My heart hammered. Alive. Kane was alive. Relief flooded me. Then…terror. Because if he was alive, then where the hell was he? A second text came in.
It could be a coincidence, but Monty’s phone is missing. She would’ve had it on her, and there’s a chance that maybe he took it. I’ve tried the number a few times. It’s going straight to voicemail, likely dead. We couldn’t trace it.
Mickey sent Monty's number through.
If you want to keep trying, you can, but for now, we don’t have any leads and my hands are full over here.
I dialed Mickey’s number, and he picked up quickly. “Please, Mick,” I said, my voice breaking. “Give us something to go off of.”
Mickey released a long exhale. “Arden, if I could, then you know I would. You can try retracing your steps at the warehouse, but if Kane was there, he would’ve been found by now. The feds are swarming the place.”
“I…can’t,” I said softly, brushing my fingers through Henry’s hair. “I can’t go after him. Not with a kid, Mick. I know you owe me nothing, but the Ravens have so many connections. Is there really nothing you can do?”
Rafe ran his palm over my arm, comforting me as tears fell.
“Please,” I whispered.
“The most I can do is the same I’m doing for the kids taken tonight, Arden. We’ll look for him. We will always look, and if we find him, you’ll be the first to know. I swear.”
I nodded against the phone, covering my mouth to muffle my sob.
“He’s a Creed,” Mickey said simply. “He’s a wanted man. Whether he was taken or whether he ran, he’s gone for now. I’m not telling you that to hurt you, bella, but because it’s the truth. Rest. Take Henry and Rafe and go make a life. Kane wouldn’t want you risking your freedom to find him. I promise, we won’t give up on him. Now text me your location. I’ll send a car, passports, whatever you need.”
“You want me to give up?” I asked angrily. “While a Creed is missing?”
“It’s not giving up; it’s doing right by that little boy. If you can’t do that, then bring him to the townhouse. He can stay with us. We’ve already got a few of the other kids here.”
I inhaled deeply, and the line disconnected, neither of us bothering with pleasantries. There was nothing pleasant about the decision I had to make. Rafe and I promised Henry in the woods that we wouldn’t leave him again. I couldn’t just walk away, and I knew that Mickey was right—Kane would hate if I did that too. Rafe kept trailing his fingers down my arm, his mouth twisted with the same uncomfortable truth. As long as we had Henry, we had to let go. The Ravens were strong, and I trusted Mickey with my life. I knew he wouldn’t go back on his word.
After awhile, Rafe dozed off while I flipped through channels on the muted TV, stopping on the news and reading the closed captions. There wasn’t a single station that wasn’t covering our manhunt. The authorities—credit where credit was due—had actually managed to track Creed from the rest stop to the warehouse. There was coverage of the ‘Gruesome Massacre at the Shipyard’ and ‘Fatal Van Explosion Kills Five’. Though no one seemed to connect the forest fire behind the orphanage to Creed, there was coverage for it too. I was glad to see that it had been put out and no firefighters were injured in doing so. I’d hated that I’d caused so much damage to the trees and homes of wildlife, but it wasn’t like I had a hose on me. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if an innocent life had been taken by flame either. I firmly wanted to believe that part of my life was finally over.
Henry was my little flame now. As was Rafe. Our family.
The next morning, Ravens dropped off a car, duffel of clothes, cash, passports, and anything else we would need to start a new life. I didn’t know either of the men who did the drop-off, but they were kind enough, giving Henry high fives and showing off the toys they’d brought him. Rafe shook their hands before they left and the three of us changed. I shifted into fresh jeans and a familiar top—both from my thrift trip with the Ravens all those years ago. A lump was in my throat when I saw Rafe in jeans too. I realized that I’dneverseen him in normal clothes before. Even at the estate, he and Kane were always in their standard cargo pants and combat boots, chests exposed to show off their brands and muscles in the courtyard. He’d always had a uniform, and in Los Angeles, he’d worn a suit for our date.
But this Rafe was my favorite. The Rafe that allowed himself to chuckle despite the pain in his throat when Henry put his pants on backwards. The corners of Rafe’s eyes wrinkled in amusement, his smile so bright and handsome as he helped Henry get dressed. It was surreal and incredible that we walked out of that motel, got in that car, and were capable of going anywhere we wanted in the world without fear.
It made sense too that the only place we wanted to go was a graveyard.
The Ravens buried Thorne next to Alex, and it was the first time I’d seen either of their graves. Rafe and I held Henry’s handsbetween us, Rafe with a ball cap hiding his face and my brown hair trapped under a blond wig.
“This is Uncle Thorne,” I told Henry, patting Thorne’s headstone gently, “and this is Uncle Alex.”
Henry followed my lead and patted both headstones.
“The world will tell you that Creed are criminals,” I told him, kneeling in the grass and letting him sit on my thigh. Rafe knelt next to us, protecting us, always. “It’s true, Henry. I won’t lie to you. We didn’t want to, but we became criminals and are criminals in the eyes of the world. The police will always be after us because of that, but also because of everything we did, we got to save you.”
Henry tugged on one of my fake blond strands and I grinned.
“As long as we’re in the States, I’ll have to wear the disguise, especially here in New York, but there’s a safe house in London with our name on it.” I adjusted my leather jacket, reaching into the pocket and pulling out my lighter. Rafe kissed the top of my head as I gently pressed the silver metal into the space between Alex and Thorne’s graves, theV.S.glinting under the sunlight.
“We’re going to find Uncle Kane too,” I promised, no longer looking at Henry but at Thorne’s headstone, my eyes watering. “We will never stop looking for him. I promise.”
Every day, I was leaving voicemails on Monty’s number, desperately hoping that Kane would pick up. Mickey kept the line paid and had a Raven keeping an eye on it in case it came online and they were able to pin a location, but there’d been no such luck.
I wiped my cheeks and picked up Henry, settling him on my hip as we stood. Rafe pressed a firm hand over both headstones for a moment, his eyes shutting. Then he stepped back and met my gaze, the most broken pieces of me healing simply by being able to exist together. No cages or Buyers or kills. We were just us, and it was new territory, but I couldn’t be happier knowingI’d get to explore that with him. We would never be without our grief. We would never feel whole until we knew Kane too was safe. But life, I thought as we walked back to the car, Viktor’s lighter left among the dead, wasn’t meant to be simple. It was multifaceted, good and bad, hope and trauma. It was meant to be lived and survived, whether handed an ill fate or not.
There was no measure for the pain we endured or the fact that we would continue to endure it until our dying breaths, but there never failed to be glimmers of light between hells. They were there for us. Every single time. We latched to them, starving to be consumed by that light, and we found it mostly in each other.
