Chapter 25
I give the police my full report, telling them everything that happened, but I'm not able to actually identify the men. All I can say is that they looked like they were in their forties or fifties, and they could have been anything from Italian to Russian to Hispanic.
I’m really not sure. Maybe one of them was dark-skinned. They were all wearing thin coats or something, just regular jackets that looked like they were made of denim, but brown and different colors. It was just so hard to tell.
The mechanic shop was also right next door to the station, and they looked over everything on the car. They could not find a single thing that would have possibly happened to it that made it just stop like that.
While they're investigating, one of the cops looks up from his digital pad and asks, “What's the car registered under?”
“It's registered under my husband's name,” I reply, my voice still shaking.
“Who's your husband?”
“I told you. Daniel Akari,” I say, wondering if they're even listening to me.
The cop's eyes widen slightly. “Daniel Akari is your husband?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
I had already texted Daniel to let him know what happened, but the car system should have already automatically alerted him.
Anyone on the primary account gets a notification whenever the vehicle is attacked, if the glass is broken, or if there's some kind of kinetic issue like it being broken into.
It automatically broadcasts the exact location.
I'm sitting there at the police station when my phone suddenly rings. I scramble to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Mel?! Are you okay?!”
He actually sounds super frantic on the phone, which absolutely shocks me.
“Ye—yeah. I'm alive,” I stammer. “The ambulance already looked me over. I'm just grazed, luckily.”
“Grazed??? What the fuck is going on? You got hit? I saw the clips from the surveillance of the car. Who the hell were those guys? What the fuck happened? What were you doing down there?” he fires off, the questions tumbling out of him.
“The car just took me there,” I tell him, the thought reeling over and over in my head if the system got hacked. “I don't know. It, like, broke down right at that area. Almost like those guys wanted it to get there or something. I don't know.”
“Baby, I'm coming home,” he states in worry. “No, please don't do that. The Tokyo Summit is very important.”
“How can you say that?! You almost fucking died! Guys attacked you with guns and shit. I'm coming home. I can come back later, we can reconvene,” he insists.
“Danny—”
“I didn't fucking ask your permission or a question! I'm coming home. Just… I'm sending Rafi to you. I don't want you to be alone,” he says, sounding stressed beyond measure.
Still shaken up, I can still admire the comfort in his command.
This is exactly why I didn't want to deal with these self-driving fucking cars.
My car has never done that to me before, and they can't find anything wrong with it, so what the hell?
Things in my mind start to swirl around, like maybe it was the AI in the car trying to kill me, or someone else trying to kill me. Everything is a complete blur.
Later on, Rafi comes to get me and drops me off at home, but per Daniel's strict orders, he waits outside the house.
Then, around nine o'clock at night, Daniel walks through the door. I had been playing the piano just to calm myself down, but I sit up and stand there, looking at him. He just stares at me as he drops his briefcase, takes off his coat, and closes the door. His eyes look as though he’s seeing me for the very first time, as if he expected me to be dead and is looking at a ghost.
He comes close to me, holding his arms out, and grabs me up. My feet dangle right off the floor as he lifts me, holding his face close to my neck, kissing me, kissing my lips, my cheeks, all over my face.
“Ow,” I wince.
“I'm sorry. Let me see,” he gently orders.
I can't remember the last time I've seen his eyes look this manic. When I show him the bandaged patch on my shoulder, his eyes close in immediate shame.
“It only hurts when it gets touched,” I try to inform him. “You shouldn't have come all the way back here.”
He stands up tall again, looking at me, his eyes full of water and regret. Then he hangs his head, looking at the ground between us while still holding me, ticking his jaw.
“Have I treated you that badly that you really expect me to not come home… when you're attacked? When something happens to you? When someone…” He shakes his head, closing his eyes, looking very angry. “…tries to fuck with what's mine?”
His jaw tenses as he opens his mouth, trying to calm himself down.
He looks toward the front door, and a single tear falls down the side of his face, but he wipes it away quickly.
Then, he gently leads me to the living room and sits me down right by the fireplace.
My body is still completely chilled from the events of earlier.
“You want me to get you something? I… some tea or some…” His voice trails off, and he walks away from me, turning his back to me.
His hair and his suit look completely disheveled, like he was running, and he has sweat all over him.
“Danny,” I call out softly.
He sniffles. I can't see what he's doing until he turns around and looks at me, trying to put on a facade of strength, but I can tell he was extremely worried. Latent memories of Kara dig far back. Because I'm scared, and all that I want right now is to not be.
“All I need is for you to… tell me it's going to be okay and hold me. Then you can go back tomorrow, back to your summit,” I say.
His face softens into a sad expression, and he sits right next to me, bringing me in close. We just hold each other for a while. His left arm tenderly drapes around my body, pulling me right into his ribs.
“As angry as I was with you… I never want to see you get hurt,” Danny says quietly. “And I can't always be here to protect you. I'm so sorry, Mel. The bodyguards… I know what I said before, but…” He sighs heavily. “We're going to have to figure something out.”
I can feel the tension radiating off him. I know he’s not telling me everything, but he looks down at me.
“I don't want to scare you,” he says.
“What is it?” I ask, looking up at him.
“One of my main clients, Enoch Alloways… he got gunned down by three of his own bodyguard details,” Danny reveals slowly. “Turns out they were spies for an enemy group.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my blood suddenly becoming a red river of frost.
“No, it's… whatever. He was in some bad dealings,” Daniel says, trying to dismiss it.
“We don't have to worry about that, do we?”
Daniel looks at me, his eyes dead serious.
“When you're in a place of power and you risk putting people out of business, a target is on your back.
So, needless to say, there's not a lot of people that I trust. It's why I mostly do my business outside the house, because I don't want to take anything home and risk you, or us. Our home is supposed to be a place of safety.”
I take a quiet moment, looking at him before I finally ask the question that's been eating at me. “Where do you sleep when you don't come home?”
“A hotel,” Danny says simply. “I have the money, and I have other properties around.
Sometimes I'll go and spend time with my mother.
But Mel, you have to understand, what we're doing at the company is changing everything, and it's angering a lot of people.
Changing the world risks dethroning those who held the power in the old world.
That's exactly what happened to Alloways. He’s been trying to monopolize the new regional energy grids, completely squeezing out the old cartel guys who used to run the infrastructure.
And trust me, those guys don't take early retirement well. "
“Did you ever feel like you were in danger?” I ask.
“There's been a few people that tried for my life,” Danny says flatly.
I stare at him, completely shocked. “What the fuck, Danny?”
“I try to protect you from all of this,” he says, fastening his grip on my shoulder.
“But I need you to understand that I'm taking care of things.
I'm being careful. I wish I could just give you my gun to keep here, but the firearms are strictly tracked by biometric data.
If it's not on my person, it triggers an automatic alert and gets confiscated by state enforcement.”
He lets out a bitter laugh, shaking his head.
“One of the worst things that ever happened to society was convincing civilians they would be safer if they gave up their means to defend themselves.
The very thing made to put them on equal footing with the criminals.
Look where that leaves us. But that's exactly why my dad and I are doing this, making our city's grid infrastructure like this for the future, so people can't easily get away with crimes anymore.”
I look down at the fire, processing his words, before I look back up at him.
“Yeah, but if you build a city that's totally dependent on a digital grid just to keep everyone safe, then people just become completely dependent on the system itself.
It doesn't actually fix the corruption, Danny. It just… I dunno… trades the old corporate threat for a different kind of power that evil people can abuse. And make people feel helpless.”
Daniel looks at me for a long beat, his face full of an emotion I haven't seen in a long time.
“No matter what, I'm going to make sure you're taken care of,” he says softly. “I know we have a lot of issues between us, but you're still my wife, and I love you. All I could think about when I got that emergency alert on my phone today was that I had lost you.”
The damn finally bursts and I sob openly into Daniel's chest. The sheer terror of the day, the humiliation at the boutique, the burning pain in my right shoulder becomes unbearable for me to hold in anymore.
He doesn't pull away; he just wraps his arms tighter around me, letting me ruin his disheveled suit with my tears.
“Call me what you want, Mel,” Daniel murmurs into my hair. “But I'm going to make sure you stay safe.”
The next time I open my eyes, the room is quiet save for the crackle of the dying embers. Both Daniel and I are still lying lengthwise on the couch next to the fireplace. And this is all I need right now.
To feel safe.
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