Milo
The man in front of me is dead.
Or what remains of him.
There was something inside him, a device, a trigger, because the moment we began questioning him, and the first pain was inflicted, he detonated.
And he nearly took us with him.
The blast throws me backward. My head cracks against the concrete floor.
For a second, everything spins, my ears ring. The breath is knocked out of me.
I push myself to my feet and look at what’s left of him.
“Is someone playing with us?” I roar, my voice rips through the basement.
Ido doesn’t move.
His arms remain crossed as he leans against the wall. The man is a machine. He didn’t even flinch when the explosion went off. If it weren’t for the thin smear of soot across his face, you would think he hadn’t been here at all.
“Looks like it,” he says calmly.
I run a hand through my hair and begin pacing.
My thoughts keep circling back to Viktor, but I try to focus on the present. That was likely his intention, to rattle me further.
We stand there in silence for a moment, the air still thick with smoke.
“I’ll have my people dig deeper,” I say after a moment. “Because this goes beyond absurd.”
Isaak doesn’t merely look at me, he looks through me. And I know I won’t like what he says next.
“When are you going to tell the family what happened to Octavia?”
My head snaps up.
“Arlo knows something is wrong,” he continues evenly. “And Adelaide is pressing me. She can’t keep replying from Octavia’s phone much longer. It won’t hold. Ophelia and her mother want to video call her. They want to see her in person.”
“I don’t care what anyone wants,” I snap. “You’re not saying a fucking word.”
“They need to know.”
“I know!” I roar, the sound ripping out of me. “But the moment they do, they’ll want a funeral. And I’m not ready for that.”
Isaak exhales sharply, still watching me closely, though he says nothing.
I meet his eyes head on. “There will be no funeral for her,” I say evenly. “You’ll wait. You’ll have two at the same time.”
He recoils. “You’re talking about suicide. Stop this. It’s twisted, even for you.”
I step into his space.
“You know what’s twisted?” I snarl. “Losing the person who meant everything to you. Trying to live in a world where she no longer exists.”
My chest burns, and my vision blurs.
“You don’t understand,” I continue, my voice roughening. “You go home to Adelaide every night. Imagine losing your reason for breathing. Imagine never seeing her face again. Never kissing her. Never touching her. Never hearing her voice.”
I shake my head.
“It’s unbearable,” I say, the word scraping out of me. “She’s gone. What would you be then? You wouldn’t be living. You’d just be existing in a world you don’t even want.”
He opens his mouth, but I shut him down.
“No. Save it. Help me get my revenge, or don’t. Either way, my mind is made up, and you won’t change it.”
My voice hardens, though my lungs refuse a full inhale.
“I have no purpose now. I’m not going to torture myself pretending it’s manageable. Every second I’m here and she’s not feels like suffocation.”
I hold his stare.
“And don’t worry,” I add. “I’m not planning anything dramatic. But missions go wrong. Accidents happen. A bullet to the head isn’t exactly rare in our line of work.”
My phone vibrates, and my fingers close around it as I look at the display.
Unknown number.
I narrow my eyes at the screen before answering, hoping for a lead.
I don’t speak.
All I hear is fast, uneven breathing on the other end, as if whoever is there is running.
“Milo.”
I stop moving altogether.
I don’t answer.
I don’t even breathe.
That voice.
It can’t be.
My heart jolts violently in my chest, then seems to stall altogether. For a second I am certain I’ve finally crossed the line into madness.
Hallucinations would make sense at this point.
“Milo,” the voice says again.
My legs give out beneath me and I drop to my knees, my hand presses hard against my chest as if I can force my heart to keep beating properly.
This isn’t real.
It cannot be real.
Hope is a dangerous damn thing.
I have read the reports.
Her body was identified.
And yet…
There’s movement on the line, then a sudden scuffle followed by raised voices and hurried footsteps.
What the fuck.
I switch the call to speaker.
Isaak and Ido watch me now, something close to concern appears on their otherwise composed expressions.
The shouting grows louder, male voices raised and urgent as they close in.
“Get her!” someone roars in the background.
I clamp my teeth so hard a dull pain spreads along my jaw.
“Milo,” she whispers again, her voice trembles. “I’m not dead, baby… he—”
A strangled gasp comes through the line, and then a heavy crash sounds in the background.
“Let me go!” she screams.
The sound drives into me, and I grind my teeth together until the pressure builds behind my eyes.
Fuck no.
They will pay.
All of them.
The shouting grows louder, the voices crowding the line, and then it stops.
The line goes dead.
I stare at the screen.
My body doesn’t move. I just stand there, the world narrowing to that black, silent rectangle in my palm.
She’s alive.
For a second, I genuinely question my own sanity.
I turn to Isaak. “Am I hallucinating?”
He studies me for a moment, then a faint smile touches his lips. “If you are, then so am I.”
The air leaves my lungs in a rough exhale.
The realisation hits me with such a force it almost hurts.
She’s alive.
She is fucking alive.
I get to see her again.
To touch her skin, to breathe in that vanilla scent that belongs only to her.
To kiss those intoxicating lips.
To hold her and never let her go.
Something in my chest shifts back into place, something that has been absent for months.
Purpose.
Direction.
Breath.
She isn’t gone.
And whoever laid a hand on her—whoever took her—has just sealed their own death sentence.