Chapter 4 #2
Our past. Our history. Our future.
Gone.
I can’t hide the emotion from my voice.
I can’t hide the bitter tone in my voice. “And now, it’s nothing.”
“Aye,” Bayne says, sensing my grief. “And your family will build it back.”
“Yes, we will. Stronger than before,” Blaze adds.
“Except it’s not nothing,” Gregory says.
The short clip plays on a loop. I can’t stop myself from looking at it again. Even blurred, even distant, the shape of her is familiar enough to make something in my chest tear open.
Summer light.
A white dress.
A scream through smoke.
Now my hands are the ones to curl. I can’t look at Erin.
The cabin disappears for half a second.
I am in the fire again.
Smoke black enough to blind. Heat crawling over my skin. Men screaming my name. My lungs burning. Carlos’s voice somewhere in the chaos, telling me to run.
Her screaming my name.
I grip the back of the chair in front of me until the wood creaks.
“Lucian.” Erin’s voice. Quiet but strong. Anchoring.
I look at her despite myself. Her eyes are fixed on my hands. On the wood splintering under my grip.
I release the chair.
Slowly.
She catches my eye and smiles. Soft. Kind. Reassuring.
Rafe waits until he is sure I am listening before continuing.
“Second point. Carlos’s men were spotted in the same area less than twenty minutes after she left.”
“She wanted to be seen,” Bayne says.
Blaze swears. “Did he want to be seen as well?”
“We don’t know,” Rafe says.
“Different messages,” Gregory says quietly, the words careful rather than confident.
Every head turns toward him.
He adjusts his glasses, then seems to realize he has spoken in a room full of murderers and one furious billionaire with control issues. To his credit, he does not shrink.
“I only mean,” Gregory continues, “if Carlos wanted to prove she was alive, the sighting could have been cleaner. A direct image. A message. Something unmistakable. A grainy clip from a broken camera, then his men spotted in the same area right afterward? This is almost designed to make you argue with yourselves.”
I study him. “What do you mean?”
Gregory leans forward. “Carlos wants Lucian distracted.”
I look at Erin.
She is not looking at me now. She is looking at the screen, studying the blurred woman as if she were a problem she could solve if she stared hard enough.
“Not just distracted,” Erin whispers. “It’s emotional warfare.”
Blaze glances at me. “She’s not wrong.”
“I am aware,” I say.
Erin’s eyes flick to mine.
Recognition.
She knows exactly what emotional compromise looks like because she has been used as a lever against me before. She knows Carlos has chosen his weapon well.
I am the first one to look away.
“Wait,” Erin says. “What was the third point of torment?”
“Confirmation,” Gregory quickly corrects her.
My neck tenses, and I run a hand over the back of it.
Rafe taps a key. Another image appears.
This one is worse.
A close-up pulled from a different angle. Still poor quality. Still imperfect. The figure of a woman walking down an alleyway between metal warehouses.
This time, we can’t see her face.
She turns the corner.
And I see the street sign.
My eyes flicker to the bottom-right corner of the screen.
The date is a gut punch.
The air leaves my body.
Blaze looks at Bayne, a Scot and not a New Yorker, filling him in.
“It’s old footage. This is the street perpendicular to the one the warehouse was on.
The date is the date of the fire. We think this is Isobel. Escaping.”
My stomach drops to the floor.
It’s her.
Escaping the fire.
Alive.
All this time.
And I’m still trapped in the flames.
Hating myself for not saving her.
The room is silent.
I feel Erin watching me and gauging my reaction.
I finally look at her fully.
Mistake.
Her face is composed, but I know every inch of that face now. I know the difference between calm and shutdown. This is Erin sealing herself into her corner of safety.
I move before I decide to.
Around the table. To her chair. To stand behind her.
She’s right.
It’s emotional warfare.
And I’m shit at fighting a war I can’t see.
Her eyes lift only when I stand beside her.
I place my hand on her shoulder. To feel her warmth. To anchor me. To tie me to her.
It’s all I can give at the moment, but it is enough.
She lifts her hand, placing it over mine with a squeeze.
Her own claim.
A comfort.
A warning to every man in this room that whatever ghosts have stepped from the ashes, she will not be going anywhere.
Her wordless proclamation stirs in my chest, my core. I rub her shoulder.
Mine.
“Continue,” I say, feeling more connected to the present than I have since I saw that laptop screen.
Rafe’s eyes drop briefly to my hand, then to Erin’s face, then back to the laptop.
There’s an apology in his voice.
“There’s more.”
“Of course there is,” Blaze mutters.
Bayne stands at the window, arms still crossed. His steady gaze is still scanning his woods.
Erin looks up at me and whispers, “I thought there were only three points of contention.”
Rafe says, “Confirmation.”
All I can say is, “I’m sorry.”
I lean down, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and kissing the top of her head, not giving a damn if I look soft in front of these men.
Rafe clicks again.
This time, a message fills the screen.
No image.
No signature.
Ten words.
Your past will rise from the ashes like the Phoenix.
The room goes colder than the woods.
Erin reads it.
Once.
Twice.
Then she looks up at me. “What does it mean?”
I don’t answer.
“Is she coming here?” Her voice is so small it hurts.
Because I don’t know.
I have no idea what I lost in that fire, what any of these messages mean, or who is coming.
I don’t know whether Isobel escaped hell or helped build it. I don’t know if the woman in that image is a survivor, a traitor, or one of Carlos’s knives wrapped in old skin. I don’t know if Carlos is building an army off this island.
And Erin is looking at me like she is waiting to see whether my past outranks her future.
And all I can do is wrap my arms around her tighter.
She lets out a little gasp, touching my hand.
“Lucian.”
“Sorry.”
I loosen my grip.
I’m holding her too tight.
And it’s never tight enough.
Because the one thing I’m certain is hidden in those messages is this: Erin is in more danger now than ever before.
And Isabel is alive.