My hands curled into tight fists at my sides. I’d kill them.
"Story is..." Kael continued, watching my reaction closely. "He grabbed her from the club parking lot. She woke up in his place. In some frilly doll dress he'd put her in. He killed a lot of girls, Malachai. She slit his throat and walked out."
A sound came out of me. Not quite a laugh. Not quite anything else.
That’s my fucking wife.
"Good," I said.
"But because of you, they know who she really is."
Kael's voice shifted, becoming careful now. "Although they took the hit off your head after you turned down their job, your info was already in their system. Your history. Your marriage license. She was caught on security footage at his place," Kael explained, his face grim. "Didn't try to hide. They ran her face against thedata they had and got a hit almost immediately. Now she's got a price on her head. A million dollars."
I turned back to the window, feeling like everything was pressing down on my shoulders.
I did this.
If I had listened when she begged me about Sasha… If I had burned that bitch the first time I saw the way she looked at Indigo… If I had been the husband she needed.
The baby would still be here.
Indigo would still be here.
Instead I’d spent three years in purgatory.
The first six months I tore the city apart. Paid every snitch, threatened every informant, put bullets in men just for breathing the same air she might’ve breathed. Nothing. She was a ghost.
"She killed the club owner too," Kael said after a long moment of silence. The one who set her up. Walked into his house in Queens and put him down. Stabbed him a few times, then slit his throat."
He paused, the silence stretching between us.
"Your wife really has a thing for knives."
"I know.” The scar on my chest pulled tight.
"Yeah." Kael's voice shifted. "But she's gone again, Malachai. Left New York. Bus station cameras show her getting on a Greyhound."
"Where?"
"South. Could be a lot of places. DC, Richmond, Charlotte. Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando."
"She's coming home to me." It wasn't a conjecture. It wasn't a hope. It was a fact.
"Maybe," Kael countered quietly. "Or maybe she's just running."
Kael was watching me with that look again. The exact same look I'd been seeing from him and the guards for three years. Like he was standing next to a bomb, terrified that I would finally snap and set the entire world ablaze.
"No. She's coming home." I looked at him head-on, letting him see the absolute certainty in my eyes. "She knows me. She knows I'll protect her."
I thought about that. About her out there right now, completely alone on some highway, running, scared, hurt, with a target painted on her back. I thought about the baby we'd lost—the phantom pain that never really left the house. I thought about the broken look in her eyes when she'd begged me to move, to let her get to Sasha, and I'd stood in her way like a wall.
I'd deserved every single inch of the steel she buried in me.
"I failed her," I said. The words came out quietly.
Kael didn't argue with me. He didn't try to make excuses or soften the blow. He just nodded once, his expression solemn. "Yeah. You did. But that was three years ago. What matters now is what you do next."
I looked past him toward the door.
