Chapter Forty-One
Killian
It’s been an extraordinarily long time since I’ve felt helpless. The last time I remember feeling helpless— truly helpless—was when I was a boy.
At the pharmacy with my grandfather. Watching with big eyes as the pharmacist informed him that he didn’t have enough money in his entire savings to pay for the medication, by the looks of him.
I was very young, but even then, I understood the horrible implications of her words.
I understood it meant Grandpa would be leaving this earth sooner rather than later, going to a place where no one could access him—where I could never again access him.
That moment has haunted me throughout the years.
It’s driven my decision to be who I am now: a man who will never be helpless again.
Yet that’s precisely what I am now.
It’s not the article released that presents the greatest barrier—that’ll be a pain in the ass to navigate, but it's navigable. The only thing making me helpless now is the blood.
It’s all over Lyra’s living room. Trailing a path from beneath the windowsill to the very center of the room. I know what it means; Locke, standing beside me, knows what it means.
My unborn child is dead.
And Lyra is gone.
“How?” The word is barely a rasp that escapes me. I sink to the floor, in the center of the puddle of blood, uncaring that my tuxedo will be stained beyond drycleaning.
“20% of pregnancies don’t make it past the first trimester.” Locke’s voice is quiet, withdrawn, and most of all nervous. He knows I’m a ticking time bomb right now. I can go off at any moment, and when I explode, I will probably take down a lot of people with me.
“I’m well aware.” My jaw clenches. I’m equally well aware that stress never bodes well for pregnancies at any stage, especially the earliest stages.
And Lyra had a great deal of stress heaped on her at once—an unfortunate result of my mistake.
“I’m asking how she gave you the slip.” I crane my neck up, glaring at Locke.
“I’m asking where the fuck my fiancée is. ”
Locke’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I have a dozen men on it—”
“She has been gone for three hours,” I hiss. “I don’t care how many people are searching for her—I care to find out where she fucking is.”
“I don’t know.” Locke’s gaze lowers to the ground. “If you want to take my life for my failure—”
“That’d be a waste of a resource. For now, you can keep your head, but that comes with the condition of finding my fucking woman before I lose what remains of my sanity.” I bare my teeth at Locke. “In case it’s unclear, there’s very little of it left.”
“Your people are crawling all airports and airstrips,” Locke says. “Lyra doesn’t have a car, and she doesn’t have the resourcefulness to steal one—”
“Underestimating her is the reason there’s now an article deeming me as the villain circulating.
” I know without a doubt that the article was written by Lyra.
Somehow, she managed to follow a trail of breadcrumbs and piece together a puzzle so convoluted it was nearly unsolvable.
And she did all this under my nose, while I had 24/7 surveillance on her.
If her aim was to end our relationship, she went about it the wrong way. In fact, the article—no matter how infuriating—proves her worthiness. Nobody else could’ve done it; even I couldn’t have done it.
Unfortunately, it also puts more targets on her back.
Neither Silas nor Carter were explicitly mentioned while she described the layers of the hostile takeover of Harbor in fact, I crave doing just that. I intend to kill him, slowly and painfully.
Carter, however, would be more trouble than he’s worth to kill.
A low chuckle escapes me. Lyra certainly knows how to make her exit with a bang. When I get my hands on her, I’ll be sure to punish her for the many inconveniences she’s caused me.
“Find her,” I say darkly. “Immediately. I want her in my grasp. You have twenty-four hours before I start taking heads.”
Thank you for reading Emperor of Corruption!