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ADRIK
“Where’s my mom?”
Isabella is sitting in my doorway. Her wheelchair is blocking Stefan from following her inside.
I make eye contact with him over the little girl’s head. “I wasn’t expecting visitors today.”
The undertone is obvious: what the fuck? I asked Stefan to keep her busy. Go-karts, cake, another dog, another ten dogs—whatever it takes to keep her from worrying about Emery.
And yet…
“She’s insistent,” he says with a weak shrug.
Something tells me he didn’t fight her very hard. I’ve seen Stefan take out an enemy with nothing but a beer bottle and a broken arm, but he is a fucking cupcake when it comes to Isabella.
“Where’s my mom?” Isabella asks again.
She isn’t angry with me, which tells me she doesn’t suspect I had anything to do with it. She just wants information.
“Your mom is… sick.”
Isabella groans. “No. Because when Mama gets sick, we watch movies. And I get to eat cereal for dinner.”
“She doesn’t want you to get sick, too,” I explain. "So she left to keep you safe."
“We left last night,” she says. “Did we sleep at that other place because you two are fighting?”
I shake my head. “We aren’t fighting.”
If it’s possible for a six-year-old to have a bullshit detector, Isabella has one. And it’s impeccable. She fixes me with a soul-withering glare. “Yes, you are.”
I look impatiently to Stefan to handle this, but he just stands there, watching the interaction play out like it’s reality television.
I grit my teeth. This isn’t the kind of shit I’m used to dealing with. In my world, people who ask too many questions suddenly find themselves without use of their tongue.
But I obviously can’t do that to this little girl.
Which leaves me with nothing but my words for weapons. How do I explain any of this to a kid? This is the kind of chore I would have gladly passed onto Emery. But she isn’t here.
For damn good reason.
“Listen,” I say, standing up and walking around my desk. “Your mom… She made some choices that put me in a bad position.”
“But you’re married!” Isabella blurts. “You’re married and you love each other, right?”
She looks up at me with so much sincerity and expectation in her eyes. So much belief that something like love can exist in general. That it can exist in this marriage in particular.
And I have no idea what to say to that.
Stefan, as useless as ever, is trying not to laugh in the background. I stare daggers at him over Isabella’s head.
“Don’t you love each other?” she presses. “Don’t you love her?”
Before I can say anything—or even come up with something to say—my phone starts ringing on my desk. Half a second later, Stefan’s goes off, too.
Then all hell breaks loose.
I can hear security alarms sounding at either end of the hallway. My phone is nonstop vibrating with emergency messages from the security team, one after the next after the next.
“What the—” I grab my phone and try to make sense of it. “Stefan! What the fuck is going on?”
Isabella gasps. “That’s a bad word!”
I ignore her and look at Stefan. He’s staring at his phone, his face white.
Then the bomb goes off.
It’s still far away, but I feel the rumble under my feet. I throw myself forward, shielding Isabella from anything that might rattle off the shelves.
“Get security here now,” I roar to Stefan. “I want every available man on the perimeter. Find out who is doing this and—”
A rapid fire banging echoes down the hallway. A sound I know all too well.
Gunfire.
“And kill them,” I finish.
Stefan nods and sprints off down the hall. Isabella is wide-eyed, trying to turn her chair around to see where Stefan went.
“What is that noise?” she asks. “What do I—”
“In the closet,” I tell her, throwing my closet doors open. It’s a makeshift panic room. Every closet in the house is equipped that way. The walls are reinforced and lockable from the inside. “Get in the closet now.”
“But Travis!” she yells, trying to go back into the hallway. “Travis is—”
Before she can finish, the dog lumbers into the room from his post at the door and settles at her side.
“Travis,” she whimpers.
“Get in the closet now,” I tell her. “I have to go deal with this, and I need you to be safe. Stay here and don’t leave no matter what. Don’t come out until I come back to get you."
Her eyes are watering now, and she's shaking. "Don't leave, Adrik. Stay with me."
My heart rips open. I don't want to leave her scared and alone.
But I don't have a choice.
"You'll be fine, okay? Listen to me: you are strong and brave and fearless and nothing bad can happen to you as long as you remember that. Do you understand me?”
She nods, eyes brimming with tears. But that nod is enough.
“Travis is here with you,” I add. “And I'll be back before you know it.”
She nods one more time.
"That’s my girl." I wink and close the closet doors, sealing her inside.
As soon as Isabella is taken care of, it's all business. I operate on autopilot, grabbing weapons from the hidden compartment built into my office wall and stepping out into the melee.
There's smoke in the air, wafting from further down the hallway, and bullet holes burrowed in the drywall.
As I try to figure out which way to go, a bullet hisses past my ear.
I turn on instinct and lift my gun. Just as the dark shape of the shooter takes shape, I pull the trigger.
He falls.
As I move closer and the smoke clears, I can see the man. He's young, lean. Dark hair and tactical gear.
But my shot caught him in an exposed section of neck. Blood is gushing from the wound, but I'm focused on the other side of his throat.
On a familiar tattoo.
It’s a stylized “V,” the end of it hidden just beneath the collar of the man’s black shirt.
“Fucking Volandris,” I growl.
Apparently, Emery was able to get out her information before I locked her up.
The idea should enrage me. I should want to burn through these invaders and then move straight to the dungeon to execute her like I should have when I found her at the motel.
But the anger won’t come.
