Chapter 22
Domenico
I drop to my knees beside her so hard the impact rattles through my bones, but I barely register it. The cave is cold, damp, and suffocatingly silent except for the steady drip of water somewhere in the darkness.
Every sound seems unnaturally loud, every second stretching longer than it should. My entire world narrows to the woman lying motionless in front of me.
For a moment, I simply stare.
Water glistens on her skin. Strands of dark hair cling to her face and neck. Her clothes are soaked through, plastered against her body, and she is far too still. The sight unsettles me in a way I don't immediately understand.
Zora is many things. Stubborn, infuriating, reckless. But she has never been still. Even when she's silent, there is always something alive about her. Looking at her now feels wrong, as though I'm staring at a stranger wearing her face.
A sharp unease settles beneath my ribs.
I press two fingers against her neck, searching for a pulse, and hold them there longer than necessary because my mind refuses to accept what my body already knows.
Nothing.
The silence inside the cave suddenly feels unbearable.
"Zora." Her name leaves my mouth rougher than I intend. She doesn't move. Doesn't react. Doesn't even seem to hear me.
"Fuck." The curse slips under my breath as I immediately roll her onto her back and position my hands over the center of her chest. Training takes over where thought fails.
I begin compressions, counting automatically while my gaze remains fixed on her face, searching for any sign that she's still here. Nothing.
The rhythm becomes mechanical. My arms work while my thoughts betray me.
I remember the day I walked into Stefano's office with her file in my hands. The moment I learned who she really was, I knew exactly what I was looking at. A Krogen. Marcus Krogen's daughter. The daughter of the man who murdered my father.
I still remember placing the file on Stefano's desk and telling him we should hire her. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind, reminding me exactly whose daughter she was, but that was the point.
Getting close to Zora Krogen had consumed my life for months. She was never supposed to be anything more than a way in, another calculated move in a revenge that had already cost me too much.
I boarded her private jet with every intention of finally killing her. It was supposed to end there. But when the moment came... I couldn't do it. Something stopped me. I told myself it was strategy, that I needed more time, a better opportunity. It wasn't.
Somewhere along the way, though, she stopped being Marcus Krogen's daughter. She became Zora, and without realizing it, I'd started fighting to protect her instead of using her.
I force air into her lungs before immediately returning to chest compressions, refusing to let my hands stop moving. My arms burn with the effort, but I press down harder anyway.
"Don't do this." I mutter through clenched teeth. "You don't get to do this."
Water drips from my hair onto her face as I push harder, refusing to acknowledge the growing desperation clawing its way through my chest.
"You were supposed to be a target." Another compression. Another breath forced into her lungs. "A means to an end. That's all you were supposed to be."
The words should have felt true. They don't.
I try to focus on the rhythm of the compressions instead, on the familiar repetition of movement and technique, but my attention keeps drifting back to her face.
To the unnatural stillness of it. To the terrifying absence of the sharp, infuriating woman who never seems capable of keeping her opinions to herself.
The cave feels far too quiet without her.
Grinding my teeth, I tilt her head back, pinch her nose, and breathe air into her lungs before immediately returning to compressions. My shoulders ache. Every muscle in my body feels as though it's been stretched beyond its limits, but I refuse to stop.
"Come on, Zora." My voice barely sounds like my own. It's rough with exhaustion, frayed by desperation, but I don't stop. I keep pressing against her chest with steady, practiced movements, counting silently in my head as I force myself to stay focused.
Again. Again. Again.
The image of dragging her through the surf flashes through my mind without warning. The dead weight of her body. The cold terror that settled in my chest when she hadn't opened her eyes. The possibility that after everything we'd survived, this would be how it ended.
"No." The word escapes before I can stop it.
My hands never slow as I continue the compressions, refusing to surrender to the silence stretching between us.
"Not like this." I don't know whether I'm talking to her or myself. Maybe both.
"You don't get to die here." I say through clenched teeth, forcing another breath into her lungs before returning to the compressions. "Not by drowning."
"I decide when this ends." The words are harsh, almost angry. "You still owe me, Zora. I still have my revenge to take, and I'll be damned if you rob me of it by dying like this."
I press down harder.
"So stop making my life difficult..." My voice cracks despite myself. "And wake the hell up."
The words have barely left my mouth when her body suddenly convulses beneath my hands. A violent cough tears through her as water spills from her mouth onto the stone floor.
Relief hits so suddenly and so violently that it almost knocks the air from my lungs.
I immediately roll her onto her side and support her as another coughing fit wracks her body. She struggles for air, dragging in ragged breaths between coughs while seawater continues spilling onto the rock.
"It's alright." The words leave me before I can think about them. "Easy."
My hand remains against her back, keeping her upright as another violent coughing fit tears through her.
Water continues spilling onto the stone floor while she struggles to draw a proper breath, her entire body trembling from exhaustion.
I don't rush her. I simply stay where I am, supporting her weight as her breathing slowly begins to steady.
One breath. Then another. And another.
The realization settles quietly inside my chest, loosening a tension I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying. I close my eyes for the briefest moment and draw a slow breath of my own before opening them again. She's breathing without my help now.
When she finally lifts her head, confusion clouds her expression. Her eyes wander around the cave, taking in the rough stone walls, the damp floor, and the narrow opening overlooking the jungle before settling on me once more.
"Where..." Her voice breaks beneath the strain. She swallows hard, wincing before trying again. "Where are we?"
For a moment, I simply look at her. The fact that she's asking questions at all is enough to tell me she's going to be fine.
"An island."
Her brows knit together despite her obvious weariness. "That's not exactly specific."
A tired smirk pulls at the corner of my mouth. "No." I admit. "But it's all I've got."
She rolls her eyes and leans her head back against the stone wall. For a moment, neither of us says anything. The silence isn't uncomfortable, exactly. It's just heavy with everything neither of us wants to think about.
Then I see it happen. The confusion slowly fades from her expression, replaced by something far heavier. Her eyes lose that distant, unfocused look as memory begins piecing itself back together, one fragment at a time. I watch the exact moment she remembers.
"The plane..." Her voice is barely more than a whisper.
I don't answer. There isn't anything I can say that she doesn't already know.
Her gaze drifts toward the mouth of the cave, where the fading daylight spills across the rocks, and I can almost see the realization settling over her. The attack. The gunfire. The crash. The ocean. Whatever hope she'd been clinging to dies quietly behind her eyes.
A shiver suddenly runs through her body, followed by another. She immediately folds her arms across herself, trying to hide how violently she's trembling, but it's useless. Her soaked clothes cling to her skin, and the cold is only getting worse as the evening air creeps into the cave.
"We should light a fire."
I follow her gaze toward the entrance before shaking my head. "No."
Her head turns sharply. "No?"
"No."
She stares at me for a second, clearly waiting for an explanation that doesn't come.
For a moment, genuine irritation flashes across her face. Then I see the answer click into place. Her expression changes almost instantly as she remembers the bullets tearing through the aircraft and the people who had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure she didn’t survive.
Her eyes drift back toward the darkness beyond the cave. "Oh."
"Yeah."
Silence settles between us again, broken only by the wind weaving through the rocks. It whistles into the cave, carrying enough cold with it to make her shiver once more.
"Great." She mutters, rubbing her hands over her arms. "So we're stranded on an island with a group of armed psychopaths somewhere outside."
"Looks that way."
She keeps staring toward the entrance for several long seconds before letting out a quiet, humorless laugh.
"You know, when I imagined paradise, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind."
I lean my head back against the cave wall, unable to stop the faint smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Your standards are unreasonable, Elf."
She rolls her eyes so dramatically that I almost laugh.
For the first time since she opened her eyes, though, I catch the faintest hint of a smile trying to break through the fear, and somehow, that feels like the first genuinely good thing that's happened since the jet fell out of the sky.
The cave grows noticeably colder as the last of the daylight disappears. Zora tries to ignore it, hugging her arms around herself as if stubbornness alone could keep the cold at bay, but the steady shiver running through her body tells a different story.
I watch her for a moment before finally speaking.