33. Atara
Atara
My left eye is swollen halfway shut, and every time I draw a breath, a sharp, white-hot needle drives straight into my right ribs.
Great. Cracked ribs, check. Concussion, highly probable. Swollen jaw, definitely. At least my nose isn't broken. If I'm going to get out of here, I'd prefer not to look like a pug while doing it.
I spit a mouthful of blood onto the dirty concrete floor. The shipping terminal is cold, smelling of grease, rusted iron, and reservoir water.
Silas’s trap had been clean. Immaculate, really.
I had slipped out of the compound with my boots quiet, keeping the black-handled knife Lorcan gave me tucked flat against my forearm.
I’d mapped the blind spots on the cameras.
I’d timed the perimeter rotation down to the second.
I’d reached the reservoir road, thinking I was a shadow, thinking I was the cleverest girl to ever leave Brooklyn.
And then three men had stepped out of the scrub brush before I even crossed the threshold of the terminal. No warnings. One of them had simply driven the butt of a rifle into my stomach, and when I went down, gasping for the air that had left my lungs, another had kicked me in the face.
They took the knife. They threw me into this rusted metal chair. And they tied my wrists behind my back with heavy plastic zip-ties that bite deeper into my skin with every twitch of my fingers.
"You're remarkably quiet," a voice rasps from the shadows near the back wall.
Silas steps into the dim circle of light cast by a single dangling bulb. He’s got his right arm wrapped in a thick, clean white bandage, but he looks otherwise undisturbed. The unhurried, lazy smile is back on his face.
"I'm running calculations," I say, my voice sounding like gravel being ground under a heel. "Mainly about how much it’s going to cost me to replace this dress. Red silk is notoriously hard to dry-clean."
Silas lets out a short, quiet laugh. "He really did pick a strange one. Most girls in your position would be crying by now."
"Most girls aren’t me. They didn't graduate top of their class in finance," I spit, ignoring the way my jaw screams at the movement. "Which means most girls don't understand that crying has a zero percent return on investment. What do you want, Silas?"
"I already told your man what I want," he says, stepping closer until he's looming over me. He smells like cheap mints and old blood. "I want to watch him do the math. I want to see if he can solve an equation where the only answer is his own ruin."
"He's better at calculation than you think," I mutter.
"We'll see." Silas turns his head toward the dark corner of the warehouse. "Bring the other one out. Let them have a chat. I like to be hospitable before the show starts."
One of his guards, a thick-necked guy with a scar running across his lip, drags a second chair into the light. Tied to it is a girl. Her face is smudged with dirt, her curls are a chaotic nest, and she’s wearing a rumpled, oversized gray NYU sweatshirt.
My heart stops. The cold concrete beneath my feet feels like it’s tilting.
"Tania?" I whisper.
She lifts her head. Her eyes are red, swollen from crying, but the moment she sees me, a choked-off sob escapes her throat.
"Atara!" she gasps, her voice cracking. "Oh my god, Atara! Your eye—what did they do to you?"
"I'm fine, Tania. I'm okay," I say, the words tumbling out in a frantic rush.
My throat feels tight, a sudden, terrifying wave of panic threatening to drown me.
Not her. Please, God, not her. She was supposed to be in Queens.
She was supposed to be safe on her couch.
"What are you doing here? How did they find you? "
Silas smiles, checking his watch. "I'll leave you two to catch up. Ten minutes. Don't make too much noise."
He walks back into the shadows, the metal door of the office at the far end of the warehouse clanging shut behind him. The guards stay, but they retreat to the perimeter, their rifles slung low, ignoring us.
"Tania, talk to me," I whisper, leaning forward as far as the ropes will let me. "How did this happen? Did they snatch you from the apartment?"
Tania shakes her head, a tear escaping and cutting a clean path through the dust on her cheek. "No. No, Atara. I... I wasn't in New York."
"What?" I blink, my swollen eye throbbing. "What do you mean you weren't in New York?"
"I got a call," she says, her voice trembling so hard I can barely understand her. "Three days ago. A man with a very polite voice... he said his name was Echo. He told me you were in Las Vegas. He said you were safe, but that you were homesick and lonely."
My brain stalls. Echo?
"He said... he said his boss wanted to surprise you," Tania continues, her lip wobbling. "He flew me out on a private jet, Atara. First class. Everything. He said you had been through a really bad breakup and needed your best friend."
I sit there, the silence of the warehouse suddenly roaring in my ears.
Lorcan.
He did that?
The giant, grumpy, terrifying crime lord who smashed my phone and locked me in the East Wing... he flew my best friend across the country because he thought I was lonely? Because he wanted to make me smile?
"But when I landed," Tania sobs, her head dropping, "we didn't even make it out of the private terminal. Some men in tactical gear... they hit the car. They killed the driver. They took me. I've been in a basement for two days, Atara. I didn't know what was happening. I thought you were dead."
"I'm not dead," I say, but my voice is barely a whisper.
I look down at my hands, tied tight behind my back. My skin is bruised, my fingers are cold, and my head is pounding. But my chest feels like it’s being split wide open, filled with a sudden, devastating warmth that has absolutely nothing to do with this freezing warehouse.
He loved me.
It wasn't just the sex. It wasn't just the dominant need to keep me in his shadow or the way he looked at my neck in the boardroom.
He had looked at me, really looked at me, and seen a girl missing her home.
He had spent his own resources, his own time, to bring a piece of Brooklyn to the desert for me.
And I had spent the last three weeks calling him a monster.
I was just lying to myself.
I… I love him.
I love his rough hands. I love his stupid, quiet half-smiles.
I love the way his boots sound when they hit the floorboards, and the way he held my head to his chest in the dark corridor when he was falling apart.
I love him, and I am currently sitting in a trap designed to kill him, and I have exactly zero seconds to waste being sentimental.
"Atara?" Tania whispers, looking up through her curls. "Who are these people? Who is Lorcan?"
"He's..." I swallow the blood in my mouth, my mind instantly clicking back into gear. The emotional fog clears instantly. "He's a very dangerous man, Tania. But he's also the man who's going to get us out of here."
"He's coming alone," she says, her eyes wide with terror. "The man with the bandage... Silas. He said if Lorcan brings anyone, they'll kill us."
"I know," I say.
I start scanning the room. My eyes move, quick and systematic.
Okay. Let's look at the numbers.
There are four guards in the main room. Two by the loading dock doors, two by the office.
They are carrying short-barreled rifles, standard caliber, probably three-round burst. Silas has a sidearm, but his right hand is crippled from the knife wound I gave him at the gala.
He’s running on adrenaline and pride, which makes him sloppy.
I look at the support beams. Rusted steel. The floor is concrete, cracked, and with pools of stagnant water.
If Lorcan walks through that door alone, he is outnumbered five to one. But Silas is expecting him to play the hero. He’s expecting Lorcan to freeze again, the way he did in the ballroom.
"Tania, listen to me," I whisper, my voice flat and absolute. "When the doors open, I need you to slide your chair back. As far into the shadow as you can get. Do you understand?"
"Atara, I'm scared," she whimpers.
"I know you are. But you're a Brooklyn girl. We don't get taken out in a Nevada warehouse. Slide the chair. Don't make a sound."
A heavy, metallic screech echoes through the space.
The main double steel doors of the warehouse slowly grind open, letting in a shaft of pale, dusty morning light. The desert wind follows, whipping the loose paper on the floor into a small vortex.
My breath catches in my throat.
Lorcan walks in.
He is alone, his face completely devoid of expression, no anger, no fear, just a cold, stony mask that looks like it was carved out of the mountain.
But his eyes.
The moment he enters, his gaze sweeps the room, ignoring the guards, ignoring the rifles pointed at his chest, and locks onto mine.
He sees my swollen eye. He sees the dark smear of blood on my collarbone. He sees the way my shoulders are hunched from the pain in my ribs.
I watch the shift happen.
It’s subtle, but to me, it’s like an earthquake.
The stone mask doesn't break, but his jaw sets so hard the muscle in his cheek looks like steel.
His shoulders reset, his chest rising with one slow, deep breath, and his posture turns into something so ancient and lethal that the guard nearest to him instinctively takes a step back, his rifle hand trembling.
Lorcan goes completely, dangerously still.
He doesn't draw his weapon. He doesn't shout. He just stands there in the middle of the concrete floor, his eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that feels like a physical touch.
He’s here.
The office door clangs open, and Silas steps out onto the metal catwalk above, his hand resting on the railing as he looks down at the floor. He lets out a loud, jagged laugh that echoes off the corrugated tin roof.
"Look at that," Silas chuckles, his voice wet and rasping. "The King of the West Coast. Walking into a warehouse like he's checking the inventory. I have to hand it to you, Lorcan. You really are a romantic."
Lorcan doesn't look up at him. His eyes stay on me.
"I'm here, Silas," Lorcan says, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that shakes the dust off the beams. "Let them go."
"Oh, we'll get to that," Silas says, walking down the metal stairs, his boots clanging rhythmically. "But first, we have some business to finish."
I look at Lorcan, my heart hammering against my cracked ribs.
Don't do it, I try to tell him with my eyes. Don't play his game.
But Lorcan just holds my gaze, his face still and his hands steady.