It took no time for Amir to get to Jacqueline, wrestle a gun from her white-knuckled fingers, and get her onto her feet. He held her roughly and practically dragged her over to us.
“Your threats to Sophie end today, Miss Caldwell,” Kian said flatly, his voice like a whip.
“She knows where he is,” she screamed. “I’m going to find out. He’ll come for me.” She chanted those words over and over again.
“What is she rambling about?” Amir asked.
I shrugged. “I think she’s lost her marbles.”
There was no other explanation.
“Did we figure out who the other team was?” Kian asked Amir.
Before he could answer, a familiar voice said, “Her fiancé.”
I spun and my lips parted on a swift breath. Jonathan stood there. Jonathan! The man who died in front of me washere, in Albania. My eyes had to be deceiving me.
“I knew he would come,” Jacqueline screeched, fighting against Amir’s grip and desperate to get to Jonathan. “Didn’t I tell you he was alive?” she shouted, glaring at me while her hair swung left and right.
Confusion swirled in my brain.
“Mr. Caldwell,” Kian said casually, his fingers tightening around my hand he still held. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He didn’t seem shocked to see my dead boyfriend while I reeledfrom it, staring wide-eyed at Jonathan’s face and doubting my sight. How was this possible? I saw him shot dead, blood pooling around him. Yet, here he was, alive and well.
“Saving Sophie, of course,” Jonathan snarled, muscles tight like he was going to pounce at any moment.
What was happening? My mind struggled to make sense of the man—so familiar, yet a total stranger—who stood in front of me. He still looked like himself, same blond hair and blue eyes. Yet, he was somehow different. He sported a scruffy beard now, and there were lines on his face that I’d not noticed before.
“I’m quite capable of keeping her safe,” Kian gritted, every word forged with steel.
Jonathan’s mouth curved into a slow, unimpressed smile. “You could have fooled me.”
He moved toward me, unhurried, as if Kian weren’t standing there armed and poised to strike. The harsh lines of Jonathan’s face softened as he closed the distance, his gaze fixed on mine—searching, familiar, devastatingly intimate.
He leaned down while I stood frozen. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. My body locked in place as his mouth drew closer and closer, my mind screaming while my limbs refused to listen.
Jonathan never reached me.
The sharp clack of metal against bone echoed through the room as Kian slammed the butt of his gun into Jonathan’s temple. Jonathan crumpled instantly, hitting the floor with a dull thud.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” Kian snarled.
The air shifted.
Kian’s men flooded the doorway as if summoned by the violence, their weapons raised and eyes hard. Amir straightened at my side, his hand already on his pistol, waiting for the slightest excuse.
Jonathan groaned, then pushed himself up onto one elbow and then up to standing. Instead of fear, a reckless defiance burned in his eyes as he lifted his chin to Kian.
“Why don’t we let her choose?” he said. His gaze slid back to me. “Or are you scared she’ll choose me?”
My pulse roared in my ears. Pain twisted through my stomach, sharp and debilitating.
“I saw you die,” I whispered, the words tearing out of me as I stared at him. At the man who had been my first crush. My first love. “I watched them lower you into the ground. How are you here?” I turned to Kian, my chest tight. “Did you know?”
Kian’s jaw clenched, his mouth flattening into a hard line. “I suspected,” he admitted. “But it seemed too incredible to be true.”
I swallowed thickly as memories crashed over me—everything since that rainy October night last year. The funeral. The sleepless nights. The fear. The grief that had hollowed me out piece by piece.
