Chapter Twenty-Nine Khai
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Khai
When I wake, it feels as though I’ve been asleep for years, buried under something heavy and dreamless. I can’t remember the last time rest claimed me this completely. My body is loose, unguarded, steeped in a rare, dangerous calm.
I lie on my back, eyes still closed, letting the warmth of the morning sun spill over me. It presses through the windows and into my skin, soft and deceptive, like a promise that isn’t meant to be kept.
Instinct takes over.
I roll slightly, reaching for Emmy, to pull her against me, to feel her warmth, to anchor myself in the proof that she’s still here.
My eyes snap open.
My hand closes around nothing.
Cold sheets. Empty space.
The absence hits harder than any blow. My fingers curl uselessly into the mattress, my hand landing where she should be with a dull, final thud.
I exhale slowly, forcing myself to believe she’s simply wandered into the living room. Or out onto the balcony, chasing the morning the way she sometimes does, barefoot, quiet, wrapped in borrowed comfort. It’s an easy lie. A necessary one.
I reach for my phone.
The screen lights up, cool and unforgiving. I scroll absently through notifications until one stops me cold.
Security Alert: Lift activity detected.
The world narrows.
I sit up sharply, every sense snapping awake as the silence of the penthouse presses in on me. It’s too quiet. Not peaceful, vacant. The kind of quiet that follows a theft.
I’m on my feet in seconds, moving through the space with purpose. The living area is empty. No soft footsteps. No hum of life. Nothing.
My phone remains clenched in my hand as my gaze sweeps the room again, slower now, more deliberate, until it lands on the kitchen island.
A coffee cup.
Barely touched.
It sits abandoned among the scattered papers from the envelope, steam long gone, the sight of it tightening something in my chest I don’t bother to name. I cross the room quickly, my eyes scanning the documents, inventorying them out of instinct.
Then I see it.
The absence.
One page is missing.
The order.
I look around again, sharper this time, cataloguing details with ruthless precision. Her shoes are gone. Her handbag. She didn’t leave on impulse.
She left prepared.
She took the paper.
She saw everything.
Understanding settles in slowly, dangerously calm. Emmy knows what I am. What I do. The parts of me I never intended to place in her hands. My Little Heaven found the truth, the ugly, unforgivable truth, and she ran.
Dread coils in my chest.
Not rage.
Never rage.
This is colder than that.
Because if she had a target on her back before, it’s nothing compared to what she carries now. Knowledge is a currency in my world, and she’s holding a secret my father has spent years burying in blood.
He cannot know.
And as I stand there in the wreckage of her absence, one truth burns clear and merciless through the quiet:
Running won’t save her.
I brace my hands against the kitchen counter, bowing my head as I draw in a slow, measured breath. Then another. I let the urge surge through me, the instinct to move, to hunt, to drag her back into my arms where she belongs.
I crush it.
No.
I’m going to let her run.
For now.
I unlock my phone again and send a message to Jaxon, my fingers steady despite the storm coiling beneath my skin.
Khai:
Find a way to stall my father.
I have a runaway I need to keep safe.
The reply comes almost instantly.
Jaxon:
What did you do to make her run?
A humourless scoff leaves me.
Asshole.
Khai:
She found out the truth.
I don’t elaborate. I don’t need to. Jaxon will understand exactly what that means.
I switch apps, my focus sharpening as I pull up the building’s security feed. The cameras load one by one until I find her.
Emmy.
I watch her step into the lift, hands gripping the rails like she’s holding herself together by sheer force. Her eyes stay locked on the doors, wide and wary, until they finally slide shut. Only then does she sag slightly, a deep breath leaving her lips.
Something tightens in my chest.
In the foyer, she ducks her head and all but sprints past the security desk, hiding behind that cascade of golden hair like it might shield her from the world. The moment she exits the building; she slips behind a delivery truck and waits.
She doesn’t wait long.
A car pulls up. She climbs in quickly.
I catch a glimpse of the driver.
Tate.
Recognition settles in, followed by a measured sense of relief. Emmy ran to someone she trusts. Someone safe. As far as my world goes, that’s the best outcome she could have chosen.
She’ll be safe.
For now.
I switch to another app, the one I swore I’d never need. The screen loads, and there it is: a blinking blue dot, steady and alive, parked at Tate’s townhouse.
More calm washes through me.
I watch the dot pulse for several long moments. Breathing. Thinking. Planning.
Emmy may have slipped through my fingers today, but it won’t last. She was never meant to disappear from my life, only to orbit closer, deeper, until escape was no longer an illusion she could afford.
She is mine.
And there is nowhere on this earth she can hide that I won’t find her.
I set my phone down and turn towards the bathroom, already shedding the remnants of softness from my thoughts.
I spend the day constructing contingencies in my head, dismantling them just as quickly. Every option leads back to the same problem: my father and his deadline. I need time. I need silence. Most of all, I need Emmy untouched by his attention.
He cannot know she carries a fragment of his secret.
I have Keys run the hospital records again, deeper this time. Every database. Every archive. Anything tied to Liam. The result is the same as before.
Nothing.
No admission. No discharge. No death certificate. No report. No autopsy.
It’s as if he never existed at all.
But he did.
And the absence screams louder than any evidence ever could. My father erased him, methodically, completely. Liam didn’t disappear by chance. He was removed.
After I asked Jaxon to stall him, I already knew the answer before it came. My father doesn’t detour. He doesn’t delay. And he certainly doesn’t forgive interference. Jaxon tried, I’ll give him that, but there is no redirecting a man like him.
Which means there is only one path left.
I have to confront him.
I have to let him move first.
My father is ruthless, unpredictable by design, but right now, he’s also unsettled.
Paranoid. A man guarding a secret is always careless in ways he doesn’t anticipate.
If I let him reveal his hand, if I force him to believe he’s still in control, I might be able to turn the board before he realises the game has changed.
Until then, I shift every available resource toward one purpose.
Emmy.
Eyes in the shadows. Silent watchers. Distance that looks like abandonment but isn’t. I don’t need her to know she’s protected, I just need her alive.
She ran from me believing she was escaping the danger.
What she doesn’t understand, what I will make sure she never has to, is that the real threat isn’t me.
And if my father comes for her…
He won’t see me coming.
The shrill ring of my phone cuts through my thoughts like a blade.
I don’t need to look at the screen to know who it is.
My father.
“What do you want, old man?” I grit out as I answer, my voice steady despite the tension coiling tight beneath my skin.
“Time is up, boy,” he says, his tone flat and merciless. “I need results.”
Final. Absolute. A command, not a request.
“I have your papers, Father,” I reply calmly. “I was the one who took them.”
Silence stretches between us. Then I hear it, the familiar flick of a lighter, the slow inhale of smoke. He’s thinking. Calculating. That’s always been the most dangerous part.
“You disappoint me, son.”
I don’t rise to it. “Nothing new there.”
Another drag. The pause is deliberate now, baiting me. I light a cigarette of my own, the burn in my lungs grounding me, keeping me sharp.
“This conversation should be face to face, Khai,” he says, irritation bleeding through the cracks of his control. “Meet me at the warehouse in one hour. Don’t keep me waiting.”
The line goes dead.
I stare at my phone, smoke curling from my lips as I weigh the options. The warehouse could be a trap. Or it could be the one place he won’t bring witnesses, not now, not when he knows I’ve seen the truth. My father has never hesitated to sacrifice his own men if it keeps his secrets buried.
I pace the apartment, tension winding tighter with every step.
I call Jaxon.
Once. Twice.
Nothing.
I try again.
Straight to voicemail.
Cold creeps into my veins. Jaxon doesn’t ignore my calls.
I ring Keys instead. He answers on the second ring, the clatter of keys and rapid typing filling the background.
“Yes, boss?”
“I need Jaxon’s location,” I say sharply. “Now.”
“Give me a second.”
The pause is too long.
“I can’t pin him, Khai,” Keys finally says. “His tracker’s been disabled.”
The room tilts.
Jaxon would never turn off his tracker. Ever.
“Keep trying,” I say, already moving. “Message me the moment you find him.”
I end the call, the certainty settling deep in my bones.
This is my father’s doing.
I pull up the surveillance app again, my gaze locking onto the blinking blue dot. Emmy. Still at Tate’s. Safe.
I release a slow breath, the smallest mercy in a day full of fractures.
As I head for the lift, grabbing my bike keys on the way, my phone vibrates.
A text.
I open it immediately, expecting Keys.
It isn’t.
It’s from my father.
An image loads.
And the world spins.
Jaxon is tied to a chair in the warehouse, blood streaking his face, his body slumped but breathing. A gun barrel is pressed to his temple, close enough to leave a mark.
My father’s message is wordless.
He doesn’t need to say anything.
He’s already made his point.
And now, there is no choice left at all.