The door is ajar.
I step inside, and stop.
The room is wrong.
Too still. Too clean. The air feels undisturbed, like it’s been waiting.
Mr Blackwood lies in the bed, but he looks… fine. Colour warms his cheeks. His chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm. No alarms scream. No frantic voices crowd the space. No signs of imminent death.
Confusion prickles sharply along my nerves.
Then the door closes behind me.
Soft. Deliberate. Final.
Cold metal kisses my temple.
Not a press, a promise.
Every muscle in my body locks as the weight of the gun settles there, firm and unyielding, angled just enough to make its intent unmistakable. A single movement would be enough. A breath taken wrong.
I freeze.
A presence looms close, invading my space, my air, and a breath that is not Khai’s brushes my ear, slow and amused.
“Well,” a voice murmurs, low and cultured, threaded with something sharp and cruel. “Nice to finally meet you, pretty little thing.”
The barrel shifts slightly, tracing my skin, a calculated reminder of how easily I could be erased.
“I see why my son was so eager to keep you hidden,” he continues softly, almost fond. “You’re much more delicate than I expected.”
My heart hammers violently, terror flooding my veins as understanding crashes down around me.
This isn’t a coincidence. This isn’t a mistake.
And in that moment, with steel at my head and death breathing down my neck, the truth settles in with terrifying clarity:
Running didn’t save me.
It only delivered me exactly where he wanted me.
Chapter Thirty-One
Khai
The bike roars beneath me as I tear through the city, the engine snarling like it shares my rage. Streetlights smear into streaks of colour. Red lights mean nothing. Speed limits dissolve into irrelevance. Lanes become suggestions I cut through without mercy.
I don’t slow.
I don’t breathe.
Everything else falls away, the world narrowing to asphalt and velocity and the violent, singular need driving me forward. The need to reach the warehouse before it is too late.
I should’ve known.
The moment Jaxon’s tracker went dark, the game had already shifted, the trap snapping shut with surgical precision.
I cut the bike hard into the warehouse yard, gravel exploding beneath the tyres as I skid to a stop and dismount in one fluid motion. The building looms ahead, cavernous and still. Too still. One of the massive doors hangs partially open, a silent invitation laced with threat.
