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As we burst into the day, a rush of cool air hit us, filling our lungs with oxygen. The underbelly of Miami was quiet, almost peaceful compared to the hell we'd just left behind. But none of us were under any illusions - we weren't free yet.
“Where’s Sofia?” I asked.
Victor sighed. “Wrong question. Where’s Stephen?”
"We need to find Sofia," I panted, my chest heaving as I leaned against a nearby brick wall, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Victor ran a hand through his already tousled hair, frustration etching lines onto his forehead. “You think I don’t know that?” he snapped, his eyes hard as steel. “But Stephen’s the one who snatched her.”
Jace swore under his breath.
“If he had wanted to kill her, he would’ve done so already,” Victor said. “And I have no idea where to start looking. Maybe we need to go back to the hospital and reconvene with Teo.”
“And just leave her out there, vulnerable to whatever the Viper wants to do with her?”
Victor glared at me. “What are our choices here, Grayson?”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I pushed myself off the wall and took a step forward, my brows furrowed in thought. He was right. We couldn’t just barge in without a plan, especially not knowing where exactly we'd be barging into. Considering that I didn’t fucking know where she had gone in the first place.
“Okay,” I said finally, my voice steady even though my mind was anything but. "We go back to the hospital, meet up with Teo, figure out our next move."
Victor nodded, looking somewhat relieved at my agreement. Jace, on the other hand, didn’t look too pleased.
“You serious?” he asked me, disbelief lacing his words. His eyes were fiery with anger, his hands clenched into fists by his side. “Sofia could be in danger, she—”
“I know,” I cut him off sharply, turning to face him. “Do you think I don’t care about her safety? We all do, Jace. That’s exactly why we need a plan, and I’m not making one without Teo here. He can also talk to his cousin and the Knives have their ear to the ground. We’re running on someone’s else’s turf hoping to find info on her without thinking it through and I keep doing things rashly and putting her in danger. I’m not doing that again.”
Jace just stared at me for a long moment, his chest heaving with rapid breaths. He finally nodded, but the anger in his gaze never fully left.
"Fine," he snapped tersely, his voice echoing gruffly around the empty alleyway. "Let's go then."
And so we did. We turned our backs to the place we'd left behind, abandoning it to its shadows and its secrets. Every step felt like a betrayal, leaving Sofia behind in the hands of her captor. I couldn't shake off the gut-wrenching feeling of dread that had settled heavily in my chest. We drove back to the hospital as Jace worked on his phone to find more information about Stephen.
“I’d turned the cameras off outside to cover for us so there’s no footage of Stephen leaving with Sofia,” Jace sounded frustrated. “But I’ll keep looking into Stephen Matthews. There has to be something there. There just has to be.”
"Good," Victor murmured, his eyes not straying from the road ahead. His grip on the steering wheel was so tight his knuckles were ghostly white. The car was filled with an uneasy silence, punctuated only by Jace's relentless typing and Victor's occasional muttered curse.
He looked bad; his skin was dirty, his clothes were sticking to him with sweat and there was blood on his shirt.
I leaned my head back against the seat, closing my eyes and trying to will away the pounding in my skull. The adrenaline had long since worn off, leaving me with a gnawing exhaustion and a knot of dread that refused to unfurl.
"Keep looking, Jace,” I said, grabbing my phone and dialing Teo. He didn’t answer and the cold knot at the top of my stomach tightened. Victor took a sharp turn, nearly causing me to drop my phone. My heart pounded in my chest as I envisioned Sofia, alone and terrified. The image was potent, lighting a fire of resolve within me.
Finally, I redialled Teo again, my fingers dancing nervously over the screen. It rang once, twice... no answer. I scowled at the screen before tossing it onto the seat beside me, leaning back against the headrest with a deep sigh.
"I think we should talk to Sam," Jace finally said after several minutes of silence, his voice barely above a whisper.
Victor grunted but didn’t reply. He seemed miles away, lost in thought as he navigated the familiar Miami streets, the noon sun high up in the sky. “Fuck Sam,” Victor said. “If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all.”
"Sam didn't ask his father to be a criminal mastermind," I said, my voice tired and weary. I caught Victor's hard gaze in the rearview mirror. "He's just as much a victim as Sofia."
"Sofia’s not a victim,” Jace muttered, his words curt and cutting like the edge of a blade. “She’s a survivor.”
I looked over at him, studying his profile for a moment. He was rigid, every line of his body tense, his hands balled into fists on his laps as he stared out the window at the passing cityscape.
Victor’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Sofia was never supposed to be involved in any of this,” he said. “That was my one job, to keep her safe from all this. And I failed.”
“We all failed,” I said. “If you’re going to beat yourself up, might as well be precise about it.”
