Chapter 54
FIFTY-FOUR
TRISTAN
Calder's smile widens.
He drains his whiskey, sets the glass on a passing tray, then starts walking toward Keira.
She's a few feet away, talking to some random person.
Move.
I'm already pushing through bodies. Shouldering past a waiter. Knocking a glass from someone's hand—but it doesn't matter, because Calder is closer.
Faster.
His hand closes around her elbow.
He leans in. Whispers something against her ear.
And I watch everything drain from her face.
Her body goes rigid. That specific kind of fear I promised she would never feel again.
Then she looks at me.
Across the crowd. Through the bodies and the flashy lie of this evening.
Her eyes find mine.
And they're filled with nothing but genuine horror.
No.
I move faster, trying to wipe away everything that exists between me and her.
All I can see is Keira's face. Calder's hand. The distance between us that won't fucking close fast enough.
Two guards stop in front of me.
Calder's men. He positioned them, knowing exactly when to spring the trap.
He knows.
"We need you to come with us." The first one plants himself in front of me like a wall.
"Get out of my way."
"Mr. Calder's orders." The second guard flanks me, boxing me in. "There's a situation that requires your attention."
Behind them, I watch Calder guide Keira toward the service stairs. She glances over her shoulder one last time, searching for me, and the fear in her is indescribable.
Then she's gone.
With that finality, I shut everything out inside me, feeling the quiet settle in.
"I said." I grab the first guard by the throat and lift. His feet leave the ground and his eyes bulge. "Get. Out. Of. My. Way."
He claws at my hand, choking. The second guard reaches for his weapon. I drop the first one and catch the second's wrist before he can clear the holster. One sharp twist and he screams, the sound buried by pounding music.
I step over their bodies and break into a run.
"Calder took Keira below deck."
"I'm coming," Dom says.
The stairwell spirals downward into the belly of the yacht. Emergency lighting paints everything in shades of arterial red, like descending into something's throat. My footsteps echo off metal. My heartbeat pounds in my ears.
Where did he take her?
Is Hale down here too?
How long has he known?
The questions don't matter. Not right now.
A guard sees me coming at the bottom of the stairs and reaches for his radio.
I hit him before he can key the mic. Elbow to the temple, and he goes limp, dropping like a fly.
There's another set of stairs to my left and a long hallway to my right.
I don't know where Calder fucking went.
"Lower deck. Service platform." Cat's in my ears.
I fly down the spiral staircase, too focused on finding Keira to check for a guard—and there is one at the bottom. This one is faster.
He manages to fire a shot, which sparks against the wall inches from my head. I close the distance before he can fire again, driving my knee into his stomach and following with a right hook that sends teeth scattering across the floor.
"Where is she?"
He laughs, spitting out blood.
I grab his jaw and squeeze until I feel bone grinding. "Now."
"Back of the yacht," he garbles out.
I drop him and run.
The hallway stretches. Every step feels like wading through wet concrete. Like the air itself has thickened into something designed to slow me down, to make me watch what's coming without being able to stop it.
Faster. Move faster.
Finally, it opens onto the back platform.
I hit the door at full speed.
And the scene registers in pieces.
Fragments that will be carved into my skull until they lower me into the ground.
Calder.
Standing at the edge of the platform, silhouetted against black water and the Manhattan skyline.
Keira.
On her knees. A guard's fist twisted in her hair, wrenching her head back at an angle that has to hurt. Mascara cutting rivers down her cheeks. Her mouth open in a silent scream…or maybe she's screaming and I just can't hear anything over the roaring in my ears.
And my son.
In Calder's arms, sobbing so hard his small body convulses with it. Snot and tears and hiccuping cries as he reaches toward his mother with grasping fingers.
Mamma. Mamma. Mamma.
And then I see it.
The thing that stops my heart completely.
A concrete block sitting on the platform floor, a coarse rope wrapped around Hale's ankle.
Every thought, every calculation, every shred of control I've built over a lifetime collapses into a single, primal frequency.
"—never really mine, was he? But we both knew that. Just a constant reminder that my wife opened her legs for another man."
"Please." Keira's voice is destroyed. "Please, Ewan. I'll do anything. He's just a little boy. He's innocent."
"Innocent?" Calder laughs, devoid of humanity. "He's evidence of your betrayal and all your lies." He lifts Hale higher, adjusting his grip. “Evidence I'm about to dispose of.”
I raise my weapon, barrel trained on the center of his skull.
"Let him go."
Calder finally turns to look at me.
"Ah, there you are." He shifts Hale in his arms, putting my son's small body directly between us. Using him as a human shield. "I was starting to think you'd miss the main event."
I angle the gun. Search for a clean shot. Any shot.
"Go ahead." His smile widens. "Take it. Let's see how good your aim really is."
My finger hovers over the trigger. Hale is sobbing, twisting in his grip. Too much movement. Too much risk.
"That's what I thought. You know, I have to admit I didn't expect you to go this far.
The disguise. The accent. Weeks of playing servant in my own home.
" He chuckles. "When I sent that lockbox to your office, I thought you'd come charging in like the lovesick fool you are.
Storm the castle, get yourself killed, save me the trouble. "
He sent the fucking lockbox.
"But this?" Calder gestures at me with mock appreciation. "This level of commitment? I'm almost impressed. All this effort for a woman who isn't worth the air she breathes."
He glances down at Keira. "You hear that, darling? He infiltrated my entire operation for you." Calder's voice drips with contempt. "Wasted months of his life. Risked everything. And for what? A used-up whore who couldn't even keep her legs closed long enough to give me a legitimate heir."
Keira shakes, trying so hard to break free.
"She's not worth it. She never was. But I suppose you had to learn that the hard way."
"She's worth everything." The words leave my mouth calm. "And you're about to find out exactly what I'm willing to do to keep her."
Not get her back. Keep her. She was never his to take.
"Bold words from a man who can't even pull the trigger." Calder's grip tightens on Hale. "Did you really think you could outplay me? In my own house?"
Yes, and I still will.
You just don't know it yet.
He shakes his head slowly. "I've been running this business since before you could hold a gun, boy. I've bought governments. Buried enemies in foundations. Made men disappear so completely their own mothers forgot they existed."
I'm going to make him disappear so slowly he'll be begging those mothers to trade places.
He turns toward the water.
Every synapse in my brain fires at once. The weight of the concrete block. The depth of the water. How long a five-year-old can hold his breath. How fast I can move. How many bullets I have left. How many people need to die in the next sixty seconds.
"No." Keira's voice tears from her throat. "No, please, please—"
Calder looks at her over his shoulder, smiling. "Anyway, it's been fun, but it's time for you to say goodbye to your bastard."
He throws Hale into the river.
The splash is the loudest sound I've ever heard.
I'm moving before I realize I've made a decision, but Keira's faster, ripping free from the guard with a force I didn't know she still possessed.
Elbow cracking against his face. Nails raking across his eyes, drawing blood.
He releases her with a howl, and she's gone, bolting for the edge without a second's hesitation.
One moment she's on the platform.
The next she's swallowed by the same black water that just took our son.
The concrete block. The rope around his ankle.
He's going to sink and she can't—
Calder turns to face me, still wearing that fucking smirk. "You're too late, Henri." He raises his gun. "Or should I say…Tristan?"
I shoot twice. One bullet in his leg and the other in his shoulder.
A third shot is fired. This one grazes my ribs, but I barely feel it. Shouts echo somewhere behind me. Voices in my earpiece saying things I can't process.
None of it matters.
The thing inside me that was barely contained, starved for months, finally breaks free.
I hit the edge of the platform and dive.