Chapter Twenty-Six
The deliveries startedbefore sunrise and didn’t let up.A box truck idled out front while another backed in behind it, engines rumbling.Pallets appeared as if by magic, containing yoga mats wrapped in thick plastic, stacks of pristine white towels bound with twine, and cartons of soaps and shampoos labeled with minimalist fonts that promised eucalyptus calm and spa-level serenity.Furniture followed: desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and a sofa Chloe vaguely remembered approving at two in the morning while half-asleep and mildly delirious.
She stared at the couch, trying to remember what possessed her to choose cream instead of charcoal, and decided it was a mystery best left unsolved.
Chloe stood in the middle of the front lobby, tablet in one hand and her phone in the other, checking items off as they arrived.It felt surreal.Yesterday, she’d been standing in the cold watching a house burn to the ground.Today, she was deciding whether the bamboo shelving should go to the left or to the right of the locker room sinks.
Life, apparently, did not believe in easing up.
Every so often, Kayne would lean in to murmur a quiet question or confirm a delivery count.His voice was low and calm, and for a moment, she could forget the world was actively trying to shake her apart and this was just logistics, not survival dressed up as routine.
She clung to that calm more than she wanted to admit.
“Locker room B gets these,” she said, gesturing to a stack of boxes markedorganic cotton towels, then paused.“No—wait.A gets those.B gets the gray ones.”
“Already switched,” Kayne said easily.
She blinked at him.“You didn’t even argue.”
He gave her a faint smile.“Figured you’d change your mind again.”
She did not dignify that with a response, mostly because he wasn’t wrong.
She kept moving, kept cataloging, kept making decisions because if she stopped, her brain would circle right back to fire and the fact that Sandy and her husband had been confirmed dead, and there was nothing she could do about it.
And Danica.
Still no word.No call, text.No dramatic entrance demanding attention or reassurance or money.The silence gnawed at her in a way she couldn’t quite name.Danica was chaos, but she was family.She hadn’t known her for long, but her absence felt wrong.
Chloe checked off another delivery and forced herself to breathe.
“I need to hire a manager,” she said suddenly.“Like yesterday.”
Kayne glanced at her.“You’ve been muttering that all morning.”
“Have I?”She huffed a quiet laugh.“I guess that’s obvious.”
“You’re trying to be everywhere at once,” he said.“That works until it doesn’t.”
She looked around the space.Her vision was coming to fruition.The equipment gleamed shiny and new, waiting to be used for the first time.It would be ready to open soon, and she still didn’t have a staff in place.She was dragging her feet about offering Oliver Pearsall the job.
“I can’t keep doing this alone,” she admitted softly.
“You don’t have to,” Kayne said, no hesitation or qualifiers.
Another delivery truck pulled up, brakes hissing.Chloe straightened her shoulders and lifted her tablet again, slipping back into motion.Work she could handle.Lists she could control.
But underneath it all, worry pulsed steadily and stubbornly.Robin and Sandy were dead.Danica was missing.Everything felt one spark away from going up in flames.
Through it all, Kayne stayed solidly beside her.He was a reminder that even when everything arrived too fast and burned too bright, she wasn’t standing in it alone.
#
Cold came first.Itwasn’t the stinging kind that bit and scorched, but the slow, seeping kind that crawled into her bones and settled there as if it owned the place.The floor beneath her was concrete or something pretending to be.It was so hard and unforgiving.Her cheek pressed against it, skin numb enough that she wasn’t sure she’d feel it if it started bleeding.
She tried to move, but pain answered in a bloom of agony.A dull throb behind her eyes made her stomach roll.Her wrists were bound in front of her, chains biting just enough to keep circulation sluggish and remind her not to test them again.Her ankles were chained too.Someone certainly did not want her getting away.
