Chapter 28
EVELYN
Blood rushed through my ears, and my heartbeat seemed to echo around the room. The prod of a gun against my back forced my feet farther into the room.
“I see we remember each other.” Drake chuckled.
I needed to move, to think, to get away, but my muscles were frozen.
Conrad pushed off the wall and walked towards me, stopping in the center of the room a few feet away. He looked over my shoulder at Drake. “I didn’t think you would come through.”
Drake scoffed. “You would do better than to doubt me, Mr. Holcom. Your father would know better.”
The Holcoms were connected to Drake? I had kept track of Conrad over the years at a distance, just to make sure he wouldn’t come anywhere near me or my city. Not close enough to realize he was in bed with Kingfisher. But I should have known.
“You have two hours,” Drake said. “No limits but no killing her either.” Drake used the muzzle of the gun to trace along my throat. “She has a debt to work off for me, after all. You’ll be a nice addition to my collection, little birdy.”
My stomach churned as the implications set in. Drake was handing me over to Conrad and then going to traffic me afterwards. My breath stuttered as Drake stepped away. He closed the door behind him, the lock beeped as it clicked shut, leaving the two of us locked in this room together.
“You look good,” Conrad said.
My stomach rolled dangerously. I needed to think, to figure out how to get out of here. But the walls were closing in and the buzzing from the overhead lights had gotten louder as the room swam before my eyes.
Memories attacked my senses from all sides.
The smell of a back porch. Cold air and cheap beer and the sour taste of fear on my tongue.
The taste of fear that no girl should have ever felt.
The weight of him. The ground coming up hard.
Trying to breathe and not being able to.
The police station afterward, the officer’s eyes sliding away from mine when they realized who I was reporting.
My parents’ faces after his father left our house.
The door of my bedroom closing, and the sudden realization no one was going to protect me.
I pressed my thumbnail into my palm. Hard.
The bite of pain pulled me back into the room, into my body. Into the combat boots with two trackers in them, the knife in my left boot and my jacket with cameras in the buttons that had heard and recorded everything.
I was not sixteen years old anymore.
I was not alone.
I was not powerless.
Conrad took a step closer. “Been a long time,” he said.
“I’ve heard you’ve been causing trouble.
” He smiled like this was a conversation between two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years.
But behind the smile that didn’t reach his eyes, there was a coldness that chilled me.
“Imagine my surprise when Kingfisher reached out to me asking if I wanted some time with an old friend.”
“Is that what you think we are?” I said, my voice cracking. “Old friends? You raped me.”
He chuckled as he got closer. “Says who? No one believed your silly little story back then. Besides, you were asking for it.”
I pretended to cower as he got closer. My hands came up slightly, the shaking of them only slightly pretend. I took a step back. I needed him to see what he expected to see. Fear.
He took another step. Then another. His smile widened as he took in my shaking body.
I waited until he was close enough.
Then I broke his nose with the heel of my palm.
The crack was the most satisfying thing I’d felt or heard in fifteen years.
He stumbled back, yelping as he clutched his face.
I didn’t give him time to find his footing.
Fifteen years since that night. Fifteen years of training, of dark streets and back alleys, and every man who had ever underestimated me because of what I looked like.
Fifteen years of building something from the wreckage of one night on a back porch.
Fifteen years of heartache, betrayal, and rage.
I followed up my strike to his nose with a quick uppercut that sent his chin snapping backwards.
He stumbled against the wall, falling heavily into it.
Then he rallied. He came at me, swinging wildly like a man who had never had to learn any kind of technique to fight.
A man who relied on his size and his daddy’s last name to get what he wanted.
I dodged one of his wild swings, sending my fist into his side.
He grabbed my shoulder, trying to wrap his arm around my throat.
I drove my elbows back into him once, then twice, until his grip loosened.
I grabbed his arm and threw him over my shoulder.
He crashed on the floor, the breath knocked out of him.
Red tinged my vision as I straddled him like he had straddled me that night.
Except instead of his hands on my throat and covering my mouth so I would stay quiet while he raped me, it was my hands curled into fists, throwing punches to his face, his arms, any place I could reach.
It wasn’t until his arms fell away, limp as he lost consciousness, that I stopped.
I rolled off him onto my back, breathing hard.
My knuckles were split, and pain shot through them.
I climbed to my feet and looked down at him.
I expected to feel satisfaction if I ever faced him like this, and I did, but I also felt lighter.
Like the part of me that carried what he did to me that night finally let go of the weight of it all.
The rage, the heartache, the abandonment. I just let it go.
I wiped my hands on my pants and turned to the door. One monster down. One more to go.
I was crouched next to the keypad, trying to figure out if there was a way I could short it from the inside when the door was yanked open. I scrambled to my feet. Danny filled the frame.
His eyes found me first, sweeping up and down my body, then he looked past me to Conrad on the floor, and his eyes darkened. His face filled with rage, a look that I hadn’t seen since he was seventeen years old climbing through my bedroom window, his jaw set and his eyes burning.
He took a step forward, and I stepped in front of him, putting my hand flat on his chest.
“No,” I said.
“Evelyn—”
“He’s not worth it.” I held his gaze until some of the tension left his body. “He’s not worth you.”
Marcus appeared at Danny’s shoulder, his expression doing something complicated before settling into relief when he looked at me.
He was dressed in tactical gear, his gun holstered at his hip.
Behind them, through the warehouse, I could see flashing red and blue lights and voices barking out orders. The cavalry had arrived.
“Did you get him?” I asked as Marcus stepped forward until his chest brushed my shoulder.
“We got him,” Marcus said. “We got everything. Liam connected the live feed to Agent Mercer and his team as they drove here. Mercer hadn’t left the city yet from the press conference yesterday, so he was able to meet us at the warehouse minutes after Drake took you into the room.
We’ve got clear audio and video.” He paused as voices shouted behind him.
“We also found his black book. It was in the office. He was in there working on it while…” He trailed off, his jaw tight as he looked past me.
While I was supposed to be in here getting raped by Conrad. I cupped his jaw gently. “I’m okay,” I assured him. “The black book?”
“It’s legit,” Marcus said. “Mercer has it now. It’s over. He’s done.”
I exhaled slowly, trying to keep my knees strong, though they threatened to buckle. Both Danny and Marcus caught me, holding me together until I regained my balance.
“Where is he? Drake?” I asked. I needed to see him with my own eyes. Make sure he was really in custody.
“Outside,” Danny said tightly. “They have him.”
I walked out of the room, leaving my past behind me. I exited the warehouse through the bay doors into the cold night air. It had started to rain at some point, and a fine mist lingered in the air as I stepped outside.
Nathaniel Drake stood between two officers, one on each arm. His navy suit jacked hung off one shoulder from where they had grabbed him. His expression was controlled, but his eyes flashed when he saw me.
Yeah, your plan failed. I was still here. Still standing.
My guys were there, all of them. Alexander stood a few feet back with his eyes on me, his relief barely contained as he talked to Agent Mercer. Sebastian was behind him, Adrian and Dominic next to him. Marcus flanked me as I walked towards Drake slowly.
I stopped a few steps away. “It’s over,” I said. “You’re done.”
He glared at me and scoffed like this was all just a temporary inconvenience for him. “Is it?” His voice was smooth. “I’ve beaten investigations before, Miss Harper. I have resources you can’t imagine. Lawyers who have gotten men out of worse than this. This is nothing but a temporary setback.”
“We’ll see,” I said. “We’ll see when the confession you gave me in that room plays in court.
When Conrad testifies as to what you told him to do to me.
When the black book you kept reveals every transaction and contact.
We’ll see when your victims sit across from a jury and tell them what they saw. And I’ll be first in line.”
For the first time, fear flashes behind his eyes, and I press further. “You’ve dealt in fear for a long time. It’s time you found out what happens when the people you were counting on to be afraid aren’t.”
Something shifted in his eyes, not fear but definitely uncertainty.
The officers moved him toward the waiting vehicles. I watched him go. Marcus stood at my side, and his hand squeezed my hip. I started to turn away when it happened.
Drake’s hand moved. Fast and confident. He twisted and got two fingers on the officer’s weapon. He used the moment of chaos he created to pull it free, swinging it up towards us.
I didn’t think.
My hand found Marcus’s gun at his hip. My arm came up in one motion—a move I had made too many times in the last fifteen years.
A shot cracked through the misty night.
Nathaniel Drake, the Kingfisher, dropped to the ground.
The gun in his hand clattered onto the wet pavement beside him. The officers moved, reacting as the scene erupted around me. People were shouting, guns were drawn. Alexander and Agent Mercer ordered everyone to stand down.
I stood in the chaos of it all, gun still in hand. I looked at the man on the ground. The man who had ruined so many lives.
It was over.
Drake was gone. Ginny and the others were safe. The black book was in our hands, and we could dismantle his network. It was over.
A hand closed around mine, the one holding the gun, and gently, without a word, Marcus took it back.
His other arm came around me as he handed the gun to Agent Mercer.
Alexander stepped in front of me, his hands running up my arms to cup my face.
His blue eyes searched mine. I nodded at his unasked question. I was fine.
Sebastian squirmed in next to him, wrapping an arm around my waist and burying his face in my neck. “Fuck, Evie, darling…”
I ran my hands through his wet blonde curls, silently reassuring him. Alexander stepped away, and Adrian took his place. Marcus shifted behind me, and Dominic stepped closer.
“You okay, little warrior?” Adrian asked, as they all closed in around me, a protective wall against the outside world.
I took a deep breath. I was okay. Better than okay, actually.
I had faced the monsters of my past and present.
The Archers were safe and growing. Merrywood’s empty office was waiting to be filled.
The work would never be complete, but I didn’t have to do it alone.
My friends, my family, and these five men who had walked into my life and refused to leave it were right by my side.
The sixteen-year-old girl on the back porch all those years ago had never deserved to go through that, but I couldn’t help but think she might be a little proud of who I’d become.
“I’m good,” I said, and I meant it. “Let’s go home.”
It was time to live happily ever after as the storybooks went. Not because we wouldn’t face evil ever again, but because we would do it together.