Chapter 19
Kai
I prepped myself again and again for this moment.
For her.
Stay away.
Don’t touch her.
Don’t even look too long.
She was never mine to claim.
She never did.
She never would.
Those rules looped through my mind like a mantra—silent, stubborn, obsessive.
But the moment she appeared, every level of restraint I’d built shattered in an instant.
When she ran into my arms with that fierce, warm momentum, my entire mind went black. All those warnings, all that self-control, all those promises I’d carved into my bones… gone.
The feeling that hit me was overwhelming—feral, intoxicating.
Not lust.
Something deeper, older.
As though my soul recognized hers before my brain could catch up.
It flooded my veins, hot and wild, and I didn’t want to stop it.
I didn’t want to be rational.
I didn’t want to be good.
For once, losing control didn’t register as danger.
It settled into me as something undeniably right.
A need to consume her surged—pull her close, taste her, bury my face in her hair, breathe her in until I couldn’t tell where she ended and I began.
Creepy? Maybe to anyone else.
But to me, it was the purest thing I’d ever felt. The only solid truth in the chaos of the past weeks.
Then June eased back, creating a sliver of distance.
Just a small movement, barely a breath of space—but it sliced clean, sharp.
A rejection I felt all the way to my ribs.
Stillness became my shield, pretending the ache didn’t exist.
Pretending I wasn’t dizzy.
Pretending the world wasn’t tilting sideways from the sedative Lucy had slipped into my bloodstream.
Everything around me blurred.
Unreal.
“It’s nice to see you, June.”
Lucy’s words drifted in like a muffled echo from underwater—soft, uncertain.
Just like that, she slipped away from me.
Snatched away from me in a blur of motion, Lucy guiding her out of the room as if they were old friends catching up over tea.
Old friends.
Right.
They’d barely spoken.
What could they possibly be discussing?
“You look wrecked.”
The sound sliced through the haze—clear, familiar, grounding.
I didn’t need to see the face to know who it belonged to. My vision steadied just enough to confirm it.
Lincoln—my best friend.
My brother in everything but blood.
He moved to my side quickly, gripping my arm when my knees threatened to give out. Only then did I realize how weak I still was. How much of me was still recovering.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered—not because I’d done anything wrong, but because I knew the storm coming.
“Not now,” Lincoln said flatly.
That always meant he was furious.
I tried to smile, because underneath the anger, I recognised something else—hurt.
Worry.
Fear.
He wouldn’t say it. He never did. But I knew.
“What the hell happened here?” he demanded.
God, I’d missed that tone. The way he took charge. The way he filled the room with that older-brother energy I never got growing up. Maybe that’s why I’d always gravitated toward him—he made me feel anchored.
“Can you lower your voice?” I muttered. Each sharp syllable he threw sent a pulse of pain down the back of my skull. My head felt like it was cracking open.
Lincoln ignored me.
His gaze snapped to Dannie like a loaded gun.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I almost laughed, even through the pain.
He already knew exactly who Dannie was—Lincoln never walked into a room blind. If he asked, it was because he wanted confirmation straight from the source.
“What did you do to him?” Lincoln thundered, stepping closer. His voice hit the walls like impact.
Dannie opened his mouth to answer, but Lincoln didn’t let him.
“Did you even take a good look at him?” he snapped. “He looks like he’s been starved for weeks.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Lincoln’s fury sharpened.
“Why isn’t he in the hospital? What the hell do you want from him?”
His questions came as rapid and relentless as bullets, each one hitting harder than the last.
Not questions, really. Accusations. Demands. A verbal beating disguised as concern.
Dannie didn’t budge.
Didn’t defend himself.
Didn’t even blink.
He just stood there, watching me with that unnervingly calm expression—guarded, controlled—as if he’d expected this eruption, like he’d walked into the fire willingly.
I wanted to speak up, to tell Lincoln to stop, to at least slow down, but my tongue felt heavy as stone. Even breathing took effort. The world tilted just enough to remind me how freshly I’d crawled out of sedation.
Lincoln’s chest rose and fell in sharp, angry breaths.
“You think you can just drag him into whatever shit show this is and expect me to stand here?” He jabbed a finger so close to Dannie’s face it nearly brushed his skin. “You think I’ll just watch him fall apart again?”
“Lincoln—” I tried, but the word stumbled out of my mouth, weak, warped, like my voice wasn’t mine.
Then Dannie spoke, voice low but cutting through the chaos with precision. “I saved his life.”
Lincoln stopped mid-step. Completely.
His expression cracked—shock, disbelief.
“What did you just say?”
“I saved his life,” Dannie repeated. Slower this time, almost taunting, as if offering Lincoln a second chance to listen properly.
“I heard you,” Lincoln snapped, stepping forward again, jaw clenched so tight it looked painful. “I just don’t believe you. People like you don’t save lives. You ruin them.”
“Lincoln Young.”
Her words cut clean through the tension, sharp as a whip. It snapped both men’s attention, echoing off the high ceilings.
For a moment, everything froze.
“He’s my friend,” I muttered, forcing the words out even though they felt thin and fragile.
“That’s right,” Dannie added, stepping closer, his voice steady but his eyes burning with something fierce—too fierce. “I saved my brother when no one else was doing it.”
Brother.
The word hit different.
Heavy.
Personal.
Rooted in blood and in a past that still throbbed beneath my skin.
Xiao Wu was no longer just a childhood ghost.
He was here.
Alive.
Standing in front of me, claiming me—claiming us—with a loyalty that felt both comforting and suffocating.
But there was something else in his eyes too.
Something darker.
Possession.
The rescue came with a price—one that settled heavy inside me.
Lincoln didn’t understand the weight behind the word. Even he sensed the threat. I could see it in the way his shoulders squared, in the way he stepped forward as if a wolf were backing another into a corner.
“Explain yourself,” Lincoln’s shout cracked through the room.
Before Dannie could answer, Lincoln grabbed him by the collar, knuckles white, veins standing out on his arm like they might break through his skin. Lincoln jerked Dannie forward, and I stepped between them so fast the room spun.
The two men glared over my shoulder, heat radiating off both of them seconds away from tearing each other apart.
“We could have rescued Kai according to plan if you hadn’t meddled!” Lincoln barked past me, voice cracking with rage.
“Lincoln!” June’s warning cut sharp, but he was past warnings.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to speak.
“Thanks for coming, bro,” I muttered, the words scraping out of me as sharp as broken glass.
Helpless.
Small.
The air in my lungs thinned—as if something clawed from the inside.
Images slammed behind my eyes in jagged flashes—so fast I couldn’t separate one nightmare from another.
The padded room.
The filthy hut.
The bucket.
Xiao Wu’s tiny hand gripping mine.
Nurse Angela’s fake concern.
My mother’s perfume.
The straps.
The darkness.
They bled together, an ugly collage of everything I’d tried to bury under money, power, and the illusion of control.
Control.
The one thing I’d fought all my life to own—slipped through my fingers like water.
“Of course.”
“I said I would come back for you.”
Two voices.
Overlapping.
Colliding.
Dannie’s. Lincoln’s.
Both claiming me in their own way, both laced with memories and guilt and unfinished debts.
For a moment, the room went still—thick with something heavier than anger. The two men stared at each other across the space, something electric in the air between them.
Respect?
Recognition?
Hatred?
Even I didn’t know.
Then Dannie’s expression wavered.
A flicker.
Barely there.
But I caught it.
His knees buckled—just enough that my body tensed on instinct.
“Dannie?” I barked, already half rising.
Dannie’s hand shot up to his brow, fingers digging into the bridge of his nose like he could pinch the pain out of existence. A sharp breath hitched in him, a sound he tried to swallow.
Then June moved.
Fast.
Efficient.
Cutting through chaos with blade-sharp precision.
“Hey–hey, easy.” Her tone stayed steady, even though her hands trembled. She slipped beneath Dannie’s arm, guiding him down as two of his men rushed forward, muttering urgently in Cantonese.
They lowered him into an armchair—right in the center of the room, set dead-center like a throne he neither earned nor deserved. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
She dropped to her knees in front of him, hair falling around her face until she swept it back with her wrist. Her fingers brushed his forehead and slid to his throat, checking his pulse. Her frown deepened.
Something was wrong.
Really wrong.
My chest tightened. As much as I hated him for storming in and taking over, for dragging June’s attention away from me yet again…
He was still Xiao Wu to me.
The boy who promised someone would come for us.
The boy I’d trusted before I even understood what trust was.
“Tell me what’s happening,” I snapped, sharper than I intended.
Jealousy crawled through me—hot, acidic, humiliating.
Watching June lean over him, fingers against his skin, her voice softening just for him…
It sliced something raw inside me.
I wanted her hands on me.
I wanted her worry.
I wanted her attention focused on me and no one else.
“He’s not supposed to be here,” June said, her tone sharp as a reprimand.
“He’s supposed to be in the hospital.”
Hospital?
My head jerked up.
Lincoln stiffened beside me.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lincoln demanded, voice booming across the room, vibrating through the marble floor.