THIRTY-FOUR
I stumbled back from the railing, heart slamming hard and fast as if it wanted out. My heels beat the stone as my hand caught the doorframe in a rush.
He was here.
The image of him, standing there and watching, crawled under my skin like a parasite.
I shoved the terrace door open and slipped inside in a whisper of panic, plastering a smile over the tremble in my jaw. My pulse was a drumbeat in my throat. Each step back to the table felt wrong – too slow, too loud, as if I were moving through water.
And horribly familiar.
Cain looked up before I even reached him; eyes narrowing the moment they caught mine.
Sliding into the chair beside him, I tried to move as if I hadn’t just sprinted from the devil himself. My fingers curled around the napkin in my lap, clenching the soft fabric as though it might tether me to something solid. Something real.
Vinnie glanced over, catching the movements, but his mind was still lost somewhere else – eyes shadowed, jaw clenched, the unrest behind his demeanour still bleeding.
Then Cain’s fingers brushed my knee under the table, squeezing a question.
I flinched sharply.
His hand paused.
When I looked at him, his gaze was fixed on mine – brows drawn, eyes narrowing with that dark knowing. As if he’d recognised something on my face.
He would. There was no hiding it from him. He knew trauma the way I did – by habit and scar.
The panic was in full throttle, still pulsing wild and hot beneath my skin.
He leaned in, lips grazing the shell of my ear. ‘You look pale.’
‘Travis is outside.’ It cracked out of me. I could barely breathe.
The room was closing in on me.
His whole body went rigid, tension knotting along his frame, coiled like a drawn wire.
I caught it then – the tremor in his shoulders, the twitch in his thigh, that second before he almost pushed back his chair. I clamped my hand to his knee, pressing hard.
‘No,’ I murmured with urgency, just as Vinnie turned to drown Genevieve in lazy chatter. ‘He’ll kill you.’
Cain didn’t look at me. His lips barely moved as he spoke past my cheek, his gaze locked on the windows behind me.
‘He won’t get the chance,’ he whispered – quiet, lethal, and already halfway to war.
‘Please…’ My voice splintered like fragile bone, my mind suddenly making an inventory of his duffel bag from before.
But he didn’t move. Just reclined against his seat, his gaze holding mine like a man calculating which bad decision would drag him to hell quicker.
His head tilted just slightly towards Vinnie, whose glass froze mid-air when he met his eyes.
Vinnie’s baby blues flicked from Cain to me, widening. The smile left his face.
He set his wineglass down with a soft clink, his gaze sharpening to attention.
‘We need to go,’ Cain said, flat and final.
Vinnie frowned, throwing a sideways glance at Genevieve, who was still sipping her wine, blissfully unaware, her attention on whatever topic they were discussing.
Clearing his throat, Vinnie rose first.
‘Glad to have you over the pond, Genevieve,’ he said, extending a hand with that polished charm he wore like a suit.
She blinked, startled, and took it – but I wasn’t paying attention any more.
My gaze kept flicking to the windows as the room began to spin. To the glass smeared with fading light and the vague silhouettes beyond it. Searching for movement. For the shape of him.
But the shadows were empty now.
Gone.
Every single muscle on my body shuddered at that.
Cain stood, prompting me to follow, and I did – legs stiff, spine tight, mouth too dry to make a sound.
We made our way to the lift leading to the garage, the low hum of conversation and clinking cutlery fading behind us.
‘He’s here,’ Cain muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Vinnie.
Vinnie’s head snapped towards him – then to me.
Then his unblinking stare cut forward, hardening.
‘I’ll meet you at yours,’ he murmured, stepping close to Genevieve, whose curiosity honed with every fragment of the hushed exchange.
She opened her mouth to say something, but Vinnie was already on her, his voice dropping low and debonair like always. ‘I hope we’ll see you again soon.’
The lift dinged at the first basement level, the sound sharp in the quiet.
‘I’ll walk you to the taxi rank. It’s difficult to catch a—’
Their voices trailed off as the lift door closed behind them, swallowing the words.
‘Have you got your pistol?’ Cain asked calmly.
I squeezed my purse tighter, feeling the outline of it beneath my fingers. But the mention of the weapon lifted the fine hairs along my neck.
‘Please don’t go after him,’ I whispered, the plea trembling in my throat.
‘I won’t leave you,’ he said – an oath, not comfort – as his arm wrapped tight around my waist.
The lift jolted to a stop on the lower level.
Cain moved fast. He shoved me behind him, scanning the shadows as the doors peeled open with a robotic sound.
‘Stay with me,’ he growled, and took my hand.
We broke into a run.
Out of the metal box, into the yawning expanse of concrete and silence, our footsteps rang sharp and loud. The air was colder here, damp with exhaust and something fouler: fear.
Cain didn’t slow. I trailed behind, tethered to him as he led us towards the black Audi parked under a flickering strip of ceiling lights.
He looked larger somehow. Harder. As though fury had expanded the confines of his frame until even his shadow walked taller.
His head whipped left and right, each flick of his gaze cutting across the dim space. I followed the movement of his eyes, dread creeping in wherever the dark corners swallowed the light.
Then—
A double chirp – the Audi blinked its lights in a fragile moment of reprieve.
I ducked low as we reached it, spine folding tight until the smell of new leather hit me and I settled onto the seat.
‘Lower,’ Cain ordered just above a breath, eyes still cast over the roof of the car.
I slumped deeper into the seat until the only thing I could see was the overhead concrete through the windscreen, and the glare of reflectors slicing across the space.
Cain slid in beside me onto the driver’s seat. No words.
He yanked open the glove compartment – metal clinked, leather rustled – then he drew it out.
‘Oh my God,’ I breathed, air tearing in my chest.
The Bowie knife gleamed beneath the garage lights as he unsheathed it halfway, tested the edge, then slid the leather strap under his jeans. He fastened it to his ankle as if it were routine.
‘You’ve seen it before,’ he argued, as if that justified the glint in his eyes.
‘Not for this purpose.’
I tried speaking, but every syllable sounded like a breath gone astray.
We strapped in. The engine roared.
All I could hear was my own heart and the snarl of the motor as we sped out of the garage, headlights punishing the night.
Cain’s hand dropped to mine, white-knuckled around my purse. He glanced at me – not soft or comforting. His eyes had darkened to obsidian, as if carved from vengeance.
‘He’s never hurting you again, Paula,’ he said with a finality that sounded less a promise than a verdict.
My heart stuttered – not only with relief, but with the cold shock of sitting beside a man who would relish the damage he could deliver.
Cain wasn’t protecting me like a man guarding what was his. He was a shadow broken out of his own pain.
And I knew – God, I knew – if he ever came face-to-face with Travis again, I’d lose him. Because the kind of punishment Cain would hand out wouldn’t come from mercy and protection – it would come from a place much darker and colder.
‘The penthouse is safe. There are alarms everywhere, cameras… and a guard always stationed. You don’t go in unless ID’d and with a keycard.’
‘I don’t understand…’ I whispered, staring out at the streaking lights. ‘Why is he here? Why now? Halfway across the world.’
Cain sighed, the sound barely audible over the engine. His gaze stayed on the road, but I saw the twitch in his jaw.
‘He didn’t love me enough to do all this,’ I added.
‘Some people don’t need love. Just fear.’ He shook his head slowly, as if exorcising a ghost. ‘And when you develop a taste for fear…’ His voice dragged, but his silence said more.
I glanced sideways, taking in his stern stance.
‘Are you talking about Ezio now?’ Or yourself? I didn’t say the latter, but it was there.
He didn’t wince. Maybe because he didn’t know the answer either.
Stretching my fingers beneath his, I interlaced them. His palm was warm, tense – alive with restraint.
‘Both of us, I think,’ he said eventually. Then softer: ‘But the difference is… I like to see it leave your eyes. I live for it – when you let me touch it. When I turn it into something else.’
His gaze shot to mine, and it was stripped of armour.
‘I hate it when it’s because of me. But I’m fucking addicted to undoing it.’
He looked away first, eyes narrowing on the road as we turned a sharp corner.
‘And knowing all this—’ He inhaled deeply through his nose, held it, then let the words spill with his breath. ‘—he’s not going to stop. Unless we do something.’
I shook my head, but not in rejection – in acquiescence. I already knew that.
It wasn’t just shock. It was a truth that pulsed under my skin. One I had always carried with me. Constant and undeniable.
I felt as if I were teetering between fire and water.
Burning. Drowning.
And never quite sure which would drag me down first.
‘Is that why you were there that night? In Obsidian?’ I asked, needing to anchor my thoughts to something else. Something unresolved.
He gave a small smirk, the colour returning to his face as he squeezed my hand.
‘Fear?’ he tried. ‘No. I don’t think so. I think it was… freedom. I needed a vent.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘You know how sometimes you feel like you’re suffocating? And no matter where you turn, there’s not enough air?’
‘Oh yeah,’ I conceded. I’ve felt this way for a long time. I actually didn’t even remember a time before that.
I let it settle for a beat. Two. Three. ‘And did you get it? Did it give you freedom?’
Did I? I needed to know. Desperately.