KAIRA.
Halston stared straight ahead as streetlights flashed across his face in pieces—jaw tight, hands steady on the wheel.
He hadn’t said a word since forcing me into the passenger seat.
He looked infuriatingly calm for a man I had whipped with his own belt.
I watched the trees blur past while my mind was a chaotic mess of calculations.
Was he taking me to the woods?
A cliff?
Maybe he was taking me to a shallow grave to bury me alive.
Honestly, with Halston, the options were endless.
I turned and stared at him then decided, whatever he had planned, I was not going to sit here and wait politely for my own destruction.
“Where are we going?” I asked but he didn’t answer.
The arrogance of his silence snapped the last thread of my restraint.
I lunged.
I grabbed the steering wheel, yanking it hard to the right.
Halston cursed, one of his hand yanking at the wheel fighting mine for control and the other grabbing my wrist.
I pulled harder, throwing in my entire weight into the turn.
The tires shrieked, losing their grip.
The world spun, the front of the car slammed violently into a massive tree by the roadside.
The airbag didn’t deploy.
My head snapped sideways, the window glass cracking as my face slammed against it.
Silence followed.
Only the ticking of the cooling engine remained.
I sat back, laughter bubbling up from my chest as blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.
I looked at Halston.
His head was resting on the steering wheel, a dark trail of blood snaking down his forehead and dripping onto his crimson shirt.
He lifted his head slowly.
His eyes weren’t just dark; they were black holes of pure, unfiltered fury.
He looked at me like I was sick and frankly, I didn’t mind.
He got out of the car, walked around to my side, tore the door open, and dragged me out by my hair so hard my shoes barely touched the ground.
He slammed me against the crumpled hood of the car, his hand locking around my throat, hard.
His face was inches from mine, blood running down his temple, his breathing rough.
“You are,” he said, voice low and terrifying, “the most exhausting woman I have ever met.”
I clawed at his wrist and hit his chest with my free hand.
“Good,” I choked out.
His grip tightened.
“You…
want…
to die?” he hissed, “Is that it?
You want it to be over?”
I couldn’t breathe.
I kicked at his shins, refusing to look away.
I stared into his eyes until my vision began to turn grey, until the stars above us started to fade.
Just before the world went black, he let go.
I collapsed onto the ground, gasping and coughing violently, my lungs burning as they dragged in the cool night air.
Halston stood over me, wiping the blood from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He reached down, grabbed my arm, and hauled me toward a weathered, broken roadside bench a few yards away.
He pushed me onto the wood and sat down beside me, staring out at the empty road.
For a while, neither of us spoke, then his voice cut through the quiet.
Quieter in a way it had never been.
It made me look at him.
He stared ahead.
“My parents hid me in a secret room behind my father’s office.
There was a mirrored wall.
From inside, I could see everything.
From outside, it looked like an ordinary mirror.”
His jaw shifted.
“They told me not to come out.
No matter what happened.”
Something in my chest tightened but I said nothing.
“They knew people were coming.”
His voice stayed calm, but I could hear it underneath.
The rage.
The memory.
“I watched them walk in.
And your father,” he continued, his jaw tightening, ” Your father stood in the corner of that room.
He didn’t pull the trigger, he didn’t need to but he stood there and watched it happen.
He did nothing.
He was my father best friend, the most trusted person my father ever had, and he betrayed him for whatever his reasons were.”
My mouth twitched, I wanted to defend him, say something, protect the version of my father I had spent my whole life loving but then, remembering the words in the letter “survival is always greater than love,” I was rendered speechless.
What was I going to say to defend him when even my mind doubted who I thought I knew all my life.
He swallowed.
“He was a spectator to their executions.”
“You’re lying,” I said anyway, but weaker this time.
He looked at me, finally.
His gaze washing all over me before once again meeting my eyes.
“You say it, you try to convince yourself that I would be lying to you but something deep down” he pointed with a finger to my chest.
“can differentiate when you are being told the truth and when you are lied to.”
He faced front again, staring at the empty road.
“I didn’t kill your parents.”
The world felt like it was tilting again.
“What?
But the blood…
the house…
you said—”
“I said I wanted revenge.
I said they deserved it, I said I was just getting started.
I never said I pulled the trigger”
He turned back to face me, his eyes locking to mine.
“That was never my revenge, I wanted your father alive long enough to watch grief with his own eyes, to understand what pain felt while being helpless, to know what it means to love someone dearly yet watch them suffer.”
He took in a deep, long breath.
“When I got there, they were already cold.”
The questions hit me.
If not him, then who?
Was that why my father sounded so panicked on the phone?
Did they know what was coming?
I pressed my hands against my face as my brows furrowed trying to figure out the answers to what I was clueless about.
“Then why the letter?” I whispered.
“Why give me that? Get faster updates on g.com.
Closure?
Guilt?
What was that supposed to be?”
Halston leaned back slightly.
“I don’t know.”
Somehow I believed him.
The silence between us stretched again.
The anger was still there, but the air between us had changed.
It was heavy with shared feelings of betrayal and waves of painful memories.
“The scars,” he said, nodding toward my back.
“How were they obtained?”
“My uncle,” I said, leaning back against the bench.
“He trained me in secret.
He used to tell me the world for girls was tougher—that it wasted no time devouring the weaklings.”
Halston smirked faintly.
“He sounds charming.”
“He was terrifying.” I countered.
“That explains a lot.” He jested.
I glared at him.
“Don’t get comfortable.
I still hate you.”
“I would be worried if you didn’t.” He said with a lift of his brow.
And somehow, for one ridiculous second, we almost smiled.
I wiped the blood from my lip and continued.
“I think I finally understand that he was trying to protect me.
He trained me, taught me that anything could be a weapon as long as I could used it to my defense.”
“Something tells me I would likely get along with the man.”
We talked until the sky began to bleed into soft blue replacing the black.
Neither of us mentioned it, but something had shifted.
Not forgiveness.
Definitely not peace.
But something that cracked in the war between us.
He stood first.
“Come on.”
I sighed and stood with him.
We returned back to the estate.
The car was a wreck, the front bumper hanging off, the windshield shattered, the side panels crushed.
When we pulled into the driveway, Oliver stood at the entrance as the guards ran toward us, their faces masks of shock.
Their eyes moved from the destroyed front bumper to the dried blood on Halston’s face, then to the bruises already darkening around my throat and the blood near my mouth.
Oliver looked like he had several questions.
Halston stepped out of the car, ignoring Oliver’s expression that was questions itself.
He walked straight toward the house.
“Take her to her room,” He commanded over his shoulder.
Halston headed up to his master suite and shut the door behind him.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
He pulled it out and answered.
“Speak.”
“It is done, boss,” the voice on the other end said.
Halston leaned against the wall, a slow, dark smile spreading across his face.
“Good,” he whispered and hung up.