21. Anastasia
My skin feels like it’s rippling with shallow flame. I haven’t been able to eat much for days, and I’m so tired, getting so weak, and it’s only my adrenaline pushing me forward.
I sit in the rooftop restaurant with Jacob, losing my confidence. I can feel it slipping from my grasp like the cold water I’m drinking. My stomach can’t handle anything else when I’m consciously trying not to excuse myself to the bathroom to throw up.
“You don’t look well, darling,” Jacob says. I believe his concern, but only because he’d lose interest in sickly things.
“Just a bit of flu,” I lie.
He’s not fully convinced, but he doesn’t push.
“Perhaps this will lift your spirits,” he says, pushing an envelope toward me.
I’m already lightheaded, and my vision sways with the sudden burst of hope I’m afraid to feel. “Did you find him?” I whisper.
“I did.”
I don’t really feel the chair beneath me anymore. I don’t hear the low chatter of the other diners. I swallow hard against the vomit that rises in me, because I can’t quite believe it. I stare and stare at every crease of that white envelope as if Rhett will be inside.
He is inside. And outside. My eyes cast over the city. He’s right. There.
I dare to reach for it, but Jacob’s hand stops me. “First I need you to sign this,” he says, sliding another document to me.
“What is it?”
“Do you want Kaiser’s location or not?”
The only part visible is the signature area, already signed by him on one side. I understand the gravity of putting my name on a document like this, but he won’t yield to me, and I want Rhett too desperately to risk him taking back the intel on where he is if I argue.
Jacob offers me an expensive fountain pen, and I scrawl fast, trying to pretend I don’t feel the condemnation in doing so. I watch the ink dry with a thundering heart and set the pen down.
“You’ve done well, Anastasia. You’ve earned this.”
I fight the sting in my nose. Force back the tears pooling in my eyes. All my exhaustion bears down at once, and I have to take a moment. He takes his document back and hands it to one of his men. I take the envelope with Rhett inside, and my fingers clench as if Jacob will try to snatch it back.
I have to move fast. Now. I have to get this information to Rix so we can begin our plan, which has to happen before Silas breaks.
If he moves first and takes Kenna from Alistair, everything will be exposed. He’ll know I betrayed him and that there was never anything between me and Silas. Jacob will hear about how I played them both. Alistair will move Rhett, maybe even kill him, in his rage. I don’t know what he’ll do to me.
It’s become a race.
“I must get going,” Jacob says.
I always leave first, but I can’t. I think if I stand I’ll collapse before I reach the door, and I curse myself for the neglect of my body and the stress that’s been eating me alive.
“I think I’ll get something to eat,” I say. It’s not a lie. I need to try holding something down to get my strength back.
Jacob stands, buttoning his suit jacket. “I’ll be seeing you soon, my love.”
The term of endearment crawls over my skin. I hope to not see him anytime soon, but I smile.
When he leaves, I inhale a new clear breath. A tear escapes, a crack in my bottle, but I swipe it away.
I spend the next hour forcing down a chicken salad. I’ve already sent a picture of the location to Rix, who has it pinned, guys already being assigned to scope it out first in case it’s a trap.
We’re coming for you, Rhett.
Now I’m riddled with terror over how we’ll find him. How many pieces Alistair will have made of him. But I’m ready to love each one for as long as it takes to put him back together.
The food helps, and I take a long breath of determination as the sun starts to set. I head out and slip into the car Tony drives. I keep a tight grip on my phone from Xoid, antsy for an update. The street speeds by like my thoughts, a blurred, rushing mess. My knee bounces, and I taste the blood in my mouth from biting my thumb raw.
It’s when the car slows to turn at a junction that my awareness starts to trickle back. I stop biting. He’s supposed to take me home, but I recognize the route to the secluded manor.
“Why are you taking me there?” I ask.
“Alistair’s instruction, ma’am.”
Now I’m concluding the worst. That Kenna has told him everything. Silas has kidnapped her and I’m to blame. He’s found out I know Rhett’s alive.
The effort I put into eating and holding down the salad is about to be wasted when we pull up at the hauntingly familiar house. I hope to one day stand before it in ashes instead.
I head straight to Alistair’s office, knocking before entering. Kenna is here, and that brings on a new hot flush. I swallow down the sickness threatening to show them both my measly dinner.
She’s not dead. Not kidnapped.
It’s twisted to have hoped for the latter, if only because I wanted to believe my intuition was right and Silas was a lesser, if far more powerful, evil than Alistair.
Alistair sits in his tall chair by the fire. Kenna stands by his desk and regards me with no emotion at all. I’m used to it, but I still wish she would yield something.
“Sit, Anastasia,” Alistair orders. It sends chills down my spine.
Hot and cold, I can’t regulate myself. I’ve spent so much time pushing through everything I should have felt in these three months, and now it’s all punishing me, reversing the resilience I’ve built in myself. The fear of him; the dread of what he could do. I’ve not faced any punishment before, and I think that’s about to change.
Be brave, little bird.
I breathe. I calm. I sit.
I’m offered a glass of water, which I take eagerly, but I sip it carefully.
“I’m rather tired today,” I say. “Why am I here?”
“It’s been a week, and you’ve not been back to Lumina.”
Alistair doesn’t even look at me. He smokes a cigar and watches the fire, because this isn’t an interrogation; he holds all the answers.
“I didn’t realize I had a schedule to be there.”
“Silas won’t answer my request for another meeting.”
“He’s a very busy man.”
“Ana.” He drawls my name, and when his blue eyes do shift to me, they’re testing. “Tell me why I’ve been told Silas has also met with Forthson.”
My blood runs cold. Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I don’t lift my eyes to Kenna to figure out if she betrayed me. It would give away that I even thought it, and that’s as good as proof. Kenna has no warmth toward me, certainly no allegiance. If Alistair was breathing down her neck,I can’t blame her for giving something up.
“I guess he wants to be sure the competition is worth dropping for this.”
“You see, I’m not convinced you’re doing your job as well as you displayed here with him. Unless something happened ...?”
“No,” I say quickly.
“Then I expect you to go back to his club, and if I don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I’ll suspect you’re lying to me.”
“Silas doesn’t take well to being pressured.”
“Then you’d better not make it seem so.”
He wants me to go there tonight.
“Will Kenna be coming with me?”
It’s the first time she meets my eye, but there’s nothing friendly in it. The opposite, in fact. She looks like she’s itching to hold a knife to my throat again.
“No.”
I shiver at Alistair’s tone. He can’t know about Silas’s interest in her, can he?
“Shame. The dominant male ego in that place gets suffocating.” I hope it’s enough to ease his growing suspicion as I stand, appearing bored.
I head out of his office, but Alistair speaks at my back. “What a disappointment it will be to have to punish you for failing your first job.”
My steps slow, but I don’t stop. I’m barely present as I change into high-waisted black tailored shorts, a black tank top, and over-the-knee boots. Everything feels like it’s crumbling around me. All I’ve tried to hold together to see through this madness that I stepped into for Rhett.
I can’t fall apart now.
Outside Lumina, I can already anticipate what’s going to happen. Silas doesn’t dwell on things that didn’t work out for him; he’s likely moved on, forgotten about both Kenna and me if he’s discovered she’s content with Alistair.
I texted Rix on the way here, telling him not to panic, but if something happened to me for a while and he didn’t hear from me, he couldn’t lose focus as we’re so close to finding Rhett. Perhaps they’ll find him without me—then, when my nightmare is over, we’ll find each other, and perhaps our broken pieces will fit just perfectly for us to mend each other together.
I get out of the car, numb as I approach the familiar security out front. They pull out the scanner as usual, and I count each second it takes for them to read the screen.
“Apologies, Miss Kinsley. Silas won’t be seeing you tonight.”
I’m not surprised by his announcement. I anticipated it. Silas said he revoked my membership, and we have no common goal anymore.
“Can you ask him again?” I say anyway.
One of them speaks into a small, concealed device, and we wait. I assume he hears the response through his earpiece as he tells me the same thing. Silas won’t come. Won’t allow me inside to see him.
I’m angry now. He’s a fucking coward.A pretentious, arrogant asshole like the rest of them.
“Then you can tell him this for me ...” I say coldly, hoping he can hear me through whatever they’re wearing. “Taking her now may be another powerful man doing something against her will, but leaving her shouldn’t be an option. Tell him if he didn’t just see a possession like everyone else, it would be worth the patience and the challenge. But I guess he’s just like them.”
I storm away, tears hot behind my eyes, but I force them to stay put. Taking a route around the club, I try to avoid Tony. I can’t go back—I fear Alistair now more than ever, even though I knew this day could come. He wants to punish me, and I don’t know what it’ll entail. I hurry down the sidewalk, typing to Rix. If they can reach me first, perhaps I can hide. They’ll have a safe house or something to make me disappear until we get Rhett back.
I need him right now.
I thought I could do this, be strong and brave and resilient, but I’m just one fucking person. One person who hasn’t stopped grieving and has pushed past her reserves of adrenaline and anger to see this through.
My pace is brisk, but Rix isn’t responding. My frantic messages disappear one by one, and I try not to break down in my fear, feeling like it’s too late anyway.
My instinct was right about that at least.
A hand covers my mouth, smothering my scream. My vision blurs as I inhale a sharp scent that lures my conscious to sleep, but they tie a blindfold over my eyes anyway. Two people, I think as I’m drifting. One picks me up while the other makes quick work of tying my hands and the blindfold.
It’s over in seconds.
That’s the pity of being the little bird. Freedom is high and endless, but all it takes is one swoop too low to become trapped between the palms of cruel hands once again.