29. Zayn
CHAPTER 29
ZAYN
Of course, we did. What else would it be?
Isla looked between the two of us, and I took a moment to appreciate her effortless beauty. With her hair up, the way she preferred it for work, she sported a simple, sleek ponytail. She wore a loose blouse, no jacket, and plain black pants. Her eyes were wide as she glanced at me, revealing that she was still rattled from whatever she and Julian had discussed.
And a call that should’ve never reached her.
I didn’t speak, I just pulled her into me. She came willingly, folding into my chest like she’d needed to breathe and had waited for me to bring it.
“Tell me again,” I said, my mouth close to her temple, my eyes fixed on Rye.
She recounted the call, knowing it was for Rye’s benefit, the words, the voice—the way it hadn’t been threatening exactly, but it hadn’t been nothing either.
I clenched my jaw, fury rippling just beneath my skin. She shouldn’t have to carry this. None of it. And yet here she was, still involved, getting deeper. I saw the same reflected in Rye’s look. I’d asked for her protection, but that didn’t come until I delivered this fucking money deal on an impossible deadline.
Isla didn’t flinch as she finished. “It was a warning, right? That they know where to get me?” She looked up at me. “A warning for you?”
“For us,” I corrected. “Tell me about your conversation with Julian.”
I saw Rye frown at her when I spoke, and Isla blushed as she looked away; I wondered what that was about. I heard the pain in her voice as she spoke, but for once, neither Rye nor I interrupted.
I understood. He was her closest friend, and she was willing to fight for him. If I were younger and didn’t know him as well as I did now, I might be willing to fight for him too.
One glance at Rye showed me he wasn’t on the same page.
I kissed her temple. She felt wonderful in my arms. “All right.” I glanced back at Rye. “So?—”
“A man came to the hotel yesterday.”
Rye and I looked at her, and her face flamed red. “Excuse me?”
Isla bit her lip under the weight of my stare. “A man…” She cleared her throat. “He approached me and…” She sighed, her gaze flicking between Rye and me. “He didn’t threaten me, he didn’t really say anything much at all, and I think the whole thing was just to let me know they knew where I was.”
“Why are you only telling me now?”
Isla flushed once more, her eyes flicking to Rye before they dropped to study the ground. “I got distracted.”
Rye’s snort was loud. I shot him a glare, and he didn’t flinch .
“Can you describe him?” I asked her carefully.
“I can do better,” she said with a sly smile. “I got his picture off the security cameras this morning. It’s on my phone.”
I smiled at her, and she grinned. “Okay.” I turned to Rye. “Your turn.”
His lips twitched, but he didn’t hesitate. “The call came from a burner. It’s exactly as she said.” He didn’t care. We had just informed her that we had tapped her phone line. “He said Thursday.”
“For the drop or the hand-off?”
Rye shrugged. “Nothing specific.” He ran a hand through his hair. “If it’s Thursday, I’m double-booked.”
“What?”
“Elixir’s booked on Thursday. Fully .” His look said it all.
I tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling. “What time does the event start?”
“First one is at twelve. Out of there by six, then there’s a twenty-first party, where they’ve brought in their own DJ. They booked the entire club for the whole night. The only thing I couldn’t give them was four booths. They’re already booked. Regulars.”
His eyes flicked to Isla, and I knew there was more. “Just tell me.”
Rye chuckled softly and shook his head. “Same hands, different gloves? The area is locked down. Town inspection flagged the permits...again. Someone tipped them off and inspectors are crawling over everything. I can’t be in both places at once—not with the events happening downstairs.”
“Then we use another site,” I said.
Rye shook his head. “No time to move it, not with the volume. And I have to be visible for the twenty-first party. I already pushed it back an hour—clients were twitchy. They need to see at least one of us, not just staff.”
My mind worked quickly. Multiple pieces moving at once. This wasn’t just about logistics. It was about perception.
It was about who was watching, what they were seeing, and how many angles we could cover at once without tripping over our own shadows.
From beside me, Isla pulled out of my hold. “I could do it.”
Both of us turned to look at her. She stood straight, her chin lifted like she wasn’t volunteering to step into something unknown.
“I’m experienced. This is my job, after all.” She spoke quickly. “I don’t need to know whatever the other thing is, but I can handle a twenty-first. It frees Rye from the club and lets him be where you need him to be.”
My jaw flexed. “No.”
“Why not?” Her voice didn’t waver.
“You don’t work for Elixir. You’re not?—”
“I’m the only one who can . I know your systems, and I know your standards. I just need a brief from Rye, and then I’ll be good to go. And…you’re running out of options.”
Rye ran his tongue over his lower lip before he spoke, grudgingly. “She’s not wrong.”
“She’s not involved,” I snapped.
“She’s already involved,” he shot back. “You know that better than anyone.”
Isla met my gaze. Calm. Composed. Brave. “This is what teamwork means,” she said softly. “They’re testing you, us,” she glanced at Rye. “ All of us. The only way we beat them is to show them us working together. I can be here on the club floor. There isn’t a twenty-one-year-old diva who hasn’t had a tantrum that’s beaten me yet,” she added with a light laugh. “ Rye does what you need him to do, and that leaves you to… Actually, I don’t think I need to know that part. I can do this.”
It should’ve been an easy no. But she was right. And Rye was right. She was already part of this—no matter how much I wanted to keep her apart from it.
I raked a hand across my jaw, tension biting behind my eyes. “This doesn’t become routine.”
“Of course not,” she said immediately. “Rye would kill me when I outperformed him in his own venue.” She smiled when Rye grunted. “Just one night.”
But we all knew nothing in this world ever stayed just one night .
“The booths?” I asked Rye. “Who?”
He knew what I was asking, and I saw him try to hide his smile. She might have handled twenty-first birthday celebrations, but I doubted she’d ever dealt with the more depraved sexual quirks of some of our clientele. Rye rattled off two off-season sports stars along with their usual entourage; they occupied two booths. The others were low-flying yuppies who thought they had more cash and pull than they actually did.
“Fine.” I nodded. “Okay, let’s talk logistics.” I looked down at Isla. “Do you have time to stay, or do you need to go back to The Grand?”
“I need to go back. Gerard and I are meeting with the architect for the yurts.” She saw my look. “Not Julian,” she added hastily. “He would never stoop so low as to design for something as banal as glamping.” Her smile was a mix of bitterness and sadness. She reached up, brushing her lips over mine. “You’ll be at the house later?”
“I’ll see you after you finish work,” I promised, both of us knowing I meant her work, not mine. I pulled her back when she tried to move and kissed her deeper, not caring that Rye was in the room. “I’m sending Jayden with you.” I placed my finger over her lips to stop the protest. “No arguments.”
Isla narrowed her eyes as she looked up at me. “He lied to me.”
“When?”
“Today, he said you weren’t here, and you were.”
Rye covered his laugh with a cough, and I fought my own smile. “That’s what I pay him for, but I’ll tell him not to do it with you again.”
She was going to protest; instead, she kissed me again, said goodbye to Rye, and left to meet Jayden downstairs.
I headed back to my desk, Rye following me, his silence louder than usual. I texted Jayden to go with Isla when she left and sat down.
I leaned back against the leather chair and pulled up the floor schematics on my laptop screen. Elixir’s upper level was secure—Isla would have access to everything she needed without ever stepping near the lower club or the hallway behind it. Still, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like her being on-site while everything else moved in the shadows.
Especially when I wasn’t here.
“She won’t see anything,” Rye said finally. I didn’t answer. “She’s not an idiot. She knows this isn’t a goddamn charity.”
“She’s not like us,” I muttered, pulling out blueprints for another building.
“She’s with you,” he said. “So…she’s going to need to adapt.”
My jaw ticked as I unrolled the document. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“Plans change.”
I looked at the screen, my hands clenched on either side of the keyboard. Every part of this felt like walking a tightrope in a storm. One misstep and the fall would be long. And I wouldn’t be falling alone.
“The phone call?” I asked, my voice low.
Rye nodded. “We expected it. The call was premature—someone testing our movement? It didn’t come from our side.”
I swore under my breath. “They’re watching us…or watching her.”
“Or both.”
I looked down at the digital blueprint again. Isla’s name was already on the roster for my club. A placeholder. A fiction. But now it was real. “She’s handling it,” I said flatly.
“Yeah,” Rye replied. “She’s doing better than I thought someone like her would.”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
Rye grunted. “You’re the one who had the conversation in front of her, not me.”
We fell silent. I examined the blueprints for my new club. Inspectors were everywhere. It kept being flagged for code violations. I needed it cleared by Friday, but it seemed unlikely. I recalled seeing Julian talking to Zeper in the lower club. “Check with our contacts at town hall. This has Julian’s scent all over it.”
I turned my focus to the money drop. “This needs to move smoothly,” I said. “No delays. No attention.” I went over the designated drop-off point. “Where are we with the receipts?”
“Being printed as we speak. I changed ledgers this morning after you got back.” He leaned back in his chair, a wave of tiredness washing over him. “It will go as it always does,” Rye said, stifling a yawn. “Without a problem.”
I nodded once. But the truth sat heavy behind my ribs. It had never been harder to keep my two worlds apart. And the deeper Isla got, the more I felt it—this creeping inevitability that something was going to crack.
Not because she was weak.
Because she was worth breaking for.
And I didn’t know yet what that meant for me.
I found her upstairs in the bedroom, standing barefoot in front of the windows, with her tablet in one hand and a highlighter clenched between her teeth. She was squinting at a schedule and muttering under her breath. Her hair was piled high on her head. She had changed into sleep shorts and an oversized sleep shirt that had slipped off her shoulder.
It was the most Isla thing I’d ever seen, and it made my chest ache.
“You going to rewrite the entire schedule with that highlighter?” I asked quietly.
She jumped. “Jesus, Zayn.” She pulled the pen from her mouth and shot me a look. “Do you always walk like a ghost?”
“I live in the dark, remember?” I moved closer. “It’s quiet there.”
She rolled her eyes, “Drama king.” But I saw the curve of her mouth.
“I want to talk about Thursday,” I said.
She lowered the tablet, her brows knitting together. “Is this the part when you tell me you’ve changed your mind and I’m not allowed to help?”
“No,” I said. “This is the part where I make sure you understand what you’re walking into.”
Her gaze sharpened. “I’m managing two events and four VIP booths. I’m not planning a military operation. I can handle this.” She smiled at me, full of trust. “This is actually my job, you know,” she teased.
“I know, Is,” I said, sitting at the edge of the bed. “But it doesn’t matter. Your name will be on the contact list. Your face will be the one they see. Your decisions will carry weight. This makes you part of this even if you think you’re only stepping in. You’re not.”
She crossed her arms. “You don’t think I can do this?”
I shook my head and answered honestly. “I think you’ll slip right in and be right at home.”
Her brow furrowed as she looked at me. “Then why are you so worried? I’m not scared. Not of this.”
“You shouldn’t be. Not of this.” I didn’t flinch when I said it. Her eyes flicked to the floor before returning to mine. “This world doesn’t care how smart you are or how steady. It doesn’t reward good planning or perfect schedules. It rewards survival, quick thinking, loyalty.”
“I have that.”
I gazed at her. “Yeah, you do. That’s the problem.” A moment of silence stretched between us. I reached out, brushing my fingers down the bare skin of her arm. “You don’t owe me this, Isla. You could walk away from Thursday and never look back.”
She looked up at me, her eyes soft and steely all at once. “No. I couldn’t.”
My throat tightened. I had never experienced this before. She was so damn fragile; the thought of how easily she could break was almost too much to bear.
“Just don’t try to be brave,” I said. “Be smart. If something feels wrong, walk out. I don’t give a fuck about the club. If something feels off. Get out. Call me. Call Rye. Call me . Don’t try to fix it yourself.” I looked into her eyes so she could see how much I meant it. “Okay? You walk out, Is. Don’t stay. I don’t give a fuck. If it spooks you, get the fuck out.”
She nodded slowly. “I won’t.”
“And if anyone steps too close?—”
“They won’t,” she said, her voice gentle but firm. “I don’t know where you’ll be, but I know you’ll be watching.” She smiled softly down at me. “Rye will definitely be watching to see how much I kill it,” she added teasingly. She reached out and stroked her hand over my hair. “You’ll be watching. I won’t be alone.”
I didn’t confirm it. I didn’t need to. She already knew. And it terrified me how much she trusted that.
“Zayn?”
“Yeah?”
She reached for my hand. “I’ll be fine.”
I stared at her for a long second.
“You better be,” I said. “Because if you’re not, I’ll kill every motherfucker who ever looked at you.”
Isla stepped in between my legs, her hands cupping my jaw as she tilted my head back and brought her lips down to mine in a soft kiss.
“You’re scary when you say things like that,” she whispered against my lips. “And also…really hot.”
I smiled, my hands encircling her waist, drawing her closer to me. “Yeah? Show me how hot I am, babe.”
Isla pulled her head back slightly, her eyes searching mine as her teeth bit her lower lip; she looked like a damn temptress.
“Show you?” she whispered, dipping her head to place a kiss at the corner of my mouth. “On my knees?”
Fuck .
“Mmhmm.” I moved to pull her down to me, but she stepped lightly away, her smile mischievous .
Isla bent slightly at the waist, her hand trailing over my cock. “On my knees on the floor,” she asked, lowering herself, her hand once more on my cock. “Or…” She straightened and took off her top. “On my knees on the bed?”
She stepped out of her shorts, reaching up to pull her hair free. Her hand ran over my shoulder as she climbed onto the bed and got on all fours. She looked at me. “You choose.”
Fucking hell, I could already see how wet she was.
“And if I say both?” I asked as I pulled off my shirt, my eyes lingering on her ass.
“Then you can have both.” Isla watched me undress. “I’ll give you anything you want.”
Fuck .
It was going to be a long night.