I swallow with shaky fingers. Take it. Take it and run. Put it somewhere you can easily grab it. I don’t know what to do. It’s here. Right here. I can do it.
“Aiden?”
“Huh?”
“Are you okay?”
“Oh um, yeah.” I laugh, and I hand him the elephant and grab two towels. “More tired than I thought.” Sawyer kisses me as I pass him. My mind is reeling. I don’t know what to do. I follow him out to the kitchen and watch him place it on his counter. “Where did she get that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, but she kept it in her bedroom. She was obsessed with this thing, I have no idea why. It’s ugly, right?” I nod. It looks like it got caught in a radiation pool. It’s melting. Its eyes lopsided. What the fuck could Ivan possibly want with it? There’s no way this has any value.
Is he fucking with me?
Sawyer grins, looping his arms around my waist. “Come on. I want to wash my beautiful terrible boyfriend.” I drag my eyes away from the elephant to look at him. He places a kiss on my chest.
His face scrunches at the same time I smell it.
“What’s that?” I say.
He pulls out of my arms and frowns, looking around the apartment.
“You smell that?”
Sawyer nods. “Get dressed!” I follow him into the room and pull on my clothes. He stabs his legs through a pair of sweats and throws on a T-shirt. Stopping at his door, he slips on a pair of slides, and I follow him down the stairs so fast I’m shocked I don’t trip and take us both out.
The fire alarm blares.
I grab the extinguisher on the way down, rushing into the bakery and freezing when I see three giant men standing there.
“What the fuck,” Sawyer yells.
Two of his tables are on fire, but I can’t look away.
Tagar, Dominic, and Ivan.
No. No, no, no. There’s broken glass littered all over the floor. Sawyer told me his alarm is bullshit. He planned on getting a real one once he opens back up for good. Dominic has a torch in his hand. Tagar looks uncomfortable, maybe even apologetic. The pitying look he gives me slices my skin.
“I called the police,” Sawyer lies.
Ivan smirks. “No you didn’t.”
“What the hell is going on?! I have no money.”
Ivan ignores him, looking around the bakery. “You know... not the career choice I had in mind for you,” he says idly. “Your mother...” He shakes his head. “Always too smart for her own good. Changed her name. Changed Jane’s name. Hid you away in this tiny fucking town.” He laughs, stepping forward. “All this time I’ve searched for one thing she stole from me, only to find out she was hiding another.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Sawyer keeps looking at his burning tables. “I don’t have any money, really.”
“I don’t want your money, and it seems that I’ll have to do this myself.” His eyes slide to mine and a chill unlike anything settles in my bones. “Aiden, you’ve done a lot of stupid shit, but this...” He waves a hand between us. “You’re going to wish you were dead.”
Sawyer looks at me, but I can’t meet his eyes. “I told you, it’s not here.” I can’t look at him. I can’t see his face.
“What’s going on?” Sawyer asks me. “Wait. How do you know my mother?”
A slow sadistic grin spreads across his face. Ivan cocks his head. “Fleeing with my daughter is one thing.” Hetsks. “But hiding a son?” He chuckles, looking up to the ceiling. “Nisha, you are lucky cancer got you before I could.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Who’s Nisha?”
Ivan smiles. “There’s so much you don’t know about her.” Ivan shakes his head. “My wife.”
