Chapter 11 Faina
FAINA
Keeping Evri alive until the phone call proves easier said than done. He refuses to eat and won’t drink unless we waterboard him, which I do with Cian out of the room. The last thing I need is to accidentally trigger the man I’m trying to help.
Evri’s stubbornness raises more questions than answers about Hexagon.
What kind of faceless organization creates such unwavering loyalty in men on the cusp of dying?
It’s the level of loyalty I’d expect to see high up in any Mafia family, but not in the ground-level grunts.
Evri keeps his mouth wired shut as if he’s a general holding every secret, and it’s a wonder we even managed to get anything out of him at all.
Finally, the scheduled call with Hawk arrives and I walk into the small bathroom where we’ve been holding Evri while the mobile buzzes in my hand.
“Let’s keep this short, Evri. I’m not against—holy shit!
Cian!” The phone slips from my hand as I throw myself toward Evri.
Both my hands slam into his blood-soaked face as his upper teeth sink deep into his tongue.
The gurgling, drowning noises of pain that bubble from him quickly grow muted as his eyelids droop and he sags forward into me.
“Faina, what’s wrong—holy shit!” Cian skids to a stop in the doorway and looks on in horror as I drag Evri to the floor.
Whatever Hexagon has on him is worth killing himself by biting off his own tongue.
I snatch towels off the wall and washcloths from the rack in the bathtub, but there’s far too much blood.
He’s drowning in it and fading by the second while his phone continues to buzz on the floor.
“Answer it!” I gasp desperately.
“What?”
“You have to answer it, Cian. It’s our only lead and it’s painfully obvious that I’m not a man.”
“Shit!” Cian snatches up the phone and stares at it like it’s morphing into something terrible right before his very eyes, then he ends the jingling music with a press of a button and rests it against his ear. “What?” Cian says, making his voice as gruff as he can to match Evri’s.
Evri closes one bloodied hand weakly around my wrist. Our eyes meet, and I watch the light fade from his grey eyes until there’s nothing but dead silence staring back at me. His fingers fall limp and his hand drops off to the side.
He’s dead.
Part of me still tries to bring him back by soaking up the blood sluggishly leaking from his mouth, but there’s nothing to save.
He’s gone. Behind me, Cian grunts and answers in one-word increments trying to imitate what we heard from Evri during our short conversations.
Then he hangs up and silence falls in the bathroom, broken briefly by my own panting.
“Is he…?”
“Dead? Yeah. Sad fucker.” I slump back onto my haunches and wipe away a bead of sweat on my forehead with the back of my wrist. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry.”
My shoulders lift. “It’s no loss. It’s just another breadcrumb we’re leaving behind.” Rubbing at that same spot in my forehead, I look past my bloodied fingers and up at Cian. “Well?”
“It was some guy. He sounded pissed and he barked off some address Evri’s expected at and ordered not to be late like last time.”
“Did he give you the address?”
Cian nods.
“Then we go.”
“What about him?” Cian jerks his head toward dead Evri.
“We leave him. We’ve already spent way too long here.”
Over these past few days with Cian, I’ve noticed warmth still lingers in him.
He carries grief heavily and it weighs down his eyes and slopes his walk, but the way he showed concern for Evri’s body, the way he tips the taxi drivers and adjusts the blankets covering me, shows me there’s still warmth in his heart.
He’s a broken man reaching out and I want to reach back.
I want to talk about the night we spent together and how amazing it felt to have him inside me again, to be in his arms and feel loved again.
The words don’t come.
More importantly, they can’t, because upon reaching the address given to Cian while pretending to be Evri, we arrive at a private manor that seems to be hosting some kind of gala.
The driveway is swimming with cars and fancy-dressed people and after scouring the perimeter, I’m met with armed guards.
After testing the entire perimeter, I meet up with Cian at our agreed meeting place across the street and find he’s arrived first.
“Any luck?” He stands at the window of a small boutique we broke into the moment we arrived with his attention fixed on the manor across the street. Spotlights sway back and forth, music flows, and the stream of vehicles is relentless.
“Nah. That place is pretty damn secure. So, unless you know someone and we can charter a plane to rappel down from the sky, I don’t know how we’re getting in there.”
“What about through the front door?” Cian turns to me with a mischievous smirk on his face.
“Huh?”
He nods behind me to the reclining couch near a collection of boxes. Draped across one arm is a sparkling silver dress with spaghetti straps and a cinched waist. “Where did you find that?”
“This is some kind of donation, goodwill boutique. I found it in the back after noticing the AK-47 in the arms of one of the guards. If we can’t sneak in, then why not walk in like we own the place?”
I squint back at Cian. “And when they take one look at us and see we have absolutely nothing that proves we should be there?”
Cian’s playful smirk widens a fraction. “I’m sure someone in the parking lot is just looking to lose their invitations.”
It’s a long shot but Cian’s right. It’s worth a shot.
After dressing up in the dress and suit he found, we head toward the party and make it past the gate security with ease.
There’s a tall man in a charcoal gray suit checking what looks like invitations at the door so, after feigning an issue with the strappy shoes Cian found for me, we target a couple in the middle of an argument near their car.
Subduing them is a piece of cake compared to the last people we had to fight and then, arm in arm, we head into the gala with invitations in hand.
No one bats an eye at us and we melt into the crowd with practiced ease. The air inside the manor is cool, drinks in crystal glasses pass us balanced on golden trays, glittering chandeliers hang from the roof, and exquisite paintings line the ornate walls.
“I think that might be real,” I murmur in Cian’s ear as we pass a Rembrandt in the hallway.
Food and drink flow past us at an alarming rate and everyone seems to be having a perfectly great time, but there’s no sign as to what the gala is for. No birthday wishes, no hints of a celebration, nothing.
Until the auction starts and everything clicks.
Dancers clear the stage in the main ballroom, and Cian and I watch on in horror as one by one, slaves in terrible condition are dragged onto the stage and sold.
Person after person is hauled under a spotlight and obscene amounts of money are called out all around us until someone is satisfied and the victim is dragged off the other side of the stage, never to be seen again.
I’d read Saoirse’s account of her own slave auction last year, but nothing prepared me for the reality of being involved in one.
My heart begins to pound and sweat trickles down my spine as victim after victim is carted across the stage like a prized sow.
Through it all, Cian remains frozen at my side like a rigid statue.
Slipping my hand into his to calm him, it takes several minutes of me slowly rubbing his forearm with my other hand to draw him out of whatever trance or memory he got stuck in.
“Come on,” I murmur in a low voice against his ear, playing the part of the affectionate wife to anyone who looks too closely. “This is the perfect time for us to sneak about.”
Getting Cian away from the active slave auction becomes my goal, and as we melt away from the crowd and sneak off backstage, he slowly seems to come back to himself.
He doesn’t mention the auction, but he keeps a watchful eye on me as we sneak through the corridors beyond the ballroom and trail one hurried man to a small office tucked at the back of the building.
It’s filled with CCTV footage and countless computers.
One shows the name of the bank we got Evri’s name from, so that becomes my focus while Cian works on wiping all the CCTV from the files.
Hawk is my target name and within a few clicks, he pops up on the computer along with a handful of other names and addresses.
It’s all information that’s far too good to pass up, so Cian goes to keep watch in the corridor while I download as much as I can onto the pen drive I brought with me.
I get the majority of it, but I don’t have time to erase my presence as Cian suddenly bursts back into the room, takes my hand, and we’re forced to run.
While we’re not directly chased, our escape from the manor is slightly tricky as all security suddenly seems on high alert.
By some insane stroke of luck, the couple we knocked out and robbed in the parking lot finally wake up and cause such a commotion by their car that it draws the majority of the front door security and we’re able to make our escape.
To throw off any tails, we don’t head back to the motel immediately and instead head to the beach where the water twinkles like black ink under the glittering moonlight and anyone suspicious of us will hopefully think we’re just a couple seeking a moonlit stroll on the beach.
“Are you okay?” I ask softly after taking off my shoes to sink my toes into the sand.
“Yeah, fine. Why?”
“You didn’t seem fine back there.” I tilt my head slightly and loop my arm through his. “That was hardly a pleasant situation.”
“You mean the auction?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I don’t believe him for a second. “You know, if you’re not, then you can tell me. Either because you understand that I care about you or because I need you a hundred percent, and if you’re not on top of your game, then it risks my life. Whichever reason suits you.”
He sends me a sidelong glance while we walk. “There’s not enough time in our little world for me to even give you a fraction of why I’m not okay.”
“I know.” My heart beats heavily. “If I could take any of that pain away from you, you know I would.”
“I know.”
“Did it remind you of back then? With your sister?”
Cian’s jaw tenses into a sharp line and under the moonlight, even the shadow of his beard isn’t enough to hide the edge.
“I read Saoirse’s report. She wouldn’t talk to me about it.
I think when Domenico took her, she resigned herself, y’know?
She spent a lot of time in their captivity thinking I was dead.
Seeing those people up there…” Cian shakes his head.
“It made me wonder what the fuck I’m doing. ”
“How do you mean?” We come to a stop near the shoreline where the water lazily creeps forward and laps at my bare ankles.
“When I woke up in that hospital, I had one goal. I was going to tear the world apart and hunt down the bastard responsible for stripping my family away. I was going to make him hurt for as long as I was hurting, and then I would join them.”
My chest squeezes at the thought but I remain silent.
“But seeing that auction? The sickening way those rich assholes were bidding on people like it was some easy-living show? All I could think was how on earth am I going to even get close to that fucker? And when I do, what if I can’t do it?
What if I get so far and then I just can’t make him pay the way he deserves? ”
“You’ll be able to,” I answer gently.
“How do you know?” Cian’s eyes meet mine and even in the darkness, the pain is clear. “What if I freeze up in front of him the way I froze up back there?”
“You’re forgetting something.”
“Which is?”
“Me.”
Cian’s brow dips faintly. “You.”
“Not to get all egotistical on you or anything, but Cian, you’re not in this alone. I’m not saying we share the same level of pain to get to the bottom of this, but we both have the same goal and I’m not going to let you fall.”
His lips part but no words escape him. For a moment, he looks incredibly pained and then he tears his gaze away to the ocean. “And how do you plan on doing that?”
“You mean with how fucking stubborn you are each time I try to help you?” I snort softly. “Well, we have a list of very important people and I’m assuming killing Hawk isn’t going to be easy. So we’ll get his attention.”
Cian looks back at me. “By killing the list of very important people?”
“Exactly. And maybe it will work off a bit of the pain you’re carrying.”
The wind picks up briefly and lifts a few strands of Cian’s auburn hair. They drift back down across his forehead for a moment and then a small smile creeps across his lips. “You really think it will be that easy?”
“No.” I sigh softly and I pat his arm. “But it’s a start. We might be alone, but we have each other.”
“That’s also what scared me.”
“Us?”
“What if I’m not strong enough to protect you?” Cian’s voice quavers slightly. “I think I’m more broken than I want to admit.”
“I’m basically treating you like you’re made of glass so any strength you have in there is a bonus,” I tease softly, then I place my hand on his cheek.
“You don’t have to be strong enough because that’s bullshit.
We’re a team, remember? You pick up my slack and vice versa.
Sometimes, we’ll be fifty-fifty and other days, we’ll be seventy-thirty.
But as long as we stick together, Hawk can’t touch us. ”
Whether it’s my speech, the quiet calm of the beach, or the alluring roll of the waves next to us, I can’t tell, but I suddenly feel incredibly peaceful standing here with Cian looking deep into my eyes.
And I think he feels it too because the next second, his lips are pressing against mine in a gentle but very needy kiss.