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Travis turns around, making his way out of the private jet.
I don’t look at mywifeonce. She’s cooped up in the bed in the back of the jet, resting.
For hours, I contemplate what I’m supposed to tell mipreciosa. She isn’t expecting us home so soon. I… I’ve messed up. There’s no guilt because what I did last night, I’ve done before. I have every right to do it. She’s mine. Out of all people, I would’ve thought the Katantians would understand.
Apparently not.
I can’t be taken down. I refuse to. I’ll fight to the death. If I go down, so will everyone else in my vicinity.
I don’t realize it just yet, but it’s begun.
There’s a countdown in the back of my head, ringing the loss of every second.
“Where is she?” The first words out of my mouth after I wake up are dedicated to her. I saw her in my dreams, and she was happy in them. A sob erupts from my insides, the woman’s agony forever engraved in my brain.
I will never forget those brief seconds in her presence.
“Where the fuck is she? Take me to her. Right now! I want to see that she’s okay. I need to know. Did you kill him? Is he dead? I want that motherfucker dead! Fuck him!” I ramble at Travis Cross who sits by my bed in a cold and plain hospital room. There’s a television on the opposite side of my bed, but it’s turned off.
“She’s gone,” Travis reveals, and I scowl at him. It must be a lie! He’s protectinghim. Every cell in my body agrees. That man is poison, worse than the pretty aconite flower I dissolved in my syringe. “Gone? No. I don’t believe it. Is she alive?”
“They flew back home yesterday.” Travis wears his palace uniform, the Katantian emblem gracing his chest. He’s Aram’s soldier, and all I want is to bash his head in. Yet, I can feel my weak body. I can’t attack a killer right now. I went into shock. My body must adjust.
Seeing her being attacked like that, it sent me into a bottomless pit, not knowing where the start or the end was. She was numb, a floating nothing. She didn’t deserve it. Nobody deserves such treatment.
I vowed not to intervene, but technically, the woman was Martí’s wife. She isn’t Katantian business. I can allow myself to care. “How long have I been in here?”
“You’ve been in and out of it for three days. They had to let you rest,” Travis explains. He runs a hand through his hair, pursing his lips.
“Did he…” I start, but I can’t finish. If he saw me, he should know that I’m coming for his ass.
“No, I removed you from the situation before he could notice you.” I’m not relieved. It continues when Travis pulls out my syringe, placing it on the bed next to my thighs. I have family, a life to go home to.
But I don’t care.
All I want is to find the woman that made me lose my mind.
Travis exhales. “Now, I need you to take this and go back to where you came from.”
“You know?”
“Of course I do.”
“Do they? Does… my employer know my cover’s…”
“No. You’ve been sending encrypted messages to your contact.” Of course. Travis has his connections. He’s a known figure in my ranks, an icon of sorts. He and his partner never worked for the government under an official capacity, but they’re legends still. Their cases are study materials for the newbies. Travis and his partner once found a trafficked child ten years after its disappearance.
I ask, “Saying what?”
“That you met Máximo Martí, and that he’s a far more interesting target than Aris Wraith,” he explains.
“They won’t let it slide. Next time, they’ll succeed. Next time, it won’t be me pussyfooting around the bushes,” I say.
“Do me a favor, son.”
I’m already riled up. That only adds to it. “Don’t fucking call me that. I’m not your son.”
“Tell your employer to stop wasting their time. It’s being handled.” He says it with such confidence that I’m inclined to believe him, but then I remember my research on Katantia. It’s not at all handled.
