Chapter 25 - Kaia
KAIA
Time is unmoving here.
Initially, I tried to track the light coming through the small crack high up on the wall, thinking it was the sun, but after countless hours of it not moving, I realized it was just an outside light that never went off.
I tried to talk to Vic, tried to get him to see reason about the disgusting things he’d said, but he either repeated that my only value is to save the family line or completely ignored me, claiming I needed to make peace with the truth.
The silence is somehow heavier when there’s someone next to me who doesn’t speak.
Until a guard comes from me.
It’s the same man who appeared countless days ago to hold up a newspaper and take a picture of both of us without a word then left.
Vic slowly climbs to his feet as the guard slides the key into the cell and unlocks it, but it’s not Vic he’s here to see.
“You.” He points at me. “Up. Come on.”
I scramble to my feet, wobbling on cold legs and stumble after him.
Even if he takes me to my death, it’ll still be nicer than sharing a cell with the monster I used to call brother.
He makes me wait near the door as he relocks the cell and Vic shoves himself against the bars.
“Remember,” he hisses. “You only have one value, Kaia. Don’t forget.”
I stare at him and pain coils in my gut, a churning mix of anxiety and hunger, then I turn away from him while the guard opens the door.
He takes me by the arm and drags me into the stairwell, but I move without resistance until we reach the stone stairs.
“Is he going to kill me?” I ask, trying to catch the guard’s eye.
He doesn’t reply. He just shoves my back and follows me up the stairs toward the exit and remains behind me all the way to Flynn’s office.
Every part of the manor feels different. It’s like stepping into a dream.
After so long in the cold and dark of the prison cells, the warm wood against my bare feet is almost painful and the bright blue sky outside burns my eyes.
Hugging myself, I walk until I’m shoved into Flynn’s office where I stumble to a stop on a fresh, thick carpet that’s soft but also gives me the odd sensation of sinking.
Things are…different. Flynn’s office isn’t the same as it was.
There’s a new window with a black brace behind the desk, a new desk and chair and even new shelves against the wall.
The coffee table’s gone and the sofa’s now made of butter-soft black leather rather than brown.
Maybe I am in a dream.
The guard leaves and closes the door behind him as the chair behind the desk turns and Flynn reveals himself.
He looks good, but the shadows under his eyes are darker than I remember.
His face flashes in my mind, twisted with fury as he aims his gun at me, and my heart starts to race. I miss when he’d look at me with a smile or a smirk.
“Are you going to kill me?” I croak out.
Flynn stands and slowly walks around his desk until he’s leaning against it. “You stole Angie.”
“I know.”
“You tried to kidnap my daughter.”
“I did.” There’s no use in hiding anything any longer.
My choices seem to be the man I have a crush on killing me for what I’ve done, or a twisted family eager to rape me just to squeeze out a Yudkin heir.
There’s really no choice at all.
“I can’t…I can’t begin to express how fucking angry you made me. Using my daughter like that is sickening, Kaia. Using children in any capacity is so twisted I can barely stomach getting the fucking words out.”
My gaze falls to the floor and I study the light stitching across his leather shoes.
“I gave you a roof over your head. Protected you when you didn’t deserve it. Fed you. Clothed you. Cared for your wounds. Tell me why. Tell me what the fuck kind of reason could you have to use a fucking child like that? Were you going to kill her? Drown her in the lake and completely ruin me?”
It hurts more that he’s not yelling.
His anger is quiet and controlled, his words clipped and strained, but not once does he raise his voice. Somehow that makes this worse.
“I wasn’t going to kill her,” I reply weakly, certain he won’t believe me. “I was trying to save her. And myself.”
“Save her?” His words bite out like the lash of a whip. “From who, from me?”
I nod slowly.
“You spend a handful of weeks here and dare to judge me as a parent?”
“No,” I croak and warm tears sting hopelessly at my eyes. “I overheard you.”
When Flynn doesn’t reply, I continue.
“On the phone. I heard you t-talking about selling me at some kind of auction and it was… I felt like a fool because I thought you were a decent man. I thought I’d seen the real you and that all the rumors that fly about you were wrong.
I even started to like you, but I overheard all of that so I ran.
And I took Angie because the thought of you deciding to auction her off if you ever tired of her also sickened me, so I took her and I ran. I was…I was trying to save us both.”
Very slowly I lift my head.
“So if you’re going to kill me then get it over with because I know I’ve done terrible things, but I won’t apologize for trying to save a little girl from a father whose hands are stained with something as horrific as the slave trade.”
Flynn doesn’t reply for a long time, but he continues to stare at me so intently that I can’t look away, even as my heart pounds and my knees tremble despite how I press my thighs together.
Then he takes a breath.
When he speaks, his voice remains pained but it’s much gentler.
“I never intended to sell you. I have never sold another human being in my life. I have spies and people who keep an eye on the slave trade because we work to save who we can, but I would never sell you. And I certainly would never sell a child.”
I blink and tears escape down my cheeks.
“What you overheard was true though. Your uncle is a wicked man. Everyone knows the Yudkin name is stained in the flesh trade and men like him only listen to threats as wicked as they are. I was speaking and making those threats, but I had no intention of ever following through with them. Ever. I’m sorry. ”
My heart skips a painful beat. He’s apologizing…to me? That can’t be right.
“If you had asked me—.” He cuts himself off suddenly. “I realize that there’s no world in which you would ask me if you feared what you’d overheard.”
“I should be…” I sniffle. “I should be shocked, I think, that my uncle is involved or that my whole family is but I…down there with Vic, he told me things.”
Flynn’s brow knits together. “What things?”
“He told me about Eva.”
Flynn’s entire expression changes. It’s as if all his wounds have suddenly risen to the surface and the mafia king facade melts away to reveal the utterly heartbroken father underneath, a man who will do anything to get his child back.
“You didn’t know?” he asks, his voice strained.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t know if you believe me, but I swear I had no idea.
Vic was proud of it and it was disgusting and I just…
he started talking about how my only value to them was because I’m the only woman.
The only one they can use to squeeze out another Yudkin heir.
” My voice cracks and I twist my hands together.
“My family is…wrong. It’s all wrong. I’ve been so blind and I’ve done terrible things and I just—.
” Emotion wells up inside me like a wave.
“Just kill me and get it over with. I don’t want to go back to them. ”
Flynn is silent as I duck my head to hide my exhausted tears.
He doesn’t speak and he doesn’t move.
We stand in silence until there’s a soft knock at the door.
“That’s Florence,” he says quietly. “She will take you to get bathed and cleaned up, fed and water. Then we will talk properly.”
I lift my head. “What? I don’t understand.”
“Go,” Flynn says, pointing at the door. “We will talk after.”
His sudden change doesn’t make sense and that confusion remains heavy in my heart as Florence takes me up to my room and watches over me while I shower.
She helps with my hair and helps me dry off, then she dresses me in a fresh dress that feels too soft for my skin.
After a meal of hot, home-made soup and crusty bread, she plies me with water and painkillers to ease my sudden headache at being cared for, then leads me out to the garden where Flynn waits under the late afternoon sun.
When he turns to me, his eyes flit down my body and his lips twitch. “You look much better.”
“I feel much better,” I reply cautiously. “But…I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” He tilts his head and we begin lazily walking through the vast garden.
“Why have you done all of this? Aren’t you going to kill me?” My heart beats so hard in my chest it’s a wonder he doesn’t hear it even with the birdsong and light wind rustling past.
“No, Kaia. I’m not going to kill you.”
“But why?”
“Because…” He holds his arms behind himself, clasping one wrist. “I like you. And I wanted to believe that if you endangered my daughter then your reasoning would tell me everything I really needed to know about you. In a way, you were trying to save her from me and I can’t fault that. But I’m not the monster here.”
“Your reputation says otherwise,” I reply weakly, fighting to fully understand everything he’s saying. He likes me? Had I given any other reasoning as to what happened with Angie, would he have killed me?
“My reputation.” Flynn nods. “Carefully crafted to keep myself and the people I’ve rescued safe. I won’t deny I’m the monster in some people’s stories. The work I do is illegal, I’ve hurt and killed countless people, but all of it has been from a moral ground I protect.”
“I can’t judge,” I reply, remaining cautious as we walk. “Given how I thought my family was one of the good ones.” Turns out we’re just as bad as the rest, if not worse.
“My twins are the best thing I have ever done. They’re the reason I get up in the morning, the reason I fight for the best deals, the reason I make this place and my life so secure.
But…” His voice wavers and he pauses as we walk down some stone steps.
“I was in the city with Angie and Eva, and Frank and more guards than I could count. They wanted to see a new movie at the cinema and were eager for the whole experience. Dinner and a movie. I couldn’t say no to them and they always ganged up on me. ”
His voice remains soft, but the more he talks, the more pain laces each word, and my stomach twists into further knots as nausea builds. I can’t tell if it’s from the soup or just stress.
“When we were driving back home, our convoy was attacked. Several front cars were blown up, our escape route was cut off and we crashed. It was chaos. Smoke and fire everywhere, men screaming and dying from my cars and more. I was focused on my children above all else. I’ve been in a few chaotic fights in my life, but this was something else.
Blood and debris. It was like hell came to New York. ”
My heart beats faster and faster.
“I got them out of the car, and I got them to safety. I thought I did.” Flynn stops walking suddenly.
“But I was wrong. I ended up in a vicious fight with your brother, Vic. That man fights like an animal, but so do I. I did everything I could. E-Everything until he stabbed me and I ended up on the ground. He kicked my head around like it was a soccer ball and then I heard Angie screaming and screaming. I was so disoriented but those seconds…” Anger laces his tone.
“Those seconds I was down, disoriented on the ground? He took Eva. He tried to take Angie as well, but I guess there wasn’t much time.
The last time I saw Eva, she was screaming and crying in your brother’s arms as he dragged her into a car and raced away. ”
Oh god.
The weight of it all, what my family has done to his, is crippling. Angie’s healing scar on her back.
Flynn’s seeming hatred toward me.
The attack on my home.
The whole reason he kept me alive here.
I was to be the trade for his daughter.
Flynn stares off into the distance, but I glimpse the sparkle of tears in his eyes.
When he next speaks, his voice is strained like air escaping a balloon.
“I failed them. I’m their father, I’m supposed to keep them safe and I failed them.
The guilt I feel…I will never be able to forgive myself.
I hunted your brother like a dog as soon as I was stitched up.
I hunted him and I didn’t stop hunting him until the night he slipped up and as soon as I got his trail, I was on it and I followed him. ”
“All the way back to my house?” I ask softly.
Flynn’s head jerks. “Yeah. I thought Eva would be there, but when he blew up the cars parked at the front, it became a race because I was so terrified that Eva was in there and she was going to burn to death. But we picked that place apart before and after the fire and there wasn’t any sign of her. ”
Bile rises in my throat. Flynn didn’t attack the house. He didn’t set the explosions that killed Anya. It was Vic. “Did…Vic ever send you any demands?”
“No,” Flynn replies. “Only a threat that I had ventured too close to their forgery business and this was my punishment.”
“Flynn, I—.” Without thinking, I reach for him and grasp his forearm. He doesn’t shake me off. “I’m so, so sorry. I swear to you, on everything I have, that I had no idea. I never would have let something like this happen if I’d known. I swear.”
“A few weeks ago, I would have doubted you.” Flynn clears his throat and blinks quickly, chasing those tears away, and then he faces me.
“Now you know why I didn’t kill you when I found you.
I needed someone to trade. I needed to cover every single chance that would bring my daughter back to me, but now?
I have no idea where she is. Your uncle refuses to give proof of life and I—. ”
“Let me,” I cut in quickly.
“What?”
The idea’s still forming in my mind, but my mouth runs faster. “Let me find out where she is. Give me a chance. Let me redeem myself for what I did and make up for what my family has done to you. Let me find out.”
Flynn stares at me blankly. “How?”
“I’m…still working that out but please, let me try. And…if I find out, will you release me?”