45. Chapter Forty-Five Abby
Chapter Forty-Five: Abby
S tepping out of the cool night, I closed the door behind me with a soft click. My pulse throbbed in my ears, a relentless drumbeat that mirrored the chaos churning inside me. Evelyn’s words were like shards of glass in my mind, jagged and impossible to handle without getting cut. I’d left her place with a heavy heart, the weight of secrets threatening to split me open.
She wanted me to deliver this news to Nathan…and to ask him to keep everything calm while she put the pieces in place to replace Kenny with Vincent Chen.
How the hell was I going to make this happen?
“Hey, Nathan?” I called out as I dropped my keys onto the entryway table, the sound echoing off the walls, unanswered. The house was silent, unsettlingly so.
Fuck.
I checked the kitchen first, where the pots still sat on the stove from our rushed dinner earlier, the remnants of spaghetti clinging to the sides. Nothing. Next, the living room—his favorite leather chair empty, the TV dark. The stillness pressed in around me, amplifying my worry.
“Nathan?” My voice was louder this time, edged with anxiety, but it was met with only more silence. I moved through the rooms, each one as deserted as the last until I spotted the open balcony door, the sheer curtains fluttering like ghostly fingers beckoning me forward.
The cold air bit at my skin as I stepped outside, the city lights below painting a picture of life going on as usual. But for us, for Nathan and me, everything was about to change.
And I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was really fucking scared.
I found him there, his silhouette etched against the backdrop of the restless sea, shoulders hunched as if bearing the weight of our dark world. The sharp tang of whiskey reached me before I saw the tumbler in his grasp, the amber liquid sloshing gently with each of his troubled breaths.
“Rough night?” The words hung in the chilled air between us, my own unease a living shadow at my back.
He didn’t turn to acknowledge me, just continued to stare out into the abyss, where the waves crashed against the cliffs with relentless fury. On the table beside him lay a sheathed blade I didn’t think I’d ever seen before.
I stepped closer, the click of my shoes muted by the howl of the wind. Reaching out, I wordlessly claimed the whiskey from his hand, bringing it to my lips for a steadying sip. The burn of the alcohol was a small comfort, a fleeting warmth in the cold that surrounded us.
Nathan exhaled deeply, the sound almost lost to the symphony of the night. “Ba knows something,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble that sent an involuntary shiver through me despite my resolve.
“Knows what?” My heart hammered in my chest, dread coiling in my stomach like a serpent ready to strike. Nathan’s admission had the power to shift the precarious balance of our existence, and I braced myself for whatever storm was coming our way.
He finally turned, his brown-black eyes meeting mine in a gaze that was all too knowing. “Not sure exactly…just that he knows something, and him knowing something isn’t good.”
“What makes you think your father knows something?” I choked down the panic rising like bile in my throat. Kenny Zhou, the Serpent’s Head, was not a man to trifle with. His knowledge could mean life or death, and we had been dancing on the edge of a knife for too long already.
Nathan ran a hand through his hair, the motion betraying his agitation. He was a statue carved from darkness, but even marble cracks under enough pressure. “Ba called me into his office tonight. Dropped a bombshell.” The words were heavy, weighed down by the gravity of what he was about to reveal.
I steadied myself against the railing, bracing for impact. “What happened?”
“Alex,” he said, and the name was like a bullet, hitting its mark with lethal precision. My stomach plummeted.
“Kenny found him?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
Nathan nodded, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “He wants me to go there. To deal with him.” There was an unspeakable heaviness in his voice, a burden no son should have to bear.
“Deal with him how?”
But I knew.
We both did.
“Need me to spell it out for you? Kill him,” Nathan said, then tilted his head toward the knife. “In Ba’s words, he wants me to put a knife in my brother’s heart–that knife, specifically.”
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath, feeling the weight of the glass in my hand suddenly as heavy as the tension that filled the air. The last of the liquor burned a trail down my throat as I drained it, needing something to fortify myself against the storm I knew was coming.
He nodded. “That’s right. Shit.”
“In that case…you want another?” I asked, holding up the glass to Nathan, whose dark eyes seemed to be lost in thought, fixed on some unseen point over the balcony’s edge.
He let out a short, mirthless laugh, more a release of pent-up frustration than anything resembling humor. “I absolutely fucking do.”
His answer was expected; we both needed an anchor, and tonight, the burn of whiskey would have to suffice. Leaving him alone with his thoughts, I slipped back inside, the cool air of the apartment wrapping around me like a welcome reprieve from the night’s turmoil.
The familiar clink of the bottle against the glass sounded louder than usual as I poured us both a generous helping. My hands trembled slightly, betraying the calm demeanor I tried to project. Evelyn’s words echoed in my mind, each one a live wire sparking against dry tinder. How could I possibly drop another bombshell on Nathan now, after what he’d just shared?
With two full glasses in hand, I returned to the balcony, where the sea stretched out before us, a vast expanse of darkness that mirrored the uncertainty of our future. Nathan hadn’t moved an inch, his silhouette rigid against the backdrop of the night sky.
“Got a plan?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Nathan took the glass, his fingers brushing mine. He stared into it, the amber liquid reflecting the scarce light from the distant city skyline. With a heavy sigh, he shook his head slowly. “No idea,” he admitted, the words seeming to weigh him down. “I need...I just need a moment, Abby.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said softly.
“Not from you. From all this. Everything is just happening and happening and I haven’t gotten a second to breathe.”
I reached over and slipped my hand into his, our fingers weaving together. It felt grounding, like growing roots in place of the orchids that had burned at Grant Avenue. For a moment, we stood silent, two figures cast adrift amidst the chaos, finding solace in the simple touch of skin on skin.
“I wish I could give you time,” I said. “But I can’t, so how about a blowjob?”
He laughed. “You’re funny.”
“That wasn’t a joke,” I said.
He shook his head. “As much as I’d like to take you up on that, I just need a moment to process.”
I had no idea what to do for him–how to help him, what to say. Normally, we would have thrown ourselves into bed, forgotten the world while we fucked the pain away…but not tonight.
Something had changed between us.
Our relationship was deeper than ever.
“Do you ever think that maybe you should have just walked away?” Nathan asked quietly. “When we first met...do you wish it never happened?”
I turned to face him, his profile etched against the dark sky. “Not for a second,” I confessed, my words honest and bare. “There’s no place I’d rather be than right here, at your side.”
He glanced at me, his lips quirking in a humorless smile. “You’re truly psychotic, you know that?”
I smirked back. “Ditto.”
A soft exhale escaped him, as if he’d been holding his breath waiting for my answer. He seemed to relax, just a fraction, and the lines of tension around his eyes softened.
“Speaking of crazy,” he said after a moment, shifting gears with ease, “how was dinner with my mother?”
I let out a bitter laugh as my gaze darted to the glass in his hands. “I think you might need to drink all of that. Because your night is about to get a whole lot fucking weirder.”