22. Isla
CHAPTER 22
ISLA
I sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen with my laptop open, trying to organize the new event calendar for The Grand’s summer schedule. A charity gala, a tech expo requiring eighteen bedrooms, a wedding, and a bar mitzvah.
My brain kept drifting.
To the man who had told me how he traded safety for power. To the way my skin chilled at how the guy from the money deal looked at me the other day. To the sick twist of my stomach that told me this could be my life now.
I took a sip of wine. Was there any way I could stay out of it? Stay separate? I doubted it. What would that look like? A guard? A permanent guard who would watch over me whenever I wasn’t with Zayn?
I shuddered. I couldn’t think of anything worse.
I was halfway through an email when a knock at the door interrupted everything. Not the doorbell. Just three sharp raps against the solid wood.
I went still.
Who would knock on this door? No one knew this house existed. I approached the front door cautiously, peeking through the peephole, knowing who I would see on the other side.
Julian.
I exhaled sharply, my heart still racing, and cracked the door open. I could already hear Zayn in my head, frustrated by my actions. “What are you doing here?”
“Hey,” Julian greeted, his gaze directed downward. “I had to see you.” He looked like shit—tired and pale with bloodshot eyes. “Can I come in?”
I hesitated. “Zayn’s not here.”
“I’m not here for Zayn,” he said with more force than I expected. “I’m here for you. Are you allowed to let me in?”
I opened the door and stepped aside, my pulse still racing. “Don’t come here with that attitude,” I snapped at him. “The reason I can’t go home is because of you,” I growled. “Or did you forget ?”
Julian let out a sigh. “I know. Sorry. Fuck, every time I come here, I fuck up. Can I come in?”
I held the door open wider. “You look tired,” I said softly as he passed by me and halted in the hallway.
He offered a humorless smile. “I haven’t slept much.”
“I wonder why,” I said, crossing my arms and wondering whether I should let Zayn know he was here. I had left my phone on the kitchen counter, and I hated that I regretted the oversight while standing in front of my best friend . “What do you want, Julian?”
He turned to me, jaw tight. “I want to fix it.”
I blinked. “Fix what?”
He ran his hand through his hair, leaving it all messy and sticking up in every direction, which kind of epitomized the state he was in. “Everything. The debt. You. Zayn. All of it.”
I stared at him. “I thought Zayn fixed it?” I spoke hesitantly. “The debt? ”
“He paid it, yeah.”
“Then it’s no longer yours to fix.” A sense of trepidation washed over me. “Unless there’s something more?”
Julian shook his head. “No, I haven’t played since.”
“Okay.”
We stood in the hall like two strangers who had just met, abandoned by their partners, not knowing what to say to each other.
“Um...” I hesitated. “Wine?”
Julian smiled briefly. “Sure, I’d like that.”
He followed me to the kitchen, and I quickly tidied my makeshift workstation. “Just a minute,” I mumbled as I stacked my work notes into a pile.
“I know where everything is, Isla,” Julian said softly.
I stalled. “Right.” Of course, he did. He designed the house. “Um, well, go ahead, I guess.”
I watched him grab a glass and pour himself some of the Chablis I was drinking. He took the breakfast stool across from me and mock-clinked before drinking his wine deeply.
“Nice,” he murmured with appreciation. “Light.”
“Yeah,” I replied, feeling very uncomfortable with what was happening. “Not heavy at all.”
The silence descended upon us once more as I shifted on my stool. It had felt comfortable while I was working; now, however, I sensed it digging into my backside. I wanted to get up, but I didn’t know where else to go.
I didn’t know how to sit with my best friend anymore.
I despised this feeling.
“What brings you here this evening?” I asked, wincing at the formality of my tone.
Jullian stared at me in disbelief. “Jesus, Isla. Have we gotten this bad?”
I agreed with him. “I don’t know how to do this,” I confessed softly. “You’re…Julian. Yet, you feel like a stranger.”
I saw the pain in his eyes as I spoke. He looked away. “Yeah, I guess I deserve that.” He inhaled deeply. “I need to fix this. Us.”
“Then fix us.” It sounded so simple, yet I knew it wasn’t. I also feared it was unfixable. The trust was just…gone.
“I don’t know if I can,” he confessed, glancing at his hands. “I see the way you look at me, and I know I fucked up. I messed up so badly.” He picked up his wineglass and downed the last of his drink.
My eyebrows rose at his action, and I felt that stir of unease again. “What’s happened?” I asked, bracing myself for the worst. “Something’s happened. Hasn’t it?”
“Isla…”
“I’ve known you most of my life, Julian Turner, don’t you Isla me.”
He snorted, looking away, and I knew. I knew there was something worse to come. “Julian…”
“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s worse than you think.”
My stomach churned uneasily. “Tell me.” I swallowed hard, panic settling in. “If you don’t want to tell me, tell Zayn.”
He gave me a look of disbelief that clearly questioned my sanity, and I half shrugged in response. Yeah, okay, that was warranted. “Okay, tell me.”
“I was being watched.” He spoke softly. “Long before you were taken. It was more than just that I owed them and hadn’t paid. It felt…off.”
“Off? Off how?” I asked curiously.
“I don’t think they were after me…I mean, obviously, they were. I owed what I owed, but it felt more like they were wa tching…what I would do.” Julian sighed, his fingers twisting around the stem of the wineglass. “When I think back, I think…” He looked up. " I think they used me to get to him.” He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched. “I think they expected me to go to Zayn, but I didn’t know that by doing so I would give them…well you.”
Something cold settled in my chest. “Julian?—”
“They took me,” he blurted out, and my body stiffened in shock. I saw the unshed tears as he looked at me with misery. “I told them things, Isla,” he whispered. “Not because I wanted to but because I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“You gave them Zayn?” I asked, my lips numb. “Oh my god, you gave them me .”
His eyes shimmered. “I didn’t know they’d take you. I didn’t think they would actually do it.”
I slid off the stool and turned away from him, heart pounding, as I grappled with what he was saying.
“Please don’t hate me,” he said from behind me. “Just don’t?—”
Hate him? I couldn’t even bear to look at him. Tears streamed down my face. “You shouldn’t be here.” My voice was as cold as ice. “Zayn won’t be happy when he finds out.”
“I know.” I heard him take a shaky breath. “He’ll kick the shit out of me.”
I spun around. “Then why come?”
He hesitated, then reached into his jacket. I froze. But all he pulled out was a flash drive. I hadn't used one in so long that it took a moment for me to recognize it. “There’s information on here,” Julian said, his voice low, urgent . “It shows the money trail. Who’s behind it. Show this to Zayn…” He pressed it into my palm, and my fingers closed around the plastic before I could stop them. “He’ll know what to do.”
I looked up at him and saw the shadow of the man I loved like a brother. “I’m so sorry, Isla. I’m truly sorry you got involved, but… I don’t know who to trust anymore.” He rubbed his jaw. “But I trust you. Even though I know you will never trust me again.”
“Julian…”
He left the kitchen, almost running to the door, and I heard it click shut behind him.
I didn’t move. Not for a full minute, perhaps longer. I stood there, my breath shallow and the flash drive burning a hole in my hand.
I didn’t know what to do.
No. That was a lie.
I had two choices: show it to Zayn, knowing it might lead to bloodshed, or hide it. Neither option felt safe.
None of this felt sane .
The flash drive felt heavy in my hand as if it weighed a thousand pounds. I stared at it: sleek, silver, and innocuous.
Terrifying .
Should I drop it? Toss it in the trash? Burn it? Instead, my fingers tightened around it.
Zayn would know what to do with it. That’s what Julian said. He would take it, and I would never know what was on it. He would protect me from it. I really wanted that. I wanted to be protected. I didn’t want anything to do with what was on that drive.
But what if what Zayn did…made everything worse?
My feet carried me to the couch. I felt lightheaded. Fragile. Like I wasn’t really here. My legs shook. I hadn’t even looked at the fucking thing, and I was a nervous wreck. I sank down onto the couch, the plastic weapon gripped between my fingers like a live wire.
My mind raced. Too fast. Too loud. I repeatedly ran through the conversation in my head that I’d had with Julian, analyzing every moment and searching for anything I had overlooked. I examined every gut feeling I had pushed away. Every moment of thinking I knew who he was.
He handed me over to them. He explained who I was and how I was connected to Zayn. He allowed them to use me to get to Zayn.
As a pawn.
And the worst part. I wasn’t even surprised to hear it confirmed. Not anymore.
“What the hell happened to us?” I murmured, dropping my head into my hands and rubbing my temples, with the flash drive still firmly in my grip.
It all started and ended with Zayn. Elixir. The gala. The alley. The warehouse. Being tossed into the back of a car like I was a name on a debt ledger.
His world…was so much darker than I ever wanted to admit. And he thrived in it.
And now? It was my world too. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, striving to maintain steady breathing and contain my panic.
I needed to hand this over to him and forget about it. Chicken . The word echoed in my mind. I would never be able to stand by his side if I was scared. And I was scared. I was petrified of what was on this drive. What if it revealed there was more behind my kidnapping? What could be even more dangerous than just a simple kidnapping to settle a debt?
Did I seriously just say simple kidnapping?
I pushed myself to my feet. “What if this isn’t just about Zayn?” I clutched the drive closer. What if this is about me?
My safety. My choices. My life.
I ran my thumb along the edge of the USB port, my eyes burning. I needed to tell Zayn. I wanted to tell Zayn.
But if I did—if I handed it over—there would be no coming back. No more pretending I could remain separate from it all. No more lines in the sand. I knew that whatever was on that drive, he would react to it, and it wouldn’t be good.
Which meant I would be choosing his side in the full, blinding light of day, not hiding under the pretense of a divide.
I sat in the silence of the house, still gripping the flash drive. Deep within me, the decision had already been made. Slowly, I got to my feet and made my way back to the kitchen.
Almost robotically, I pulled out the stool and sat at the counter. I stared at the laptop as if it might bite me. Reluctantly, I opened my hand and examined the flash drive resting in my palm, appearing as harmless as ever. It was as if it hadn’t just been handed to me by my oldest friend—the one who had betrayed us both.
I took a breath.
Then another.
And slid the USB into the port.
The screen lit up with a folder displayed on it. No password. No encryption. Just one folder labeled Pyramid.
I clicked the folder, pushing aside the fleeting thought that it could be a virus or something worse. Inside was a list of spreadsheets, and I clicked on the first one.
Time stamps. Transaction IDs. Wire routes. Bank names I didn’t recognize. Names I did recognize. I came out of it and clicked on the next one. It was more of the same. So was the next. And the next.
And one that was called E.M.C. Holdings–Elixir Nightlife Transfer–Routed: V. Ferraro
I stared at the screen, the blood rushing in my ears.
I didn’t understand any of that except for one word. Elixir .
Zayn’s club. His front as it turned out. There it was, linked by name and number, like a receipt. What was I looking at? It appeared to be a web of shell companies, silent partners, and laundering pipelines that I couldn’t even pretend to comprehend.
A subfolder caught my eye. Photos.
With a shaky breath, I clicked.
The first image was a grainy shot of Zayn shaking hands with a man in a dark coat, his face half hidden. But I recognized him; it was the same man from the laundering drop I wasn’t supposed to see—the older man, not the one who had looked at me like I was a weakness.
I clicked on another photo. My gasp echoed in the quiet of the kitchen. This one was a close-up shot of me outside Elixir. My face was slightly blurred but still unmistakable. My stomach roiled. Cold sweat trickled down my spine.
They’d been watching. Observing me. I checked the time stamp; they’d been watching me long before Julian approached me to ask if I could reach out to Zayn for help with his debt.
“He set me up.” The cold, hard truth lay before me. He manipulated me. I’d seen enough. My hands trembled as I closed the folders, yanked the flash drive free, and dropped it onto the table as if it were on fire.
I stood quickly, backing away, needing air, needing distance?—
The front door clicked open. My heart stalled. For the first time in my life, I prayed it was Rye walking through the door.
The universe gave me another middle finger as Zayn strolled into the kitchen in a black suit, looking every bit the dangerous man I knew him to be. His eyes were sharp from the moment they locked on to mine.
I didn’t speak. Neither did he .
His gaze dropped to the laptop. To the USB beside it.
His whole body went still.
The mask of Zayn McCabe fell into place effortlessly. I recognized it now—that smooth, unreadable armor he wore like a second skin. Like his tailored suits and expensive watch, it fit him perfectly.
“Isla?” His voice was cool. Controlled. But I heard it, the undercurrent of something warmer, something steady.
Something safe.
I swallowed. My heart pounded, yet my voice remained firm. “We need to talk.”