Chapter 30
Kaze
I don’t know what happened.
One moment, Khalee is beside me, and next she’s already running, bolting towards the building like something reached into her chest and ripped something out.
So I follow her. Of course, I follow her. And the darkness in the building swallows us whole.
The stairs groan under her weight as she takes them two at a time, boots slamming against old concrete, and although I’m right behind her, flickering, heartless but not feelingless, I keep screaming at her to stop.
It doesn’t work.
There’s something weird about this place. Something that makes my spine feel too long for my body.
It’s not just an old building. It’s a building where the worst usually happens.
The walls are yellowed with time and smoke. The lights don’t work. Some floors are dead, quiet, abandoned, ghosts of lives that left without packing. But others… others breathe. Not in a way that feels human. Not in a way that feels safe.
There are no voices behind doors. Or heavy footsteps. Only a low hum of ugliness that clings to places where people did things they know they shouldn’t.
I don’t like the way this building watches us.
But none of it could’ve prepared me for what we find on the top floor.
The long hallway takes us to a bunch of doors, but there’s only one open.
Khalee slows, and I think for half a second she’s going to stop and wait for her parents. But she doesn’t. She reaches out. Opens the rest of it, and in the second, I step in behind her. I don’t believe my eyes.
Mada is on the bed.
Naked. Limp. Unconscious or close to it.
And around her, the three assholes I know better than I ever should’ve.
Patrick has a camera in his hand, its lens pointed straight at Khalee’s sister, like she’s nothing more than a scene to capture. James and Mark are shirtless, wearing smug grins like this is some kind of inside joke, like this is funny.
I freeze. Not because I’m surprised.
No, I’ve known, for a long time, what kind of sick games these bastards play with girls who are too drunk to say no, too scared to speak up, or too broken to run.
And part of me already suspected Mada had been one of them more times than she could count.
That’s why I pushed Khalee to bring her parents tonight. That’s why I didn’t want her walking into this place alone.
I freeze because when I look at Khalee, really look, I don’t see her standing in that doorway anymore.
I see her somewhere else entirely.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe.
But I feel it in her.
The way her aura shrinks, curls in on itself. The way her soul recoils like it’s been set on fire. The way something inside her breaks. And in that moment, I understand: It isn’t just fear.
Is raw panic.
This scene we’re both watching… It’s pulling her back to something.
Something I don’t know. Something she never told me.
And suddenly I feel it in my gut, a certainty I wish I didn’t have.
Mark steps forward, a smile stretched too wide across his face.
“Welcome back, sweetheart, ” he says, his voice coated in poison.
No.
No.
No.
“Love.” I manage to say, my voice strangled and thin, more air than sound.
I reach for her but my hand goes straight through her shoulder. Of course it does, and it guts me in a way I wasn’t ready for because I need her to move. To run. To scream.
To do something.
But she doesn’t.
Even as I scream her name, over and over, she stays still, a statue carved from memory and fear. I press myself into her, forehead to her temple, body aching with a rage that can’t find purchase.
“Come back to me, Khalee.” My whisper is broken now. Desperate. “Please. Please come back, love. You have to leave.” But she’s gone.
Her body’s here, stiff, trembling, but her mind is miles away. Years away. Her eyes are wide, fixed, glazed over, looking at nothing, like she’s not seeing this room at all.
And then a tear slips down her cheek.
And another.
No breath. No sob.
Just pure agony. Quiet, soul-splitting agony.
They’re talking, but for some time, I can’t hear anything they’re saying because all I want is to make her move, make her leave. But then James talks, and that’s when something inside me snaps.
“Go on, princess, ” he mutters. His voice cuts through the room like a knife, thick with mockery and rot. “You still remember, right? How we like it.”
And that’s it. That’s the moment everything comes back to me.
“K, I need you.”
“Please pick up.”
“Something’s wrong. I need your help.”
“I’m sending the location. Please come meet me. I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t terrified. I’ll be waiting for you.”
That’s the moment I realize…
I failed her.
I failed her.
I failed her.