Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
A deafening roar splits the night, freezing the chaos around me.
The crowd halts mid-panic, heads snapping upward as one. My own gaze follows, and for a moment, I think I’m seeing things.
The underside of a Lamborghini flies overhead, illuminated by the neon lights of the Strip.
They’re fucking doing it.
Before the thought even fully registers, Koen’s hand clamps around the back of my neck, “Move!” he barks, pushing me forward.
The crowd has gone eerily still, everyone gawking at the impossible sight above. It’s easier to push through now, but it takes everything in me not to crane my neck again, not to look up and see if they’re actually going to make it—or crash headfirst into the Heights.
Koen doesn’t stop guiding me, and my heart slams against my ribs, the cut in my lip sending a pulse of pain through me with every beat.
A dull thud crackles through the earpiece, followed by the screech of tires. Then, a loud crash.
The sound punches me in the gut, knocking the breath from my lungs.
They made it over, but they crashed the landing?
Sickness coils in my stomach, threatening to claw its way up. I risk a glance at Koen, whose face mirrors my own dread. Stricken.
“Faster!” Ezra barrels through the remaining clusters of people, almost carrying Levi, clearing a path for us, and we follow in his wake. My legs burn, but I don’t stop, not until the van comes into view.
“Sparkle?” Sylus asks hesitantly. “Ric?”
Koen is reaching for the sliding door, his hand brushing the handle, when Novalee’s voice crackles through the earpiece.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit!”
Alaric’s laughter follows, wild and unhinged.
“I hate you both.” Sylus’s voice is breaking, almost sobbing. “I hate you so fucking much.” Relief crashes over me so hard I almost collapse. Koen yanks the van door open, and we pile in, my adrenaline still coursing.
“Did it work? You guys out?” Alaric asks, panting.
“We’re in the van.” Koen grunts.
Ezra kneels in front of Levi, his chest heaving as he cups his face with both hands, scanning him from head to toe. “Are you hurt, love?”
Levi shakes his head, tears welling up in his eyes. “No. I-I’m fine.” His breath hitches, and then the tears spill over. “That was fucking scary. Thank you.”
Ezra crashes his lips against Levi’s, stroking his cheeks gently as Levi clutches his shoulders.
“Sy, try to get us to the front of the Heights so we can grab those two idiots and get the fuck out of here, please,” Koen shouts to the front.
From the comms, Novalee’s voice fires back immediately. “Who are you calling idiots?”
“Oh, it’s fucking you, Little Thief.” Koen’s laugh is humorless. “And believe me, I’m going to whoop your ass for this. Hard.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Novalee quips, and despite everything, I can’t help but smirk.
Koen mutters under his breath but doesn’t push it. My gaze drifts to the windshield and toward the skyline, and I catch myself wondering how soon I can kiss those sassy, reckless lips again.
“The drive is connected to the transmitter,” Alaric informs us. “Get us fucking out of here, Sy.”
Sylus growls in frustration, halting the painstakingly slow drive. “Hold on.” He grabs his laptop from the passenger seat, his fingers flying over the keyboard, all of us watching silently until he lets out a relieved sigh. “I’m in the system. Doors are open. Elevator is called.”
“Oh my God, do you know what I just realized?” Novalee’s laughter bubbles up, louder than usual, like the adrenaline is still riding her hard. “Not only did you crash a Mustang but now a Lambo too. And you tell me I’m a bad driver.”
“Well, I don’t have a license either,” Alaric fires back, and Novalee’s answering laughter actually clips the mic, cutting off sound from the earpieces until Alaric adds, “Thanks, Sy. We’re in the elevator.”
Sylus grins as he finishes typing with one last flourish. “And I just broadcasted our little show over all of Veronica’s establishments.”
Levi whoops, throwing his hands in the air. “Hell yeah!”
Even Koen grins at that, and in the next moment, Sylus slides his laptop back into place and moves to get the van going again.
“The crowd’s thinning out,” he observes as he carefully moves toward the Heights’ entrance. “The panic seems to be over.”
Levi peers out the front with a scowl. “Still way too many people around for my taste. Fuck, they’re all shoulder to shoulder. How do we get through that?”
Koen’s gaze darkens, and I know he’s already strategizing.
“Almost out,” Alaric’s voice growls through the comms.
“Almost there,” Sylus says in response from the front, his focus locked on the road as the van inches closer to the Heights’ entry.
I glance out the back window to scan the thinning crowd and freeze when I see her.
Veronica.
She’s slipping out of a side door of the Heights, flanked by two of her security guards.
She’s getting away.
Because of me.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath as I reach for the sliding door of the van.
“What the fuck are you doing, Snickers?” Koen snaps.
“Fixing my fuckup,” I yell back as I yank open the door and jump out, sliding it shut before the people outside get a glimpse at the Lane twins.
“Get back here,” Ezra yells. “Let her be. The police will get her.”
“And what if they don’t?” I reply through the comms as I bolt toward where I saw her disappear, my pulse pounding as I scan my surroundings, desperate for a way through.
I turn my gaze toward the sky, begging them for an answer.
Surprisingly, it comes to me.
The balconies on the first floor of the Heights.
They’re spaced just close enough to be reachable.
I double back toward the van, ignoring the shouted protests in my earpiece, and clamber onto the hood.
“What the fuck, Short King?” Sylus pounds his fist on the windshield. “You’re gonna make a dent in it!”
“I paid for this pile of rust.” I glance at Sylus through the windshield. “I can dent it as much as I want.” Then, I leap onto the van’s roof, making the metal creak under my weight.
Sylus rolls down the window and yells at me, apparently not satisfied to use the comms. “Hell, Harrington, what are you doing?”
I don’t respond because I’m too busy jumping.
My fingers grip the edge of the first balcony, and the metal bites into my skin as I dangle there for a second, my muscles straining as I pull myself up and over the railing.
The next balcony is farther away than it looked from below, the gap wide enough to give me pause. My heart pounds as I calculate the jump, the distance. I glance down and see Veronica moving farther away, her security clearing a path for her.
No time for second-guessing.
I balance on the railing, my breath steadying as I crouch, and then I push off, leaping through the air. I’m weightless before I land hard, my knees bending to absorb the impact.
“Holy shit,” Sylus’s voice comes through the comms. “You’re fucking crazy, Harrington. You know that, right?”
“Shut up, Walker,” I mutter, already moving.
The next jump is easier, and after another, my movements grow even faster, more instinctive.
Jump. Land. Balance. Repeat.
Veronica’s security doesn’t even glance up, too focused on keeping her moving.
“Where the hell is he going?” Koen’s voice growls in my ear.
“Apparently, he’s auditioning for Cirque du Soleil,” Sylus answers.
I ignore them, pushing harder. Veronica and the guards split from the crowd and turn into an alleyway, which plays in my hand because the balconies are closer together here, and I’m gaining on them.
One more leap puts me directly above where she’s rushing through the alley with her guards.
I crouch, gripping the railing, waiting for the right moment.
With a final exhale, I push off the railing and drop, twisting midair into a backflip.
The world spins, gravity yanking me down, and I land in a crouch, my feet hitting the pavement with a thud.
I rise slowly as Veronica skids to a halt, her guards doing the same a few feet behind her.
“Evening, Mother,” I greet innocently as we lock eyes, but a sharp smile curls my lips while I try not to pant.
That was fucking epic, and I hate that Sylus didn’t see it.
Veronica’s lips part in shock, and the guards shift their hands to hover over their weapons, but I hold my ground.
Novalee’s and Alaric’s voices crackle in and out over the comms as they make it back to the van, but they’re a distant hum, drowned out by the sharp focus tunneling my vision. Everything narrows to this one moment.
“Nicholas.” Her lips curl into a sneer, dripping with venom.
“What you’ve done here tonight… it’s not only a disgrace.
It’s a betrayal. A betrayal of me, of the Harrington name.
Your grandfather would turn over in his grave.
You’ve destroyed everything we built,” she spits.
“Everything I built for you. And for what? To play the hero? To save these pathetic magicians and their circus tricks? The ones who treated you like a pariah for the last decade?”
Weeks ago, this would’ve wrecked me. The accusations, the guilt, the weight of her expectations—I would have carried it all, buckling under the pressure of needing to be her legacy, her something.
But now? Now, it’s nothing.
I force myself to stay rooted, refusing to flinch under her scrutiny. There’s a strange kind of clarity in the moment, slicing through the last threads of whatever hold she thought she had over me.
I don’t need to be her legacy.
I don’t need to be her son, her heir, her anything.
“And now what, Nicholas?” she presses, stepping closer. “You think the police will see you as anything other than my accomplice? Do you think this makes you better than me?”
Her words try to claw at me, but they slide off like it’s nothing.
“You’ve ruined us, Nicholas. And you’ll never be more than a footnote in my story, a failure.”
She’s relentless, every syllable laced with the venom of years of manipulation, years of being told I had to live up to a name that never felt like mine.