Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Gigi
The van groans beneath us, metal grinding with every dip in the road. We veer over another bump, and I nearly slide off the metal bench. I’ve lost all sense of direction. Left, right, north, south – it doesn’t matter anymore. Wherever we’re going, it’s secluded and difficult to find.
The air inside the van is thick with engine fumes. A stray of light creeps in through the back of the doors, casting shadows across the floor. The three of us sit facing each other on steel benches, wrists bound, ankles loosely chained to the floor.
Across from me, Harry is hunched forwards, head down, the vein twitching in his neck. A jolt sends my shoulder crashing into the wall. I hiss, trying to ease the pressure from my arms, and Harry whips his head up. But as if remembering I slipped from the bed this morning, he turns away.
“They must be driving in fucking circles,” Poppy mutters. “This can’t be the main route.”
This could be the work of Richard’s men, ready to follow through on their promise that Harry’s life is expendable, but it feels … different. Besides my aching scalp and the sheer panic when a gun was drawn to my head, they didn’t actually hurt us.
The driver slams on the brakes, and we topple sideways, chains clattering. The tyres screech. Outside, guards murmur through radios.
Someone bangs twice on the side of the van before the rear doors swing open, and blinding daylight floods in, stabbing my eyes.
“Everybody out!” a voice barks.
One guard grabs Poppy, and the other yanks Harry to his feet. They drag me out last, my feet slipping against the floor, landing hard on uneven gravel. I squint against the daylight, whipping my head round, but all I see is open sky and barbed wire.
They usher us inside a long, dark hallway, chains echoing with each step.
Somewhere, a man screams protests in French, his strangled curses vibrating off the walls.
The guards veer us right into a holding cell with one small, barred window up near the ceiling.
A bench on either side. Concrete floor. Metal toilet in the corner.
One man from the truck crouches down, securing the chains round our ankles to the metal hooks embedded into the wall. They step back.
Poppy barks, “What are you—?”
The door slams shut behind us with a thick metallic clunk.
Harry leans against the wall, arms folded across his chest, while Poppy sinks onto the bench.
“The coordinates were a trap, clearly.” She runs a tired hand through her auburn hair. “At least it wasn’t all for nothing.”
“Oh yeah?” Harry deadpans. “Thank fuck for that.”
She shoots daggers at him. I strain my hearing, noting nothing other than faint droplets of water echoing in the corner of the cell.
Then …
“Do you hear that?” I whisper.
Footsteps.
Slow, precise, echoing on the concrete floor outside.
The metal door groans as it swings open, and my stomach drops to the floor.
A man steps into the room, dressed in black from head to toe. At first, all I see is broad shoulders, the tall silhouette cutting through the dim light. The figure steps forwards, and for a second, my brain refuses to comprehend what my eyes are seeing.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. None of us do.
I stare, trying to process the impossible.
He stands there for a long, painful beat, his presence heavy in the room. I swallow hard, my throat dry. When he finally speaks, his voice comes out low and hauntingly familiar.
“Well,” Jack says as if he’s just walked into a family brunch. “You all look terrible.”
Jack.
My brother.
My dead brother.
He clasps his hands together once, like this is the beginning of a game. “Surprise?”
My lungs forget how to function. My tongue is a dead weight. Every version of reality I’ve pieced together over the past seven years unravels in an instant.
He’s supposed to be dead.
My vision tunnels, and I’m suddenly nineteen, back watching the coffin being lowered into the ground, hearing the thud of dirt falling on wood, feeling my heart shatter into a million pieces. And triggering Mystery Mondays for half a decade.
I thought it was suspicious, but this …
No. I never expected this.
Yet here he is, wearing a tailored black jacket, sleeves pushed halfway up his forearms to reveal dark ink, with a faint five o’clock shadow dusting his face. The same dark hair and eyes we inherited from our mother. But there’s something new in his gaze now – it’s older, sharper.
“Jack?” I breathe, barely louder than a thought.
A million questions slam into my chest all at once, but I can’t choose which one to scream first.
Poppy beats me to it. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she hisses, standing despite the chain on her ankle. “You’ve been alive this whole time? Did you enjoy watching us fucking grieve—”
“I know,” Jack interrupts, holding up a hand like he’s calming a classroom. “Believe me, I didn’t plan all the drama. It’s not exactly like I could text you all, ‘Hey, not dead. In France. Gonna have my guys nick you from the streets’.”
I blink hard, but he still appears in front of my open lids. I’m not hallucinating. He’s standing right in front of me, slightly tense but mainly amused as Poppy drills into him, nostrils flared, wagging her finger. I don’t think Harry has taken a breath since the door opened.
“You could’ve told me.” My voice is small.
“Yeah, I could’ve.” Jack’s face softens only slightly. “But that’s the thing, G. I didn’t know who I could trust. Not then. Not now.”
“And kidnapping us was the logical solution?” Harry cuts in, his tone sharp.
Jack tilts his head as if only just acknowledging his presence. “Harry,” he says smoothly.
His jaw clenches. Jack just grins.
“Look, I’ll explain everything, I promise. But first” – he gestures towards the hallway with a lazy nod – “let’s get those chains off.”
A quiet shuffle at the door reveals a fifth figure. A woman with sleek hair, mid-thirties, walks in with a ring of keys and a pair of scissors, freeing us of our restraints. I rub my wrists as the cuff falls away.
Before anyone can fully process it, Poppy moves fast. She steps forward and punches Jack hard, right across the jaw.
He doesn’t falter, doesn’t retaliate, just turns his head slowly, a hand to his face, and smirks a slow grin. “Well,” he says, glancing at Poppy. “I see you haven’t lost your touch.”
Her breathing staggers, hands flexing at her sides as if she’ll make another hit. I wouldn’t blame her.
Jack rolls his jaw, easing himself of the ache, then stretches his arms overhead casually. “It’s a bit of a walk. Anyone need to stop for a piss?”
We gawk at him. How is he acting so casual? Like he didn’t just drop a massive bombshell. Like he isn’t meant to be fucking buried. Like he isn’t alive and standing right there.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he says.
He slips into the hall. Poppy, Harry, and I exchange glances before begrudgingly following behind him. I notice a faint smile on Jack’s face, as if he knew we’d have no choice but to follow.
We keep a short distance away from him as we trek down the hallway, each cell empty as we pass.
There are a few short steps before we escape the thick air and walk over clean floorboards.
I glance down, feeling a faint vibration underfoot like a mechanical hum of power, but I can’t help but stare at Jack. This isn’t real life. It can’t be.
Harry’s hand brushes the back of mine – a silent question. “I’m okay,” I mouth. It’s maddening, the weight of everything unspoken between us, brushed aside for the sake of this almighty curveball.
“You gave us fake coordinates to lure us here,” he says from beside me. “Why?”
Jack briefly glances over his shoulder. “I just said I’d explain everything, didn’t I?”
“But how?” I breathe, ignoring his dismissive, teasing tone. “How did we end up here?”
“You’re all so impatient …” He pushes open a set of double doors, and we continue ahead. “It didn’t take much convincing on our end to trick Richard into thinking Paolo Ricci held something against him. I was in the city anyway, so it made sense for me to plant the hard drive.”
“It was you?” I ask in disbelief.
“Oui, oui, little sister. The plan was to be in and out in a few minutes.” He pauses as if revisiting something disturbing. “Then I had to unlock that fucking gate in the basement for you both.”
I remember it now. I saw him in the cellar of Paolo’s party, saying nothing. Just staring. I thought he was a figment of my imagination.
“Those hallucinations weren’t just your imagination, G.” He’s still facing ahead, his voice turning distant. “Someone had to pull you back from the edge.”
Fucking hell.
I rub my thumb and my forefinger against my temple. This is too much to take in. The memory of my insanity flashes in forcefully, making me cringe.
“I had to leave a message – a way for you guys to find me – but I couldn’t make it easy.
We set up the coordinates as a decoy, just in case they got into the wrong hands.
” His deep tone carries down the hall. “Once you had the drive, it was up to you to use it against Dad. I’ve been waiting for the day you figured it out, and here you are. Finally, might I add.”
“Couldn’t make it easy” sounds fucking right. I spent more than a year with it unknowingly in my possession, suffering in silence while it was stashed in my changing room.
Jack buzzes an intercom on the wall beside another impenetrable metal door. He waits, resting his boot back against it as it rings. I stare up at him. He looks older, carved from something harder than before, but underneath it all, I still see the boy who once swore he’d never leave me.
“You really think we’re safer with you?” I ask.
He smiles again. “Sweetheart, everyone is safer with me.”
Sweetheart. I shiver inwardly.
“Too close to home?”
A voice comes through the speaker. “Name?”
“Jack Thomas.”
“Password?”
“Marie,” he says in a French accent.
Maria. Mum.