Adrien
Present
Kiara’s voice is faint now, fragile, but desperate in a way that cuts through the fog in my head.
“I swear. She’s there. With Lucien.”
My blood stops running.
None of this makes any sense. I got the last follow-up from Bryan not long ago.
But the effort she’s putting into forming words. The way she’s fighting through whatever’s still holding her under, urging us and insisting.
A cold jolt shoots straight through my spine when Marko finally speaks. “We forgot the garage behind the property,” he says grimly. “He could still be there.”
That does it. This feels too real and too wrong.
“Adrien, please…” Kiara breathes, her voice breaking.
I just let the thought enter my brain—what if she’s really there.
I realize I’m already walking back only because Kas shouts at me, “Adrien, stop! Don’t go blind.”
“I’ll be right back. It’s already emptied,” I shout over my shoulder, not slowing down, my feet carrying me through the night fog, straight back toward the estate.
My shirt plasters to my side with slick blood pouring out of the reopened wound with every step I take.
We walk down the stairs into the garage, my fingers trembling from the pain, from possibly false hope, and mostly from that wrongness clinging to me ever since Kiara said her name. It sits in my chest like a warning I don’t know how to interpret yet.
Then a loud crack tears through the concrete space and whacks into my ears. Both Kas and I react on instinct, dropping behind the nearest column. I hear Marko’s body hit the floor with a heavy, final thud, but I can’t make myself look.
For the longest second of my life, something devastating settles in.
I don’t see her, but she’s there.
I know it with a certainty that bypasses logic. I can feel her. It’s like the flame inside me awakens after a years-long sleep, because suddenly the other half of it is close enough.
I don’t even have the space to question whether this is another false hope or something real. The decision is already made somewhere deeper than thought.
Then Lucien pulls her out of the dark corner.
At first, I think I’m fainting. But that’s not it. It’s just my brain cells short-circuiting, desperately trying to decide whether this is actually happening or if I’m hallucinating while high on something chemical and disgusting my body hasn’t caught up with yet.
Long bleached-white hair spills down her torso, cascading all the way to her waist.
He drags her fully into the light, and only then do I see her eyes—those vicious, unmistakable siren eyes. But they are not looking at me or Kas.
She’s looking straight through me.
Have I become a ghost? Is this just my imagination folding in on itself? Did I make that reckless, stupid decision and is this some version of the afterlife?
For a moment, I’m certain of it. This is hell. My personal one. I’ll exist here as this desperate echo, forever trying to catch her attention, forever reaching, and she’ll never see me, hear me or know I’m standing right in front of her.
Then the barrel of Lucien’s gun presses deeper into her neck, and she tilts her head, accepting it.
That movement snaps reality back into place. My finger threatens to tighten on the trigger of my gun on pure reflex, instinct screaming at me to end this now, but I freeze. The certainty that his gun would be faster clamps down harder than courage ever could.
His voice cuts through the silence of the garage, cold and commanding. I barely register the words, only the meaning. So I obey, sliding every weapon I have across the concrete toward him, never taking my eyes off her. Not for a single breath.
“Perfect. Now we can talk.” He drags the gun down from Natalya’s neck and lets her go entirely.
I want to go to her. My head is screaming at me to just take her, but my legs stay planted, completely unresponsive. Like they no longer belong to me. All I can do is stare at her, pinned in place by something invisible and heavier than fear.
And that’s when I see it. Something is really, deeply wrong with her.
Her body is panicking, breathing too fast and quivering, but none of it reaches her face.
Her expression stays empty, untouched, as if her mind shut itself off fully and all that’s left are malfunctioning muscles running on instinct alone.
Then her pupils shift and collide with mine.
It’s brief, and yet it feels like a conversation. Not with words, just with fragments. Subtle flashes of emotion, incomplete signals, like someone handing me a letter that’s been torn to shreds, only half the sentences still readable.
I try to piece it together desperately, knowing even as I do that it’s probably all happening inside my head. Like a delusional madman, trying to catch meaning where there might be none.
Because what’s actually happening, while I’m busy constructing fake scenarios in my stupid, hopeful head, is that Natalya is already moving, and she just threw a perfectly pointed knife my way.
It slices straight into my thigh, so clean I can feel the muscle split apart like meat.
I hit the ground hard as agony detonates up into the old, reopened wound, now bleeding so heavily that thick drops of blood splatter against the concrete beneath me.
The pain drags me back into focus, allowing me to hear him more clearly.
“I tried to bond, remember, Kas? I thought we could be friends, you know… trauma-bonded,” Lucien says. “But then you made that deal with my father and took Natalya away from me.” His eyes darken, and he just stands there, suddenly clashing the cold look of his with mine.
“She isn’t something to claim, you psycho,” I choke out, the words tearing their way past my throat.
“Yeah, I figured, since she went fucking mental when you… died.” Lucien laughs under his breath, then tilts his head slightly, amused. “But you left her rotting in that psych ward for almost a year, so—” He trails off and winks at me, as if that alone justifies everything.
Something sick rolls in my stomach.
“Okay, so… we’re about to go, you two know what to do, I don’t care how you do it, I just want him dead. Here’s your motivation.” He tightens his grip around her waist and gives her body a small, careless shake.
The motion sends a violent warning straight up my spine and into my mouth, a certainty that I will vomit if I don’t act now.
“If you do as you’re told, she’s all yours, and you will never hear about me again. You have my word,” he adds the last words with a respectful amount of seriousness and turns around.
I don’t have a single second to waste. This is it.
Six years of guilt weigh heavy enough to smother the pain when I rip the blade out of my thigh, flip the knife and catch it by the tip.
I know exactly what I need to do.
There’s a point in the human body, just beneath the collarbone, where muscle, nerve, and joint converge, and damaging it strips a man of strength and control—completely disarming.
I’m already back on my feet when the knife buries itself there, and I don’t need to check if I hit the right target, I know I did. I only hear that idiot collapse on the ground, grunting weakly.
And finally, all that matters now is that there are only a few steps left between me and what feels like the sole reason I’m still here, breathing.
But before I can take her, she jumps at me.
Not with relief, not with longing, not with recognition.
Just pure rage.
Pure, unfiltered violence. She slams her hands into my chest, hitting me like she’s trying to claw her way out of her own body and into mine, fists pounding, nails scraping, her whole frame shaking with fury that doesn’t know where to go.
And I take it gladly.
I lock her in my arms, and even though she’s fighting me, trying to tear herself free, screaming like a trapped animal, it feels like mercy just to finally feel her touch. I don’t care how hateful or how painful that touch is. I don’t care if it’s rage or fear or pure panic.
It’s her.
I’m holding my Natalya.
It’s her nails digging into my skin, trying to hurt me. Her hair damp beneath my face, soaking with tears. Her scent swallowing my entire existence, erasing everything else.
The world narrows down to skin and breath and the impossible fact that she’s real in my arms.
“Nat—Nat, stop—” I whisper, my voice splintering under the weight of pleading. “It’s me. It’s me, please—hey—hey—Selvaggia mia, look at me—”
My hands move frantically over her body. Her waist, her back, her face, gripping, squeezing, anchoring, like I need to touch every inch of her just to convince myself this isn’t another cruel trick of my mind. That she won’t dissolve if I let go.
I have no idea what’s happening around us anymore. My world has collapsed back into the one thing it was always about.
She’s here.
This is not a hallucination or hell. Finally.
It’s only when her strength begins to give out and her body starts to sag in my hold, weak and lethargic, that I realize we’ve been slumped on the cold concrete floor for a while now.
Kas steps in suddenly, efficiently, and the only thing I register is the sound of plastic tearing, the rip of a fresh needle packet, before he drives it into her neck, straight into the largest vein.
Her body slowly goes limp in my arms, entirely languid. And it all drags me back, another sickening déjà vu, to when I held her like this six years ago.
The hatred toward myself for what I did hits again.
If I had known it would be the last time I’d see her for another six years, I would have done it differently.
I snuggle my face into the crook of her neck, trying to hold her hard enough as if it could fix anything that’s wrong with her.
“Adrien,” Kas whispers to me carefully somewhere to my right, but his voice is muffled with the raging heartbeat drumming in my ears.
Only when her neck becomes soaked do I realize I’m crying, bawling everything out in heavy sobs.
“What does this mean?” I croak out, my throat plugged with a lump.
“I’m not sure,” he says, then I feel his hand reaching toward Nat, as if he’s trying to see her face, but I keep it pressed into me.
“Adrien, let’s go,” he says quietly.
I can’t. I can’t let go.
She’s here.
She’s right here.
“C’mon,” he urges me, taking her away from my arms.
“No,” I choke around a sob and hold on tighter.
“You need stitches. You’re bleeding,” he presses. “A lot.”
I lift my face from hers, blinking through tears and looking around.
Lucien is already gone, taken care of by others. It’s just us three left here.
“What does this mean—” I rasp, trying to make sense of it.
“We’ll figure it out. But you need to go now. I’ll take her, c’mon,” he tries again.
“No,” I breathe out shakily, standing up, not letting go of her.
“Did you see—” I try. “There’s something wrong with her, Kas.”
He lets out a long exhale when I look at him. His eyes are wet as well.
“Please, we need to go or you’re gonna bleed out.”
I swallow the rest of everything that wants to crawl out of me and shift her in my arms before heading out of here.
?
When we make it back to the cars, Kiara is standing in front of one of them, Dorian hesitantly holding her hair as she’s throwing up. The scene registers somewhere at the edge of my vision, but Kas is already there before my brain manages to process the whole setup.
One of the guys opens the SUV for me and I slide into the back seat, Natalya still cradled in my arms. She’s completely out. And as much as I hate it, I still have to admit it gives me something I desperately need right now.
Time.
Time to think. Time to breathe. Time to hold her without her trying to claw my eyes out like I’m a stranger.
I sink back into the seat, my head falling against the headrest, Natalya lying languid in my lap. Kas and Kiara climb into the car beside me, squeezing into the back seat that’s technically meant for three people, and somehow, we all fit just fine.
Kas is already pulling a clean sweatshirt over Kiara’s shoulders, then he’s reaching for me, lifting the hem of my T-shirt and getting to work with the butterfly strips, pressing the edges of the wound together with practiced efficiency to stop the bleeding.
My gaze follows his movements, the way he’s doing everything practically and quickly, and the way he’s taking care of us one by one, as he always does.
I shift Natalya closer so her head rests against my shoulder and let Kas move on to my thigh next, bandaging it while I sink deeper into the car seat.
Then we just sit there. All four of us. Kas beside me. Kiara tucked against his side. Waiting for the others to burn the estate and everything in it down to the ground.
Kas and I share one of those wordless, telepathic conversations through a long stare, pupils flicking between each other and the girls.
One of them pulled into unconsciousness. The other slowly clawing her way back to sobriety.
And the thought written plainly on both our faces is the same—how did we fuck this up so fundamentally, so royally?
My head tips forward until it rests against Nat, both my arms draped around her as reality starts to seep in.
She feels fragile. Not like before. She used to feel tiny, adorable, but not fragile like this. I can feel her ribs beneath my fingers, every single vertebra along her spine. She’s too thin and her skin is paler than it used to be.
I tilt my head slightly so I can study her more. She’s so pale her freckles have all but disappeared. Dark circles bruise the skin beneath her eyes and her lips are dry and chapped. She looks malnourished or sick.
Still ungodly beautiful, but in an unsettling, almost wrong way.
And her hair… her hair is bleached white. I take one thick strand and run it between my fingers.
Her cheek is crushed against my chest while she’s out, and I notice her pupils flickering frantically beneath her closed lids, like she’s trapped in some vivid, chaotic dream.
Every few minutes, she mumbles something, shifts, reacts to my movement, sometimes even clings closer to me, as if she’s not fully asleep but not awake either. Just suspended somewhere in between.
I need to know what happened. How she ended up with him. And how the hell is it possible that Bryan’s been telling us for years that she was living a happy life when we just found her looking mentally gone, living way closer than she was supposed to be.
I don’t know if it’s the blood loss, the exhaustion, or that nauseating bliss of having her back, but I can’t do anything except stare at her and think. I’m too drained to even open my mouth.
So I let my mind spin instead.
I have some serious mental work to do. I need to get sane before she wakes up.
I have a couple of hours to get back the personality she originally fell in love with, come up with an apology for being dead for six years, and on top of that, somehow devise a foolproof plan to make her fall in love with me all over again.
That’s… a lot.
I probably need a therapist too.