Chapter 53
FIFTY-THREE
FENRIR
PRESENT
There’s a second when all I see is her. Her long, dark hair, her pale, shimmering skin, and those large, brilliant eyes that are afraid, full of fear and sorrow and anger. She’s twenty years old and has never known anything else. She doesn’t deserve this life. She deserves so much better.
Snapping into action, I pick up Willa’s phone. Hayami’s eyes track me.
“What are you doing?” she asks as I slide out the SIM card.
“Taking the SIM card out,” I tell her. “We’ll do the same with all our phones. With a bit of luck, Markus might think the lines have gone down with the storm.”
“Does that even happen these days, what with Wi-Fi and stuff?” Hayami picks up her phone and takes her SIM card out, and I do the same with mine.
“I have no idea, but it’s worth a shot and will buy us some time.”
“To do what?” Hayami swallows.
I stop messing with my phone and look at her steadily.
“Leave.”
“You said we can’t, not in this weather.”
“Not on foot, but you heard what Markus said,” I explain, knowing this isn’t what she’s going to want to hear.
“They’ll clear the road as soon as the snow stops, which, according to the weather report, will be in the next couple of hours.
I’m not sure how long it’ll take them, but I guess they’ll try and get as much of it done before nightfall as possible.
That gives us a fair few hours for me to get some rest, pack up, get the snow off the Jeep, and drive down to the main road before the sun goes down.
” I stop, waiting for Hayami to catch up.
“And then what?”
I give it a second before I answer. “We run.”
She swallows again, this time harder, as if she has something lodged in her throat. I take her hand in mine.
“I wish there was another way. I wish we didn’t have to, but I don’t see what choice we have.”
Hayami winces like she’s in pain, and I wonder if she’s not only thinking about us but the danger this poses to Willa and her new family. But I can’t think about Willa now. Hayami is my priority. Has always been my priority.
It feels like an eternity before she nods and squeezes my hand.
“I’m sorry,” she says at last, her eyes pooling into watery swirls.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I tell her, squeezing her hand back.
“This is all my fault. If I hadn’t sent Willa away, if I’d just kept quiet and done as I was told, then we wouldn’t be here.”
“You seem to forget the reason why we’re here in the first place,” I say, reminding her of my culpability in all of this.
“And if you hadn’t sent Willa away, she would have missed the birth of her child, and we’d still be sitting here under the authority of your father, and you’d still be on the path to having your life auctioned off.
This way, at least we might have a chance. And that has to be worth something.”
She nods, and something cracks in my chest. She doesn’t want to run. I don’t want her to have to run. Running isn’t living. It’s surviving, and that’s all she’s ever done. Survived. Until it was too hard to even do that.
I pull her into me, and she rests her head against my chest. Smoothing down her hair, I ask, “Are you with me?”
There’s a beat, a second where I doubt her answer, worry that it won’t be the one I want to hear, and then she speaks. “I’m with you.”
Unsure whether I’m relieved or just shit scared, I hold her head.
“Good, because we have to be out of this house by nightfall.”
She tenses, and I feel bad because I’ve reminded her that her father isn’t the only thing we’re now running from. It seems that everyone is out to get us. But I know who I’m more afraid of.
We decide to try and rest whilst the snow still rages.
I want to get moving, clear the car and the drive and get packed up, but I haven’t slept in so long.
But as we lie on the bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, I hope Hayami isn’t thinking the same thoughts as me, which is that this whole thing is fucking hopeless.
We have no money on us. I’ll have to stop at a cashpoint to withdraw as much as I can, which Devall will know about. Hayami said she’ll take all the money she has out of her account, which I pointed out will probably be frozen by her father the minute he suspects that something isn’t right.
The Jeep has a tracking device, which I’ll disable. But even so, it won’t take Devall long to alert his people to be on the lookout for it, so we’ll have to change vehicles, which will probably mean stealing one. That’ll mean we won’t just have him on our case but the police as well.
And there’s our appearance. Hayami will be able to change how she looks. But me? How the fuck am I going to hide all my scars?
All this comes before we even try to find somewhere to hide.
And even if we do manage to slip through the net, how long will it be before it closes in again?
How will it feel to spend every day looking over our shoulders—for the man who, if I’m lucky, will put a bullet in my brain, and who will, in the blink of an eye, snatch his daughter away?
Hayami was right that day when she said there’s no running from a man like Barrett Devall.
I hold her tighter. It’s cruel—I’ve only just got her, after all the waiting, watching, and longing—only for it to be cut short. I have no illusion that this plan will work.
We’re fucked.
* * *
HAYAMI
We’re on the bed, holding on to each other as if we’re on the Titanic and the water is rushing into the cabin. And it’s awful to think that I’d prefer that. Death would be the better option right now.
I’ve never been afraid of dying.
I’ve always been afraid of my father.
He’ll find us. Fenrir knows it too. I can see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, feel it through the tightness of his embrace.
And he’ll kill Fenrir. It’ll be slow, painful, the worst way to die, and it’ll be my fault.
I’d welcome my death. But my father will not grant me this.
The deal will be tarnished, the goods spoiled, my purity now sullied.
There’s no way my father will believe that nothing happened between Fenrir and me.
So, not only will I have cost him money, but I’ll have embarrassed him, brought shame down on our family and him specifically. I won’t be let off lightly.
If he had other children, I’m certain he’d kill me, dispose of me like he’s done so many others who’ve disobeyed him.
So, as I lie here in Fenrir’s strong arms, I wonder what my father will do to me and whether I’d rather face the ghost of this house than endure his wrath.
I haven’t forgotten that feeling of being weightless, of floating above the mattress.
And having read my mother’s journal and the things she experienced, I wonder if what happened to her is happening to me.
She described the feeling of having someone else in her head.
I can’t say that I’ve felt this, but there’ve been the dreams, the horrible, vivid dreams of such terror, such dread, that I wonder now if this is similar to what my mother felt.
Kuchisake-Onna.
And let us not forget the whole reason I’m here in the first place.
The threat that was made by the Castros.
I was sent here because this was supposed to be the safest place for me—somewhere the bad guys wouldn’t be able to find me.
But my father knows where I am. Kuchisake-Onna knows where I am.
And I’m sure if the Castros looked hard enough, they’d find me too.
It seems I’m destined for death.
Maybe I’ve always been doomed to die; after all, aren’t we all heading in that same direction? Just some of us quicker than others.
After the first attempt in the pool, I hated Fenrir for saving me.
Even now, I wish he hadn’t, and then I wouldn’t be in this predicament, having brought him and Willa along with me.
But there’s part of me that wonders if this was fate’s way of giving me one thing—one little box ticked before I reached for the hand of death.
Before I met Fenrir, I’d not felt attraction.
I’d not felt the need for another person the way I need him, and I’d have died a virgin—my book boyfriends remaining the only experiences I had with men.
But now? Now I know what it feels like to be held, to be kissed, to be touched.
And in its cruel way, I wonder if this is worse, knowing what those things feel like and that I will never feel them again.
Is this love? Is what I feel for Fenrir the real deal? I wouldn’t know. But I would certainly like the opportunity to find out.
Someone once said it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Right now, I’m not sure if that’s true.