He looked around and breathed a sigh of relief to see his friends were all safe.The sand was scorched black in places, littered with debris—shards of glass, twisted metal, and charred remnants of what had once been a luxury resort.The air reeked of smoke.The bitter trace of it clung to the back of Rex’s throat.His lungs clawed for air, and each ragged breath was painful.He shivered, not just from the cold, but from the way his bones seemed to remember the shape of the violence before his mind could.
The horror wasn’t in the act itself but in the patience of it, the way Dominic had unraveled an innocent woman’s mind, thread by thread, not in a frenzy, but with the slow, methodical delight of a butcher deboning a carcass.Xia might not be dead, but Dominic had achieved his goal.What he had done to her would forever haunt his dreams.
Rex adjusted his grip on Xia, brushing his fingers against the raw, bleeding welts on her wrists where the ropes had dug into her skin.She flinched as her eyes fluttered open.They glazed over with pain and shock.
“Rex?”Her voice was a fragile sound, barely a whisper, as if she was afraid if she spoke too loudly, the world might shatter all over again.
“I’m here,” he murmured as he kissed her forehead.“I’m here, baby.You’re safe now.”
The look in her eyes spoke volumes.She didn’t believe him.The doubt, the fear, and the horror of what had been done to her were written into every bruise, every cut, and every trembling breath.She didn’t feel safe.She wouldn’t feel safe for a long time.
And that killed him.
“He’s gone, Xia.You’re safe.I promise.”
The nightmare had teeth now.For the first time, it wasn’t just a possibility—it was real.Mark Whittle, one of the key IT architects of QuantumSecure, the man who’d helped build the goddamn thing, was the mole.Camden had him.The cuffs were on.And now, with every name Colin Masters had spat out, the noose was tightening—one traitor at a time.
Not fast enough for my liking, though.
Rex’s body had been running on fumes and on the sheer stubborn refusal to die.But the gunshot wounds were liars.They didn’t bleed—they pumped, soaking his shirt and his goddamn soul.The beach sand beneath him was already dark with it, the grains clinging to his skin like greedy little parasites until finally...the ledge gave way.
His vision hazed over as the edges frayed like burned paper.The world tilted as the sky, sand, and Xia’s face all slammed together in a sickening blur.He tried to hold on, but his arms were leaden, his fingers numb, and the woman in his grip—his woman—was suddenly too heavy.
The last thing he felt was the wet heat of his own blood soaking the blanket someone had wrapped around them as he dragged her down with him.
Darkness wrapped around him.Not the quiet kind.Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that swallowed you whole.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Xia
Six weeks later, LSUHSCTrauma and Critical Care faculty, New Orleans...
The hospital was a monolith of sterile suffering, a place where time moved differently, and seconds stretched into eternities with the air smelling of antiseptic and despair.Xia hated hospitals.The clinical white hallways echoed the occasional beeping monitor, the hiss of oxygen, and the murmur of hushed voices—all of it blending into a symphony of healing the broken.
