KAIRA
I kept my stride even, walking a half-step behind Halston and Oliver, though my heart was hammering frantically against my ribs.
As Halston moved, his jaw clenched tight to mask the agonizing strain on his stitched shoulder and freshly bandaged hands.
He shouldn’t have been out of bed.
But the moment Oliver had entered the bedroom to report that the lone surviving attacker from the highway ambush had finally regained consciousness, the fragile, domestic bubble we had shared vanished.
Oliver unlocked the steel door at the end of the corridor, the hinges letting out a low groan.
We stepped into a dimly lit, freezing interrogation cell.
Bound to an iron chair in the center of the room was the captured guard.
He was a mess—bruised, bloody, and shivering violently.
Oliver had already explained to me and Halston on the walk down that the other captured men had slit their own throats the moment they were cornered, choosing a quick death over Halston’s wrath.
This man was the only one they had managed to disarm in time.
Halston stepped forward, the shadows of the room cutting across the harsh, unforgiving angles of his face.
He didn’t say a word at first.
He simply stood over the trembling man, like an imposing, lethal shadow that seemed to suck the very oxygen out of the room.
“Who sent you?” Halston’s voice was a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated with a terrifying promise of pain.
He leaned in slightly, his dark eyes boring into the prisoner.
“Who paid for the hit on my convoy?”
The guard swallowed hard, a rattling sound escaping his throat.
He looked up at Halston, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and utter confusion.
“You…?” he croaked out, his voice shaking.
“You think…
you were the target?”
Halston’s eyes narrowed into slits.
The guard let out a weak breath, his head turning slowly until his bloody gaze locked directly onto me.
My breath hitched in my throat as he pointed his chin in my direction.
“You were never the target,” the man whispered, blood staining his teeth.
“The girl was.”
The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
A cold shockwave washed over me, freezing the blood in my veins.
Me?
I stared at the man, my mind spinning into chaos.
The attack, the endless rain of gunfire, the brutal crossfire—none of it had seemed directed at me, or so I thought.
Halston reacted, stepping between me and the prisoner, his posture going dangerously taut.
“Who sent her?” he demanded, his voice dropping.
“The Mask only said it was an important mission.”
My brows furrowed.
“The Mask?” Oliver repeated.
The prisoner nodded.
“That’s all anyone calls her.”
Halston tilted his head, as though analysing him.
“What’s her real name?”
The guard gasped out, shaking his head weakly against the iron collar of his restraints.
“If I knew that, I’d already be dead.”
“Who does she take her orders from?” Halston growled, taking a threatening step closer.
“I don’t know!” the man shrieked, tears of sheer panic cutting tracks through the grime on his face.
“I swear to you, I don’t know!
The Mask had us…
we took our commands directly from her.
She doesn’t tell us who pays her, we just follow.
I’ve never met anyone above her.”
A chill crawled down my spine.
Nobody knew her name, nobody knew her face or who she worked for.
Yet someone had sent her after me.
Why?
Another of his guards stepped into the cell.
He walked straight to Oliver, leaning in to whisper something urgently into his ear.
Oliver’s face drained of color.
He immediately turned and whispered the message directly to Halston.
Iwatched Halston’s expression morph from cold calculation to a dark fury.
He didn’t even look back at the prisoner.
“Kill him off,” Halston commanded the dungeon guards, his voice entirely devoid of emotion.
My eyes widened.
“What?”
Before I could protest, he grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the cell, Oliver and the reporting guard following in a hurried rush.
We ascended back into the main foyer of the mansion.
A storm kept brewing inside me.
I needed answers.
Someone had hired the most lethal assassin in the underworld to put a bullet through my heart, and I had absolutely no idea why.
Halston stopped near the grand staircase, turning to face me.
“Go inside.”
“What is going on?
What are you not telling me.”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
My temper exploded.
“This has everything to do with me.
Ever since I got here, everything has had something to do with me.
Someone tried to kill me.” My voice echoed through the walls.
“I am the one being hunted by a masked psychopath.”
“I have been hunted all my life.
We’ll deal with it.
Get inside.”
“Oh, wonderful.
That’s exactly what I needed.” The sarcasm rolling off my voice.
He looked me over, then turned and disappeared down the corridor with Oliver.
I stood in the empty foyer, my chest heaving as the silence of the house closed in on me.
I wasn’t going to sit upstairs like an obedient little housewife while someone walked around with a target on my back.
I needed to know why I was being hunted.
Spying a set of spare car keys resting on the console table near the door, I snatched them up, my fingers curling tightly around them.
I marched down, determined to drive out of this madhouse and find my own answers.
But the moment I pushed the doors open, two armed guards stepped into my path, their bodies forming a wall.
“Step aside,” I hissed, my glare slicing through them.
“We cannot do that, ma’am,” the guard on the left replied.
“Sir’s orders.
No one enters or leaves the premises.”
“I am not a prisoner!” I yelled, the anger that had been simmering all morning finally boiling over.
I took an aggressive step forward, poking a finger into the center of his vest.
“I am his wife.
And as his wife, I am demanding that you get out of my fucking way!”
“We need Mr.
Redd’s permission ma’am.”
Out of blinding annoyance, I threw my hands up.
“Fine!
Where the hell is he?!”
The guards exchanged looks then one finally answered.
“The dungeon.”
Of course.
Everything in this estate eventually led back to the dungeon.
I didn’t waste another breath.
The guards tried to stop me but the fury radiating off my face made them think twice.
One of them nervously pointed me toward a wing that was tucked into a different sector of the prison layout.
I hurried down the cold corridor.
I saw them up ahead—Halston and Oliver, standing perfectly still, staring through a massive reinforced glass.
I had never seen this sector of the prison, but then again, it was Halston’s.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
They were so focused on whatever was inside that they didn’t hear me approaching from behind.
As I stepped up to the glass, the words of protest died in my throat.
My eyes locked onto the figure strapped to the chair inside.
I felt air leaving my lungs.
“Uncle Darion…” the name tore from my lips in a horrified gasp.
Halston and Oliver whipped around, surprise flashing across both of their faces at my familiarity with who was seated inside.
I moved closer, past them.
My hands touched the glass.
My uncle was chained to a heavy steel frame connected to the concrete wall.
He looked completely drained—his face hollow, his skin a sickly, pale grey, and his lips cracked and white.
Every time his body made even the slightest involuntary movement, the heavy iron chains would crackle with blue current of electricity that jolted through his frame.
It wasn’t high enough to kill him, but it was a torturous current designed to weaken his mind and body until he broke.
The horrific reality of who Halston truly was slammed back into my mind with the force of a freight train.
He was a monster.
A sick, sadistic devil.
“Release him!” I screamed, turning to Halston, my eyes burning with a blinding hatred.
“Release him right now!
What is wrong with you?!
What type of psychotic demon tortures an old man?!”
“Kaira, calm down—” Oliver started, stepping forward to intervene.
“No!
Shut up, Oliver!” I yelled, my voice cracking as I pointed a trembling, furious hand at the glass.
“Look at him!
He’s dying in there!”
“He is not an innocent old man, Kaira,” Oliver explained, his tone laced with irritation.
“We caught him sweeping the perimeter.
He has been watching this estate for weeks.
Today, our security team finally caught him.”
“I don’t care!” I shrieked as I looked back at Halston, who was standing entirely still, his face an unreadable, icy mask.
“He is my family and I’m telling you to let him go!”
“He killed two of my men during his capture, Kaira,” Halston’s eyes flared, his voice cutting through mine.
“And I will kill many more if you don’t let him go.” I screamed right back, stepping directly into his personal space, my chest heaving against his.
Halston stared down at me, his jaw ticking as he weighed my defiance against his own ruthless laws.
Finally, he narrowed his eyes, casting a dark glance at my uncle through the glass before looking back at me.
He flicked his hand toward Oliver.
“Let him go.”
Oliver nodded, hitting a heavy switch on the control panel.
Through the glass, the blue sparks vanished from the chains, and the automated locks clicked open.
“I want to speak to him,” I wiped a tear from my cheek, my voice shivering but firm.
“Alone.”
Halston’s expression went dead, the ice in his eyes hardening until he looked like the stranger who had first kidnapped me.
He stepped closer, his breath hot against my ear.
“He does not step a single foot out of this dungeon, Kaira,” Halston whispered, the utter ruthlessness in his tone making my skin crawl.
“You can speak to him here.
But if he moves toward the exit, my men will shoot him down before he can even blink.”
“He is not your enemy.”
“Kaira if I assume that of people, I’d be resting feet deep beneath the ground.”
Without waiting for my reply, Halston turned and marched down the corridor, Oliver following closely behind him.