6
In a foreign country, dusk was falling. I had just left the supermarket, planning to make hot pot with Leo for dinner. My right hand was still weak, but after several surgeries and months of physical therapy, I could man- age light tasks.
719
1433
14.33
Chacket 2
My phone rang. It was Leo.
As I was about to answer, an arm snaked around my neck from behind, dragging me into an alley.
Instinct took over. I dropped my weight, slammed my elbow back into my attacker’s ribs, and stomped my heel down hard on his foot. He grunted in pain, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. A blade, hidder between my fingers, flashed in the dim light and pressed against his throat.
It was Kaelen.
He just stared at me and then, incredibly, he smiled. “My wife is as sharp as ever. Go on. Even if you kill me, I Il have deserved it.”
A wave of nausea and pure hatred roiled in my stomach. “We’re divorced, Kaelen,” I said, my voice like ice “Get out of my life and don’t ever let me see you again.”
He ignored me, leaning forward until the blade broke his skin and a bead of blood welled up. “Come bac with me, Zoe. We can start over. The casino needs its queen. And I need you.”
I lowered the blade. “In your dreams. I will hate you for the rest of my life.”
His eyes reddened. “Zoe, I know I was wrong… please, just give me another chance.”
I heard footsteps behind him. He hadn’t come alone. I took a step back, my left hand slipping into my pocke and pressing a small button on the emergency beacon Leo had given me.
Kaelen forced me into a car and drove straight for the airport. His phone buzzed with a video call. It was m subordinate. Stella was tied to a chair, a newborn baby in her arms. A knife was at her throat.
“Let Miss Zoe go!” my man snarled. “Or you’ll never see your wife and child again!”
Kaelen’s expression didn’t change. He chuckled. “Go ahead. The two of them together aren’t worth a single strand of Zoe’s hair.”
On the screen, Stella’s eyes widened in utter, devastating despair.
Kaelen ended the call, his obsessive gaze locking back onto me. “Now no one can interrupt us.”
He was truly insane.
As we screeched to a halt at the airport entrance, several cars converged on us, blocking our path. Leo burst out of one, a gun in his hand. “Kaelen, let my sister go!”
Gunshots erupted from all sides. Kaelen threw his body over mine, shielding me from the spray of bullets. He grunted as a bullet tore through his shoulder, but he barely seemed to feel it, grabbing my wrist and trying to pull me toward the terminal. “Don’t be scared, Zoe! I’m taking you home!”
I wrenched my hand free. “We don’t have a home, Kaelen! And we can never go back!”
His face was pale, but he reached for me again. “Zoe, please… it will be just like it was before…”
8/9
14:33
14.34
Chapter 2
I looked him straight in the eye. “Tell me something, Kaelen. If I had gone after Stella that day, if I hadn’t just left, would you have beaten my brother to death in front of me again, and then killed me?”
His pupils contracted. His lips moved, but no sound came out. He couldn’t deny it.
Leo ran to my side, aiming his gun at Kaelen’s head. “Sis, let me kill him!”
I took the gun from his hand. I raised it, aimed, and fired.
Bang!
Kaelen flinched, staring in disbelief at his own mangled right hand before looking back at me, his eyes filled
with shattered shock.
“You took one of my hands,” I said, my voice steady. “Now I’ve taken one of yours.”
“Kaelen, we are even.”
“Zoe! Don’t go!” he roared, a desperate, animal sound, as he stumbled after me.
I didn’t look back.
Two years later, on a lazy, sun-drenched afternoon in Paris, I saw Stella. She was thinner than I remembered
holding the hand of a little girl who looked to be about two or three.
“I came here to finish my degree,” she said, her voice calm and steady, the old timidity gone.
I smiled and gave her and her daughter a small nod.
The blood, the hate, the tangled love of the past had finally been washed away by the river of time, leaving nothing but peace in their wake.
