Chapter 9 Keira
NINE
KEIRA
My tongue is thick, like I tried to swallow a coin in my sleep. I blink, realizing the ceiling above the bed isn't the one I fell asleep under. That one had a crack shaped like a river. This one is smooth, pale concrete with a recessed light.
Everything around me is leaden. That's how I know I was drugged.
He does this every single time.
"Mommy?"
Hale's little voice slices through the fog.
I turn my head too fast and the room tilts. Hale is curled on the other side of the bed, a small shape in an oversized T-shirt, brown hair mussed, cheeks flushed from whatever they gave us.
"I'm here, baby." I reach for him.
He blinks up at me, pupils too big. "My head hurts."
"I know. Mine too." I stroke his hair, counting the breaths between each blink.
We've been moved. The walls are stark white, the air sharp with something artificial. No Highland drizzle. No peat smoke. No green walls. Even the salt smell is different.
"Where are we, Mommy?"
"On a new adventure." I hate the lie as soon as it comes out.
I stand on shaky legs and walk toward the windows—long slits of glass, damp with condensation. Beyond them sits a stretch of manicured garden fighting the wind, then nothing but rock jutting out in jagged sheets before it all just…drops.
No trees. No neighboring houses. Just empty sky, stone, and water.
Definitely not Scotland.
"Did you sleep okay?" I ask, climbing back in bed.
He nods, wincing. "I had a weird dream. The house was shaking."
That wasn't a dream. That was them moving us while we were under.
"That's a funny dream. Do you remember anything else?"
"I had some juice and it tasted funny, like pennies."
I press my lips to Hale's forehead, shutting my eyes against the sting building behind them. Drugging me is one thing, but drugging my child is another.
This asshole doesn't care.
Hale's fingers find mine under the blanket. They're so small and so heartbreakingly soft. He's just turned five, too young for his innocence to be ripped away like this. I'm going to do everything I possibly can to protect it, even if it means lying to him sometimes.
"How long are we staying here?"
"For a while, sweetheart. But I'm right here. We'll be together the whole time."
He nods, smiling with blind trust I don't deserve.
Because he doesn't know the truth.
He doesn't know I can barely save myself.
Sudden knocking on the door startles both of us.
"Don't get up unless I tell you to, and close your eyes." I squeeze his hand, a silent reminder that everything is going to be fine.
His eyes go wide. "Is it…"
"Yes. Remember what we practiced?"
He nods and rolls onto his side, pretending to be half-asleep. His back is to the door, one hand fisted in the sheet.
"I love you, baby, so much."
"I love you too, Mommy."
My legs wobble as I cross the room. The door swings open before I reach the handle.
Ewan steps inside, blocking out the hallway like a moving shadow. Dark sweater, tailored coat, black wool slacks pressed into perfect lines. Nothing on him is accidental.
His steel-gray hair is cropped close to hide how quickly it's thinning. His eyes, cold and pale as glacier water, sweep over me with calculated hunger. It isn't desire. It's much worse.
I wish he'd choke on it.
"Good morning, or perhaps afternoon is more accurate." He checks his Rolex, a small gesture meant to remind me he controls the hours of my life, including the ones he drugged me through.
He steps farther inside. I try to hold my ground, but my body takes several steps back.
His eyes scan the bed. "Still sleeping, is he?"
"He doesn't feel well. You drugged us again," I whisper the last part so Hale doesn't hear me.
"Don't be dramatic, Keira. It was a mild sedative. Would you rather Hale remembered us dragging him across a tarmac in the middle of the night?"
No point in answering.
My entire body starts to tingle with panic as the bedroom door closes. Guards. He's never alone—at least two guards with him at all times.
"Do you know where we are?" he asks lightly, like this is a guessing game.
"Somewhere with no neighbors again."
"You're in one of my favorite properties. Private peninsula. No road in. Supply boat twice a month. The locals think this entire stretch is an old fishery. And this property is right by a beautiful cliffside."
No road in. No escape either unless you want to jump off a cliff.
"Why did you move us?"
He turns, head tilting like he's assessing a specimen. "Because the last house caught fire. It wasn't safe."
"Fire? I don't remember—"
He waves a hand. "You don't remember much these days. Your memory is god-awful. We should have you checked out by a doctor."
I swallow down the fear. "Was it an accident?"
He clicks his tongue. "Lightning. At least that's what the locals were told."
"Was anyone hurt?"
He winks. "Everyone who needed to be."
I keep my face blank. He's waiting for a flinch, a tremor—something he can use against me later.
I don't give him anything.
He walks toward me, steps measured. When he's close enough that I can smell his cologne—strong, expensive, suffocating—he reaches up and takes my jaw in his hand.
His thumb presses into the bruise that never gets time to fade. "There's a rat sniffing around my shores. Someone trying to get close to us."
I say nothing, and he squeezes harder. Pain shoots through my jaw and up my neck.
"And I have to ask myself," he continues calmly, "what changed? For years, you were off every ledger. Completely forgotten. Then I allow you to dip your toes back into work and suddenly I have a rat problem. Is there something you'd like to confess, Keira?"
"Of course not." My voice is neutral. I've been practicing this.
"Did you say something you shouldn't have? Leave crumbs for someone to follow?" His thumb drags over my cheek, pressing deeper.
"I don't have access to a phone, an account, or an unsupervised walk. You made sure of that. Just guards and walls and whatever pretty dress you pick out when you want a painting to hang on your arm."
His grip tightens and fresh heat burns behind my eye.
"Careful."
"I'm always careful. You taught me how, remember?"
Something hideous flashes in his eyes. "When I found you, everyone had already decided how you'd die. A little traitor with a price on her head. I'm the reason you're still breathing. I'm the reason he"—his gaze flicks to the bed—"has a roof and a last name. Don't forget how much you owe me."
I think of the name on the documents.
Hale Calder.
Calder is the shackle. The mark of the man who owns our oxygen.
But Hale…
Hale is mine. It will always be mine.
A piece of the man I loved and lost. The one good memory I get to carry.
The only place Ewan can't reach.
And if he ever learns that truth…that the child he parades around isn't his legacy but Tristan's—we'll both be dead before sunset.
I've always wondered if some part of him already knows Hale isn't his biological son.
Maybe he took his blood sample without me knowing, but he's never mentioned it.
And he's not the type of person to let something like that slide.
I found out I was pregnant so soon after it all happened…and Hale looks nothing like him or me. He's a spitting image of Tristan.
Not the time, Keira.
I shake away the thoughts. "I know what you've done for me, Ewan. I could never forget."
You won't ever let me.
"Good." He studies my face, trying to see if I'm lying. "You should show me just how grateful you really are."
He drops his hand from my face and adjusts his cuff. "Hale is acceptable, but I can't stake the future of what I've built on one child who doesn't even look like me."
What? No.
"I don't understand. He has your eyes—"
"NOTHING," he snaps, the mask slipping. "He has nothing of me. Everyone can see it."
A short, broken laugh escapes me. "What do you mean?"
"Don't worry, you'll fix that."
What…?
"I want another son. One who looks like me without a doubt." His gaze slides down my body and back up. "We'll start trying soon."
Trying. Like we're a normal couple.
"Ewan…"
His hand is back on my throat before I finish the word. "I'm not asking for your opinion. I'm telling you what's next. There are women who would kill to be in your place. But I kept you. Despite your history. Do not insult me by pretending this is your choice."
Hale shifts behind us in the bed, letting out a tiny whimper. I don't know if he's dreaming or seeing the way Ewan's fingers are tightening.
I pray it's a dream.
Ewan's eyes flick toward the bed, then snap back to me.
"Smile," he grits out.
In my head, I ram a toothbrush into his ear until it hits something vital. I picture the warmth of his blood on my hands.
Then I imagine the price Hale would pay after.
So I do as I'm told. Smile and remain still. Try not to even breathe. The sooner I oblige, the sooner he'll leave us alone.
He pulls me in and kisses me hard enough that my lip splits against my teeth. When he pulls back, he wipes the blood from my lip with his thumb, then wipes it on my cheek like he's marking me.
"I'll have the doctor adjust your supplements so you can prepare your body. It's time you gave me what I deserve."
He walks to the bed and stares down at Hale. "Wake him in an hour. He has lessons."
"Of course."
He straightens and walks past me to the door. "Oh, and Keira—if I find out you're hiding anything from me about the rat problem, I'll make sure they watch what happens to you before I kill them both."
He doesn't wait for an answer.
The lock clicks once, then twice.
I make it to the bathroom before my legs fold, catching myself on the sink. I glance up at the mirror, not recognizing the woman staring back.
The shower is a glass box lined with dark rock. The water is freezing when I turn it on, then scalding. I step under it, letting it hit my skin until everything is numb and burning.
The sound of the water is loud enough to hide the small, broken noises that come out of me.
I sink down, pulling my knees to my chest as water beats down on my head.
Don't forget how much you owe me.
We'll start trying soon.
I scrape my nails over the scar on my thigh, the one Tristan stitched up himself in a motel outside Prague.
The memory catches like a hook and pulls.
I shouldn't let myself go there. It's stupid. A slow kind of torture I can't afford. But my brain does what it always does when the walls close in. It slips sideways before going back.
To nights where the world wasn't kind, but I wasn't alone in it.
To hands that touched me like I was something worth keeping, not something to own.
Back to a version of myself I'll never get to be again.
The worst part isn't that I lost him. It's that I remember exactly what it felt like to be loved like that. To be seen. To matter beyond what I could do or give or survive.
And now those memories are all I have left.
They sit in my chest like shrapnel I can't dig out—painful and permanent and only mine.
So I let the water beat down and close my eyes.
Just long enough to pretend I'm somewhere else, with someone else, before I come back to this version of hell.