Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Wade
Marie had finally fallen asleep against my chest.
She’d gone limp the moment the worst of the shock left her, drifting into that deep, heavy sleep the body drops into when it decides it’s safe.
Now she was curled across my lap in the helicopter, fingers bunched in my shirt, my coat half-wrapped around her like a blanket.
Her jeans and sleeves were stiff with drying blood. His blood. It was on her hands, her cuffs, her jeans.
The rotors thudded overhead, making the cabin vibrate, but it all felt distant. My world had shrunk to the span of my arms and the small, warm shape tucked inside them.
One hand carded through her hair on an endless loop, careful and slow. The other stayed splayed between her shoulder blades, feeling each inhale of her ribs under my palm, each exhale brush warm across my throat.
She was here, she was breathing, and her heart was a soft, quick flutter against my ribs.
An hour ago, I thought I’d lost her.
The memory of that first moment, walking into our bedroom and not seeing her, was a series of sharp cuts behind my eyes.
The bedsheets were rumpled from where I’d left her, a faint hollow in the mattress shaped like her body, and my laptop sat closed on the nightstand. No Marie.
The bathroom lights were off, too. No Marie.
I’d called her name once. Twice. A third time, louder.
Nothing answered.
Downstairs, Honey had been by the side door, pressed so close her nose was fogging the glass. Her paws braced, nails scratching with a low whine caught in her throat. When I opened it, she bolted to the gate and pawed there instead, frantic.
The security feed had shown Marie slipping through it in jeans and a sweater, her bag at her side, head down, and alone.
There weren’t many moments in a life like mine that could be called fear. Calculated risk, yes. Danger, often. But not that cold, soulful fear that reaches into your soul and twists.
Realizing that my little darling had walked off my property without me knowing, had gone into a world that had already tried to break her—that was fear.
I’d found my Marie in a bloodied sweater and jeans, trembling in the middle of that room, knife limp in her hand. Kyan had been kneeling in a pool of red, and Alastair was off to the left, hands just slightly raised, both of them trying to keep Marie grounded.
Her gaze had snapped to mine the instant I said her name. The knife had clattered from her fingers like her body didn’t want it anymore, and then she’d taken one faltering step and come apart into me.
The feel of her slamming into my chest, of her fingers clutching my shirt, of the way she’d tucked her face into my neck and collapsed was still echoing through my muscles, here in the air.
She’d been holding it together with bravery and stubbornness. The second she was in my arms, all that brittle strength had finally been allowed to melt.
Good. That was my job now.
My iPad lit up on the next seat, and I shifted just enough to free my hand without jostling her. The screen was lit with a string of secure messages from Alastair, clean, clipped text updates. He knew better than to call—I wasn’t about to speak words into the air with Marie asleep on my chest.
Alastair
Castellanos confirmed. The 11-digit entry is his internal ID.
Marie was lured with footage from Moreau’s compromised email.
The sample images have been intercepted, and a full-system trace is in progress.
We’ll scrub everything. Nothing will reach your devices.
My jaw tightened at each line. Lured. Footage. Moreau. Marie had walked into that building because someone weaponized her shame and used me as the blade.
Alastair
I’ve seen enough to confirm the scope and will contain it.
I recommend that you do NOT request copies.
There was no sarcasm under that. Just a rare, blunt piece of advice from a man who almost never stepped out of professional detachment.
It was respect for Marie. For what she’d already survived.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard for a second. One simple instruction would have those files routed to a secure drive under my control. I could watch every second, note every hand that touched her, and build a ledger of sins to collect each one personally.
Every part of me trained to gather information screamed that it was what I should do. Catalog the crimes, study the faces, and use the details later when the time comes to extract payment.
I looked down, and Marie shifted faintly against me, a soft sigh escaping her. I tightened my arm around her back, bringing my lips to her hairline.
“You’re okay,” I murmured into her hair. “You’re safe, darling. Daddy’s here.”
Her breath evened out, her fingers flexing once against my ribs before going slack again.
I looked back at the screen.
Years of habit taught me that information was power. That I should know what had been done to what was mine. That I should watch it all, memorize it, burn it into my brain so I could justify every bullet, every slow punishment that would follow.
But every time I pictured those images, I didn’t see faceless men.
I saw Marie’s face. The happiness she’d had on the bed with my laptop in her lap and a smile on her lips. How her eyes had gone wide when I’d told her to spend my money. The soft, startled pleasure when I’d praised her. The trust when she’d said she wanted me inside her.
I saw her in that stone room, standing in blood with a knife in her hand, shaking and still on her feet. Healing and fighting in the same battered body.
She’d gone there to make sure I never had to see what she’d been forced to live through.
If I pulled those files now, I’d be spitting on that. On her trust, on the choice she’d made in terror, walking away from safety to protect me from the worst of her story.
I typed with my thumb, the decision clean.
Wade
Erase everything. I will not see it.
Alastair
Understood, we’ll destroy it.
…And keep the target alive for you.
I locked the screen and let the iPad slide back down to the seat.
Marie made an unconscious move, nuzzling closer, her nose pressing into my throat, as if she could burrow into me and stay there. I ached from the trust in that simple motion.
“I love you,” I whispered into her hair, the words full of meaning. “I love you so much, my Marie. I am so proud of you.”
I kissed her temple, then the damp corner of one closed eye. She just breathed, steady and soft, like she recognized my voice in sleep.
Out the window, the line of the coast was rising to meet us, the pale curve of sand, the white of the estate, the glitter of the pool, all of it impossibly normal from up here.
The world would expect me to be obsessed with what had been done to her, and I was.
But not enough to let it redefine her.
She wasn’t what had happened in front of those cameras. She was the woman who’d walked into that room alone and put a knife in the man who’d owned them. The woman asleep in my arms, covered in dried blood, and my name still half-formed on her lips.
The only record that mattered was that. The rest would burn.
I tightened my embrace as the helicopter dipped, holding her as if the descent itself might try to pull her away.
“Home,” I breathed against her hair, more to her than to myself. “We’re going home, darling. And nothing you’ve lived through changes what you are to me.”
My girl. My heart. My reason. I’d keep the worst of it out of both our eyes, even if it meant never knowing the full extent of their sins.
Because the price of that knowledge would be seeing her differently, and that was a price I refused to pay.