Chapter Thirteen
Kade
————————
Rage doesn’t just simmer. It settles. It roots itself deep, threading through muscle and bone until I’m not holding it anymore, I’m embodying it.
It’s in my breath. It’s in my pulse. It’s in the way my arms tighten around her trembling body.
They took what was mine. They hurt her. They touched her.
They dragged her back into memories she never should have had in the first place.
Memories she survived as a child. Memories she never deserved.
She clings to me with bruising force, her nails digging into my skin, her breath shaking against my neck.
She’s unraveling in my arms, falling apart piece by piece, and I can feel every fracture.
Every tremor. Every echo of the torment she endured long before tonight.
The kind of torment that shapes a person into someone who flinches at shadows and locks doors twice and sleeps with the lights on.
The kind that leaves scars no one can see.
I will bring this city down brick by fucking brick to find them.
Every alley. Every warehouse. Every backroom.
Every hole they crawl into. They can’t hide anywhere.
Not from me. Not now. Not after this. I feel the promise settle under my ribs, cold and absolute.
They will regret the day they ever laid eyes on her.
On my girl. On the woman who survived hell once already and still found a way to breathe.
I will tear them apart, until there is nothing left.
I close the door to her hospital room, making sure it clicks shut, making sure she’s safe behind it.
I look back once, just to see her chest rise, just to see her still breathing, sedated now, finally still.
The nurses promised she’d rest. They stitched my hand, wrapped it, told me to sit down, told me to breathe. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I can’t.
I pace down the hall, every step too loud, too sharp, too full of the rage still clawing at my ribs.
My hand throbs under the bandage, a reminder of how terrified she was, how deep she sank into memories she never should have had.
I see Jaxon waiting at the end of the corridor, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, face tight.
He looks up when he hears me coming, and something in his expression shifts. He knows. He can see it in my eyes.
“Answers, now.” I growl, the words scraping out of me, no patience left in my body, no calm, no restraint.
I stop in front of him, close enough that he can feel the heat rolling off me.
My pulse is a roar. My breath is uneven.
My vision is still tinted with the image of her shaking in my arms, clinging to me like she was drowning.
Jaxon straightens, jaw tightening. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t back down. But he doesn’t pretend this is normal either. He looks at my hand, then at the closed door behind me, then back at my face. “You’re not going to like what I found.”
“I don’t give a damn what I like.” My voice is low, shaking with the force of everything I’m holding back. “Tell me.”
He exhales slowly, bracing himself. “The men who took her… they weren’t random. They weren’t opportunistic. They weren’t acting alone.”
My stomach twists, a cold, violent knot forming under my ribs.
“Then who?” I demand, stepping closer, the rage rising again, sharp and suffocating.
“Don’t stall,” I snap. “Tell me what you know.”
His brows pull together. “I don’t know anything. I’ve been trying to find out who took her. I’ve been calling every contact I have. I’ve been…” he freezes, realization dawning his face, his eyes dart from his phone, to me and back down again, his grip tightens around the screen.
“It wasn’t random,” Jaxon says “None of it was. They didn’t just find her. They didn’t just take her. They were sent.”
“Sent by who?”
“My Mother.” Jaxon’s voice is quiet.
Not shocked. Not disbelieving. Just frozen, like his mind refuses to process the words. He shakes his head once, slow, like he’s trying to clear it.
“She planned it. She set it up. She made sure Mara was alone. She made sure I was gone. She made sure those men had access.”
“She knew exactly what she was doing,” I say, stepping closer. “She knew I would chase Mara if she ran. She knew Mara would be vulnerable. She knew you were out of town. She knew every gap. Every weakness. Every opening.”
Jaxon’s breath stutters. “She used her.”
“She used her,” I repeat. “As bait.”
He looks sick. His hand comes up to his mouth, his eyes wide, horrified. “I didn’t know,” he whispers. “Kade, I swear to you, I didn’t know. I would never have let this happen. I would never have”
“I know,” I say, and the truth of it hits him harder than any accusation. “I know you didn’t help her. I know you didn’t know. But she did. She orchestrated every second of it.”
Jaxon’s voice breaks. “Because she wanted her broken, Because she wanted control. Because she wanted to punish her for leaving. Because she wanted to remind her who she belonged to.”
“She’s been doing this for years,” he whispers. “Manipulating. Controlling. Hurting. And I never saw it.”
“You saw enough,” I say. “You saw the aftermath. You saw what Mara became. You saw what your mother made her into.”
He closes his eyes, pain twisting his features. “I should have protected her.”
“You will now,” I say. “Because she is finished.”
Jaxon opens his eyes, and for the first time, I see the same rage burning in him that burns in me. Not directed at Mara. Not directed at me. Directed at the woman who raised him. The woman who destroyed Mara. The woman who orchestrated this.
He nods once, slow and heavy. “Tell me what you need.”
“Everything,” I say. “Every detail. Every contact. Every place she could be hiding. Every person she could have used.”
Jaxon swallows hard. “You’ll have it.”
Jaxon’s voice is steady, but I can see the tremor beneath it.
Not guilt.
Not complicity. Shock. The kind that comes from realizing your own mother orchestrated something monstrous right under your nose.
He turns away from me, pulling out his phone, fingers moving fast, calling contacts, demanding answers, piecing together the trail she left behind.
I watch him, the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw locks, the way his breath stutters when someone on the other end gives him a name.
He hangs up and looks at me, eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them. “I found her.”
My pulse spikes. “Where.”
He swallows hard. “The old estate. The one she kept after the divorce. She’s been staying there for weeks. She didn’t tell anyone. She didn’t want anyone to know she was back.”
I glance toward Mara’s door, the room where she sleeps sedated and trembling even in her dreams. The doctors promised they would watch her.
They promised she would not be alone. They promised she would be safe.
I trust them more than I trust myself right now.
I trust them more than I trust the rage boiling under my skin.
I nod once. “We go now.”
Jaxon hesitates for a moment, looking at the door, looking at her, looking at me. “She’ll be alright?”
“She’ll be safer here than anywhere else,” I say. “And she won’t wake up alone.”
He nods again, slower this time, the weight of everything settling on him. “Then let’s go.”
We move down the hall together, silent, both of us carrying different versions of the same fury.
Mine is sharp and cold, born from watching Mara break in my arms. His is heavy and sickening, born from realizing his mother did this, his mother planned this, his mother hurt Mara again.
He walks faster than I expect, shoulders tense, breath uneven, like he’s afraid if he slows down he’ll fall apart.
Outside, the air is thick and warm, the sky dimming into evening. We get into the car without speaking. The silence is not comfortable. It is not calm. It is the kind that vibrates, the kind that hums with everything unsaid.
Jaxon grips the steering wheel, knuckles white. “I didn’t know,” he says quietly. “I swear to you, Kade. I didn’t know she was capable of this. I didn’t know she was still doing things like this.”
“I know,” I say. And I do. I saw the shock in his eyes. I saw the horror. I saw the way his voice broke when he realized what she had done. “But she did it. And we are going to end it.”
He nods, jaw tight. “She won’t touch Mara again.”
“She won’t touch anyone again.”
The estate is twenty minutes away. Twenty minutes of silence. Twenty minutes of rage. Twenty minutes of Jaxon gripping the wheel like he wants to tear it apart. Twenty minutes of me replaying Mara’s shaking hands, her broken breath, her terrified eyes.
When the gates come into view, Jaxon slows the car, staring at the house beyond them. The lights are on. She is inside. She is waiting. She thinks she is safe.
Jaxon exhales, a sound that is half breath, half pain. “This is where she brought us when we were kids,” he says quietly. “This is where she hid things. This is where she kept secrets.”
“This is where she ends,” I say.
I move through the manor silently, every step measured, every breath controlled.
The air is stale, heavy with the scent of old wood and expensive perfume.
I avoid anything that might creak, anything that might shift, anything that might betray our presence.
I move like a shadow, my pistol raised, the silencer fixed to the front, my finger resting just beside the trigger.
Jaxon follows behind me, quieter than I expected, his face pale, his jaw locked, his eyes burning with something that looks too much like betrayal.
The manor is exactly as I remember it from years ago.
Cold. Ornate. Pretending to be beautiful while hiding rot beneath the surface.
I move down the hall, past portraits of people who never deserved to be remembered, past furniture chosen for appearances rather than comfort.
Every step brings me closer to the staircase, closer to the sound of voices drifting down from above.