Chapter 28
The smell of coffee and fresh linen is a comfort I’ve come to know well.
At the Veridis, everything is about comfort, but that couldn’t be further from what I’m feeling now.
My hands clench into fists at my sides, the pulse in my veins frantic as I spot Ezra from across the café.
He smiles at me when I inch closer, with Emmett beside me.
“You may want to sit for this,” he says, opening his laptop as I hold my breath.
I don’t want to sit. I can’t sit because the anticipation of it all won’t allow me to.
“She’s alive,” he reassures, answering the dreaded question I’ve had for thirteen years, and my knees buckle, forcing me to sit.
“Where?”
His eyes drop to the laptop in the middle of the table, avoiding mine.
“Ezra…where is she?” I demand, my voice harsh and on edge.
He taps the trackpad once and turns the laptop to face me as I hold my breath, watching two girls being dragged out of a familiar fancy club…the same godforsaken place where I lost a brother.
“What the fuck?” Emmett leans over me, moving closer to the screen as the video continues. There’s a shootout, then the video cuts as a man emerges from the frame, the two girls kneeling with burlap bags over their heads.
I swallow down the notch in my throat as the bag is removed from both of them, my heart plummeting from my chest at the familiar hazel looking back at me.
“What?” I breathe, gripping the arms of the chair.
“No,” Emmett murmurs beside me, taking a step back.
My eyes lock onto Ezra’s, sharp and unyielding. He looks at me like he wants to say something, like he wants to ask me to wait before I go after her, but I’ve stopped listening.
I’m not waiting.
Not after doing thirteen years of it.
“It can’t be. This whole fucking time?” Emmett echoes the words I’m thinking but can’t say aloud because my lips won’t move. The only thing on my mind is to go to her.
To the woman the world has kept from me, only to bring me back to her now because she’s been mine all along. I just didn’t see it.
I felt it.
And as I break my gaze from Ezra’s, I hear the beating in my chest for the first time since I was a boy. The beats sound in my ears, muting everything else around me as I watch the man on the screen caress the dark hair that decorates Isla’s beautiful face.
She’s been here the entire time.
Everything starts to make sense, and when the video ends, Ezra shuts the laptop. The air becomes stagnant, the anger surging through me, mixing with relief and shock.
“We should—”
“I’m not waiting,” I say before he can finish.
“I don’t have all the pieces yet.”
“No, but I do, and I need you to pull whatever magic strings you have to find out about Purileen.”
“I suppose Adrian has already told you where she is, then?” he asks, waving a guard over.
“Benedict has her, and whatever their involvement with Purileen, I bet Judge Gordon is not so far removed from it either.”
Ezra smiles as he stands and slaps a hand on my shoulder. “Go get the girl, leave the judge to me.” He cracks his knuckles. “About time I had some fun of my own.”
I don’t have an entire arsenal of soldiers to back me up like Ezra does, but that’s not about to stop me from going to Isla.
He’s refused to be caught up in it at face value, but his support is there with his men tailing our SUV.
After I gave him what I had on Purileen, I know we’ll have some more answers before the sun rises, thanks to his extensive contact list.
“Does she know?” Emmett asks from beside me.
I shake my head, doubting Isla knows anything about what happened that night at the orphanage.
Does she even know she’s an orphan?
“Fuck,” he whispers. “How the fuck are you going to break it to her?”
“That’s if she hasn’t already figured it out,” I say, staring blankly at the gun in my lap, knowing I would do anything for her. Thirteen years change nothing. But I cannot expect that of Emmett, not after what happened to Evren. “I don’t expect you to be here, Emmett.”
“Shut the fuck up with that, Mal.”
“I can’t shoulder another burden, and I won’t ask you to either.”
He stares at me with squinted eyes. “Mal, I spent thirteen years looking for her, too, okay? I lost hope after three, but you never once lost sight of the one thing you wanted most in this world.” He stares at me and smiles. “I’m going to see you get your girl, no matter the cost.”
I don’t know what I’m walking into, but with Emmett by my side, I feel almost invincible.
Every second we spend waiting for the cover of darkness is pure torture, and now that the sun has gone, so has the last piece of my mercy.
“We’re not going to kill him, right? We can’t just kill a member of high society and get away with it,” Emmett says, echoing my thoughts.
“Exactly.”
“So, what does that mean?”
I cock the gun in my lap as the car slows down in the pristine street a block over from Benedict’s mansion.
“Like you said earlier, I’m going to get my woman, no matter the cost.”
“I swear to fuck, Mal, if you die, I’ll follow you to hell and blast you with a flamethrower myself.” He looks out the window, searching for any passersby.
“You cannot stand any sort of heat, so what makes you think you can use a weapon like that?”
He turns back to me with an incredulous look before my phone chimes. “Don’t piss me off. See who that is.”
“Put your earpiece in. Comms are live.”
“Alright, boys, Kat here. I bootlegged the system and looped the entire outdoor feed to repeat. You have five to eight minutes before the guards notice what’s up.”
As we exit the car and make our way down the path with an infantry behind us, there’s a loud bang that shakes the ground.
“What the fuck was that?” Emmett huffs, crouching to the ground as the rest of the guys fan out, surrounding the perimeter. “It sounded like a fucking grenade.”
As the commotion from inside starts to spill outside, I watch through the tall gates as my Little Nycto walks out with her shoulder slumped down, holding a gun.
“Fuck! Go now!” I yell, climbing the gate and throwing myself over. “First priority is Isla!”
I hear every breath, every shake and each heartbeat through my earpiece as we storm the front lawn, my only destination, Isla.
“Sound the fucking alarms!” a voice calls out, coming from inside the house as my legs work overtime to carry me to her.
I’m coming, baby, hold tight.
She looks weak, like they’ve barely fed her. Her arm seems like it’s been dislocated as she hugs her ribs, but I can’t be sure from here.
“Isla!”
Her eyes flick up, and my chest fucking implodes at the way they soften upon realising I’m here.
A man charges at her from behind, and I use all the power I have left in my legs to tackle him to the floor with a thud. Without wasting another second, I sink a bullet between his eyes, but when I turn, Isla’s attention is not on me, but on the prosecution—Samuel Hayes.
“Isla,” I breathe, but she doesn’t turn to me.
“I told you you’d be the first,” she grits out through clenched teeth, then pulls the trigger.
“Malik, the entire building is on fire. People are burning alive,” Emmett says through the earpiece.
“Where’s Benedict?” I ask into the mic.
“He’s fucking gone.”
“Where is he?” Isla turns to me, the gun pointed at my head.
“Isla.”
Her eyes water, gripping the gun harder, the shock now overwhelming her system. “Where the fuck is he!?”
The police sirens grow louder as the minutes pass.
I raise my hands, inching closer to her, hoping she’ll hear me. “It’s okay, Isla, just give me the gun. It’s done.”
“It’s not fucking done until I kill him!” she roars, pressing the gun to my head. I know what she’s feeling and exactly what’s coursing through her veins right now.
Blind hatred.
She won’t see me.
She won’t see anyone.
“We will find him.”
She gradually lowers the gun, and I take it from her, slipping it into my holster. In a fraction of a second, the tears fall, the energy she’s burnt up now fading as I wrap my arms around her. “Hey, look at me.”
My ribs are torn open when she does, the entirety of my organs yanked out when I see the tiredness in her eyes.
“I’m here.”
You’re here. You. The woman I’ve been searching for.
“I found you.”
She doesn’t know it, does she?
“Malik,” she whimpers, pressing her lips on mine as the sirens blare, and it’s the only thing I’ve waited thirteen years to hear.
“We have to go, now!” Emmett races to my side. “The cops, man. Hurry the fuck up.”
“Take her,” I say to Emmett. “I need to check inside.”
“What do you fucking mean? They’re coming, right fucking now. Let’s move!”
“GO!” I yell as I tear Isla’s hands from my shirt.
“Malik!” she screams as Emmett pulls her to safety. “Don’t leave me!”
“I promise, I’ll be there. Just go!”
I sprint inside, the timbers that were holding up the vintage home falling like dominoes. Flames lick at the edges of the railing as I take the stairs three at a time.
“Kat, talk to me.”
“Looks like there’s a space at the far right of the building, through the corridor, the last door on your left.”
It’s burnt to a crisp when I enter through the archway, looking around the room.
“What am I looking for?” I ask through the earpiece.
“I’ve only been able to get through their systems for six minutes before an emergency protocol kicked me out, but I found some sort of formula. I’ll send it through to you, but you have to get out of there. Now. The cops are right at the doorstep.”
“I can’t leave until I have some evidence.”
The bed in the corner of the room is unmade, the sheets burning along with the mattress. It’s not until I see the tray beside it that I notice the needles on top.
That’s it.
Sifting through them, I find one that’s half full. Breaking the metal end, I stuff the other into my pocket.
“Got it.”
“Too late, they’re there.”
Fuck.
I sprint out the door, through the corridor and back down the stairs, dodging every falling beam, when the fire cinches my arm.
“The back entrance! Through the French doors!” Kat yells as I follow her directions. “No, not THOSE French doors!”
“There’s no fucking doors, Kat! They’re all fucking burnt!”
The sirens stop as loud voices boom through the property, and just as I step out, the entire place swarms with police.
“Are they safe?” I ask through the earpiece. “Is Isla safe?”
Kat’s breaths are heavy, likely realising exactly what’s about to happen. “Yes, they’re safe.”
That’s all I need to know. That’s all that matters.
“Get on the ground, now!” A police officer points his gun at me, and I raise my hands in surrender. “Face down, now!”
I do as I’m told, and when the cold cuffs snap tight around my wrists, a dull, familiar pressure emanates through my skin, like an old wound cracking open.
It’s happening…again.
His hands are rough as he pulls me to my knees, and I hear her voice again, echoing in my mind.
“Don’t leave me.”
Her soft, pleading words are now like a fucking omen, my mind racing back to the night I was arrested for her, and I realise Emmett was right. The thing inside my chest was bound to kill me or see me in cuffs once again.
But it doesn’t matter. None of it does. No one will ever understand what it’s like to be given a love like mine, to feel like their soul is a part of yours.
The only difference between that boy’s soul and mine is that mine is tainted with black tar from years of it being withered by death and hopelessness.
As I’m pulled toward the police vehicle and shoved into the cabin, the sting around my wrists is nothing compared to the overwhelming rhythm beneath this tired chest.
My heart finally beats again.
And it beats for Isla Knight.