Chapter 19
Cain
I watch him sprawled across the ground, body twisted where it fell, blood creeping along the edge of the balaclava, and for one useless second, my brain refuses to catch up with what I’m seeing.
Then, it does.
Now!
I move fast, dragging my jeans up my legs with shaking hands, barely managing the zip before I lunge for the silk robe abandoned on the lounger beside the pool. I throw it at Sierra, and it hits her chest before sliding into her hands.
“Put it on. Right now.” The words leave me sharp and rushed, tension bleeding through every syllable. “Come on, Sierra.”
She doesn’t move. She stands there trembling, soaked skin shining under the low lights, staring at the man on the floor as if something about him has hooked into her mind and won’t let go.
Her breathing is still ragged, chest rising and falling too fast, eyes wide and fixed on him with something tangled between fear and curiosity.
“Wait,” she whispers, almost to herself.
My jaw tightens as she takes two small steps toward him, the robe hanging loose in one hand while the other lifts slowly, fingers already reaching for the balaclava.
Of course she does. Even terrified, even visibly shaken, she still wants answers badly enough to walk straight into danger for them.
“Not now.” I catch her wrist and pull her back abruptly, her body colliding with mine in a shaky gasp while violent tremors keep running through her.
“We don’t have time for this,” I snap, lowering my voice when I see her flinch.
I lean closer, making it sound like warning instead of anger.
“I don’t know how long before he wakes up, so you need to get dressed and move. ”
Her hands fumble with the robe, missing the sleeve once, then again, fingers useless from shock. I swear under my breath and yank it around her shoulders myself, dragging the silk closed over her naked body and knotting the belt tight at her waist.
“Run!” I snap, the word tearing out harsher than I intend while my pulse hammers high and fast, every nerve screaming at me to move before this chance disappears.
I drag her through the hallway, wet footprints trailing behind us across marble floors, the house still carrying the smell of chlorine and sex and violence. My heartbeat slams against my ribs with terrifying force, almost convincing me this panic is real too.
At the entrance table, I grab her keys, nearly knocking over a crystal bowl in the process, before yanking the front door open hard enough for it to slam against the wall.
The night air hits us both like ice. She stumbles down the front steps beside me, clutching the robe shut at her throat while trying not to trip over. Her hair is still dripping down her back, sticking to her cheeks, her lips parted around breaths she can’t seem to catch.
“What do we do now?” she asks, her voice thin and fraying at the edges as I drag her toward the car, every word shaking with the kind of fear that settles deep in the bones.
“Cain… what do we do?”
“We leave.” I unlock her car and yank the passenger door open before forcing her inside, making it clear immediately that this isn’t optional.
She starts to get in but hesitates at the last second, turning back toward the house like some part of her still needs to see the danger with her own eyes before she can fully believe it. Bad instinct.
My eyes follow hers just in time to catch movement inside the doorway, a black figure shifting behind the frame before stepping fully into the light.
He comes out of the house like something violent ripped loose from the dark, one hand braced on the frame for half a second before he launches forward. Blood streaks the side of his head. The balaclava is still on.
Even hurt, he moves with the same terrifying certainty as before, like pain only made him faster.
Sierra screams, and the sound rips through the night so violently everything else vanishes around it.
“He’s coming!” she cries, ducking into the car so fast she nearly falls across the seat. “Oh my God, Cain, he’s coming!”
I slide behind the wheel, slam my door shut, and shove the key into the ignition. The engine catches on the second turn.
“Look at me,” I say sharply.
She turns, tears bright in her eyes, both hands gripping the robe at her chest like it’s the only thing keeping her together.
“We’re getting out of here.” I throw the car into reverse and tear backward out of the drive, tires shrieking against stone before I slam into first and shoot us onto the road hard enough to pin her into the seat.
She grabs the dashboard with one hand and the door with the other.
Behind us, the roar of a motorcycle engine rips through the night—loud and violent—instantly pulling a whimper from her.
I glance in the mirror and see one white headlight slice into the street behind us, growing larger by the second.
“He’s following us,” she says, voice breaking now. “Cain, he’s following us.”
“I know.” My hands tighten on the wheel as I push the accelerator lower.
Streetlights smear past us in long streaks of gold while the houses on either side of the road collapse into dark, shapeless shadows, and the needle on the speedometer keeps climbing higher beneath my hands on the wheel.
Even with the engine straining and the road opening in front of us, that single headlight behind us only grows larger, cutting through the night with terrifying patience.
“He’s going to catch us,” she chokes out, twisting in her seat to look back before forcing herself forward again like the sight of him burns too badly to look at for long.
“Please… faster. Please, Cain, go faster.”
I drag a hard breath through my nose, tighten my hands on the wheel, and press deeper into the speed.
“Hold on!” I say, my voice low and tight as the car surges faster under us. The steering wheel begins to tremble in my hands as the road narrows ahead, rising toward the bridge cutting across the dark river below.
The wind hits harder up here, shoving against the frame, tires whining against the asphalt as the speed turns reckless enough to feel alive.
Beside me, Sierra lets out a frightened sound, eyes wide as she looks from the road to me and back again, finally understanding that whatever happens next will not be gentle.
Then I let the performance die.
No more fear.
No more panic.
No more Cain the hero.
Mask off.
Time for revenge.
My hands go steady on the wheel as my breathing smooths out. When I turn to look at her, there is nothing soft left in my face.
“Jump,” I tell her quietly.
She blinks at me like her brain stopped working.
“Jump now,” I yell as the guardrail rushes toward us in a blur of steel and headlights, “or die with me.”
Her scream tears through the car just as I wrench the wheel hard. Metal explodes around us when we smash through the barrier, the front of the car bursting past the bridge and hanging for one violent second over open air above the river.
“Now!”
She throws herself out first, vanishing into the dark below. I launch after her a heartbeat later.
The car drops nose-first beside us, twisting as it falls several meters before slamming into the river with a brutal crash that sends freezing spray high into the night.
I break the surface and drag in a breath, wiping my eyes quickly as I search for her. For one second there’s nothing but darkness, violent currents, and the roar of the river around me, then I catch sight of her a few feet away just as her body slips beneath the surface, one hand disappearing last.
I dive immediately, cutting through the water toward where she went down. The river hides everything beneath the surface after only a few feet, but eventually I catch sight of her farther down, motionless while her hair spreads weightlessly through the river.
I catch her around the waist and pull her back against me before kicking hard toward the surface. When we break through, her head falls against my shoulder and stays there, completely unconscious.
“Jesus,” I mutter, adjusting my grip to keep her head above the surface.
I turn us toward the riverbank and start swimming back, one arm wrapped around her, while the other drives us forward. She gives a weak cough halfway there, spilling water from her mouth, then goes still again.
By the time my feet hit the muddy bottom nearshore, I’m carrying most of her weight. I drag her the rest of the way out and lift her onto the grass, rolling her carefully onto her side.
Water runs from her lips when I press a hand between her shoulder blades.
“Come on, kitten.” She coughs twice, choking, but her eyes don’t open.
Meanwhile, people are already hurrying down from the road above us, pulled in by the crash and the splash that followed it.
Car doors slam somewhere behind them, voices pile over each other in confusion, and footsteps pound across the wet grass until, within minutes, we’re surrounded by wide eyes and nervous energy.
Two men reach us first, both breathing hard from the run.
“You alright, mate?” One asks, looking between me and Sierra with open shock before glancing at the river again. “Was anyone else in the car?”
I remain beside her on one knee, keeping a steady hand on her shoulder while rough breathing tears deliberately from my chest.
“She needs an ambulance,” I say hoarsely, brushing the wet hair back from her face. “Please call one.”
A woman behind them already has her phone pressed to her ear, pacing as she speaks to emergency services.
One of the men watches the black current consume the last visible piece of the car.
“Anyone else still in there?”
I follow his eyes briefly, my chest still rising and falling hard before I shake my head.
“No. Just us.”
Blue lights wash over the road a few minutes later, cutting through the night in sharp flashes as the first ambulance pulls up beside the growing line of stopped cars. A police car follows close behind, tires crunching over gravel while paramedics jump out, already moving.
Two of them rush straight to Sierra. They kneel beside her, checking her pulse, speaking to each other in clipped voices while opening the soaked robe enough to place monitors against her skin before covering her again.
One of them asks how long she was unconscious, but I let the question hang like I’m struggling to hear it.
“Only a minute or two,” I say, dragging air into my lungs. “I got to her as fast as I could.”
They lift her onto a stretcher with practiced speed. She stirs only slightly, coughing once, eyes still closed. Good.
A police officer approaches me next, notebook already in hand.
“Sir, can you tell me what happened tonight?”
I look toward the ambulance first and then down at the ground, letting shame and shock settle over my face before I answer.
“She’s my sister-in-law,” I explain quietly. “My brother asked me to stay with her tonight because she hasn’t been herself lately.”
The officer’s expression shifts at once.
“We were at their house talking. Trying to calm her down. She was upset, crying, saying nothing in her life mattered anymore.” I rub a hand over the back of my neck and glance toward the river. “Then she suddenly grabbed her car keys and ran outside before I could stop her.”
“You followed her?”
“Of course I did.” I let that come out fast, offended by the idea I wouldn’t.
“She got in the driver’s seat and locked the doors. I was at the window trying to calm her down until she finally unlocked the passenger door and let me in.”
The officer scribbles quickly.
“So you got into the vehicle willingly?”
“I got into the vehicle because I thought I could stop her.” I shake my head like I still can’t believe how fast everything unraveled. “I kept telling her to pull over. To breathe. To let me drive. She never even looked at me—just kept speeding up.”
The officer glances toward the broken barrier on the bridge, then back to me.
“What happened next?”
“She started saying everyone would be better off without her. Then she said if she was going, she wouldn’t go alone.” I let the words hang there before continuing. “I reached for the wheel, but she jerked it first. We hit the barrier and went straight through.”
He looks up from the notebook. “And then?”
“She jumped.” I speak through uneven breaths. “She opened the door and threw herself out before the car hit the water. I went after her.”
The officer looks me over before turning toward the ambulance where paramedics are loading Sierra inside.
“Has she made threats like this before?”
I lower my eyes and rub the back of my neck. “She’s been struggling for a while. She was admitted recently.”
“Admitted where?”
“A private psychiatric facility outside the city.” I exhale slowly, like the admission embarrasses me. “She left earlier today without permission. That’s why I was with her tonight. My brother asked me to help calm her down and convince her to go back.”
Understanding settles over his face immediately. “So she absconded from care.”
“Yes.” I say quietly, dragging a hand over my face as if the whole night has finally started catching up with me.
Another officer walks over and murmurs something to him before turning to me.
“We’ll need a formal statement later, sir, but right now you should let paramedics check you over as well.”
I look toward the ambulance doors as they begin to close around her.
“Please make sure someone stays with her when she wakes up,” I tell him quietly. “She’ll be confused, and if she starts spiraling, she could become unpredictable.”
“We’ll handle it.” The first officer nods.
I give them a tired, grateful look and pull my phone from my pocket.
“I’ll call my brother now,” I say, already unlocking the screen. “He’ll want to come straight to the hospital and arrange for her to be transferred back to the facility.”