Chapter 28 #2
“Yesterday morning. My brother, Chris, walked past the bakery where she works. He saw her through the window. He took the photo through the glass so she wouldn’t see him do it. She was laughing with a customer. She’s alive.”
“This can’t—”
“Look at her. Look at her face.”
She stares at it for a long moment, then her shoulders start to shake.
The knife slides out of her grip entirely. It hits the floor beside her foot with a small, sharp sound, and she doesn’t bend to pick it up.
She sits down on the ottoman across from me, puts her face in her hands, and starts crying heavily.
I can’t stop shaking but quickly scramble to grab the blade and grip it like my life depends on it, standing across from her, my knee still aching like a bitch.
“Where is she?” Her voice comes out a whisper through her fingers.
“I can’t tell you. She’s somewhere safe, has a new name and life. Some old boss wanted her dead, and he’s still alive, but right now, he thinks she’s dead, so she is safe.”
Upstairs, the thudding has stopped. I can’t tell when it finished, as I’ve been too caught up with Malia. A thud against the basement door at the top of the stairs, and I jump in my skin.
The door opens.
Boots. Heavy. One pair. One pair coming down. And behind them, a dragging sound. Thud. Thud. Thud. Something being hauled, one step at a time, by the heel.
I’m crying soundlessly, my back to the wall, strangling the hilt of the blade. Malia hasn’t moved from the ottoman.
The legs come down into the low battery light. Dark jeans. A torso I’d know anywhere. A dark T-shirt with blood on the shoulder and blood down the neck.
North.
He’s alive and breathing, and I want to scream out.
But behind him, hauled by one ankle, is Daniel. Face broken. Nose bent, eyes half open. A low groan rolling out of him with every bump of the stairs.
North drops the ankle at the bottom. Daniel thuds the last foot to the floor and stays there, barely conscious.
North’s gaze sweeps the room, then lands on me. “Angel.”
I run straight into North, and he catches me so hard my feet leave the ground.
His arms lock around me, crushing and desperate, and I don’t care that it almost hurts, because he’s here, he’s alive, he’s solid under my hands and breathing against my hair.
He wrestles the blade from my grip and slides it into his belt.
I bury my face against his neck for one shaking second before I’m pulling back enough to stare at him.
There’s blood at his mouth, a cut at his brow, bruising already rising along his jaw.
My throat closes. “Luca. Ace. Where are they?”
“They’re safe,” he says immediately, one hand still braced at the back of my head. “I promise.”
The basement door bangs open again, and boots hit the stairs fast. Luca and Ace come down right behind him, both of them breathing hard, both of them alive, and the sight of them tears something open in me.
Luca has blood on his knuckles and a split lip. Ace’s shirt is half torn open, and there’s a dark bruise blooming high on his cheekbone. They both look wrecked but also so beautiful.
And they’re here with me.
I notice behind us, Malia is standing, crying, watching us, hugging herself.
All three of them are closing around me at once. Luca grabs my face and kisses me hard and fast like he has to prove I’m real. Ace’s arms wrap around me from the side, and he presses his forehead to my temple for one second before kissing me there too, North still holding me in his huge arms.
“Are you hurt?” Ace asks, voice rough. “Tell me right now if you’re hurt so I can patch it up.”
“We need to check you,” Luca says, hands already moving over my arms, my shoulders, my waist, urgent and shaking despite how controlled he’s trying to sound.
I can barely get a breath in. “I’m fine, just really shaken up. But you three are bleeding.”
“We’ve had worse,” Luca mutters with a gorgeous grin.
I shake my head hard and grab both of them tighter. “I thought—” My voice breaks completely. “I thought you were going to get hurt. Or worse.”
“We’re here,” North says quietly.
I hug them harder, all of them, not caring that they’re bruised or sweaty or shaking too, because they’re alive and breathing and surrounding me. I can cry later.
Then a fourth set of footsteps starts down the stairs, and I twist in Ace’s arms.
Aman has come down behind them. Mid-forties in a white tank top. Tanned with tattoos running down both arms and old scar tissue curling up over one collarbone. A crooked nose with cropped dark hair. He walks with the specific loose, unhurried roll of a man whose body has been ready for years.
His eyes go straight to Malia, who he approaches. “Sister.”
Malia lifts her gaze, and in that moment, like a woman ten years older than the one who brought fruit to a back room in the gaming store.
“Makoa,” she says.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his arms stiff by his side.
North leans in, whispering, “He’s the chief, the leader of the gang who had a contract out on you. But I had no idea he had a sister.”
Oh, shit! Now, so much of what she told me makes sense as to how she found Daniel’s contact, why she was so pushy about Rebecca at the gaming store. She had this huge plan while none of us had a single clue she was playing us.
Malia stays quiet, staring at him, appearing almost frightened.
“We’re family, and you stole from my office, bribed two of my men.
” The chief almost hisses the words. “And you fucking brought a mainland haole into my territory without my say. Woman, you put a gun against my policies.” He takes one slow step toward her.
“All of this in my name, sister. Against a man I turned down a job from, and my word is fucking law! But you gone and betrayed me in front of my men.”
“Makoa. Please. If you hadn’t lied to me, none of this would have happened.”
“What the fuck did you say to me?” he growls.
We’re all standing there listening, watching, not saying a word.
She’s trembling. “This whole time, you knew Rebecca was alive, and you damn lied to my face, pretending she was kidnapped, leaving me to grieve. How could you do that to me?”
There’s a long pause until the chief releases a deep exhale.
“Look, sister, it’s not that simple. If anyone in our family had known she was alive, she’d be dead.
Do you understand me? Her mother didn’t stop talking about her because she stopped caring.
I went and told her the truth to help her sleep at night, but I also explained that no one else is to know, or they could be tortured into saying it. So I didn’t tell you to protect you.”
“You didn’t trust me?” Her shoulders shoot back.
“The rest of the family doesn’t know either, but you clearly had to keep poking around.
You’re lucky I got a call from North after his boys recognized my men in his house,” he says, not softening it for her.
“That call is the only reason I arrived here before this turned into something I can’t fix.
” His voice drops lower. “Do you understand me, sister? If these three hadn’t held the line when Daniel came through that door, you could have ended up dead on this floor tonight at his hands. ”
Malia folds in on herself, both hands covering her face, and a broken little sob slips through her fingers. Worse than loud, it’s thin and wrecked and ashamed.
The chief stands there looking at her for a long second, all that size and silence pressing down on the room. For one strange second, I think he’s going to haul her out of here. Instead, he drags her into his arms.
One huge hand goes to the back of her head and holds her there, not gentle, but not cruel either, just firm. “Fuck, sister,” he says into her hair, voice low and rough. “You made a real mess of things.”
Malia breaks at that. She clutches at the front of his shirt and cries properly now, shoulders shaking, face turned into his chest. “Fuck,” she chokes out. “I know. I’m sorry.”
His hand stays on the back of her head for a long moment.
“You owe these three men your life,” he states. “After trying to tear theirs apart.”
Malia pulls back and wipes at her face with both hands, dragging in shaky breaths that don’t do much to steady her. Then she turns toward us, and before anyone can stop her, she drops to her knees, facing the men.
The whole basement stills.
“I was wrong,” she says, voice trembling.
“I was wrong about all of it.” She swallows and stares at the men in front of her with swollen eyes and ruined mascara.
“I thought I was fixing something, assuming if I brought Daniel here and forced everything into the open, I could find what happened to Rebecca. But I only made it worse.” Her gaze flicks to me for one second, then drops.
“I know ‘sorry’ is worth nothing after this. I know that. But I am sorry.”
No one speaks.
Luca’s hand is still warm at my hip. North’s chest rises and falls once behind me. Ace just stares at her. My men fought for our lives today because of a woman’s grief.
“We leave,” the chief says, the words coming out like the end of a fight. Then he glances down at his sister and adds, “What a fucking day.”
That almost shouldn’t be funny, but Luca is laughing. “It needs to end now!”
His eyes shift to Daniel groaning on the floor at North’s feet. “He’s mine,” he states as if anyone might challenge him.
“He’s yours, chief,” North adds. “I want him out of my house.”
Luca’s hand tightens once at my hip. “Take him. We don’t want him.”
The chief nods slowly.
He bends, fists the back of Daniel’s collar, and hauls him half upright like he weighs nothing. Daniel groans and tries to lift his head. His face is bloodied and swollen, one eye already closing up. For one second, his gaze finds mine through all that damage, and I wait for the fear to come back.
It doesn’t.
I feel nothing but distance. He’s a monster from my past, and I don’t care what happens to him now as long as I’m not part of it.
“Adelaide,” he rasps.
I don’t answer.