Author's Note at the end

"Shit," I curse at my screen.

"What's wrong?" Gage asks from over my shoulder.

"I just can't make this thing work," I explain as I dig through the code.

"Is something wrong with it?"

"Nothing I shouldn't be able to fix." I don't say that it's taking me longer than it should.

"Want me to call Lucas?"

"No," I snap too quickly and forcefully. "I can do this. I just need some space."

If Gage finds that odd, he gives no sign. Instead, he walks away, his footsteps growing distant and the door shutting behind him. I'm alone.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes. The truth is, I couldn't stop thinking about Lucas for most of the time since our meeting. The rest of the time is reserved for sleep and thoughts of Sienna and my father, as much as it grinds my fucking gears to admit. The scripts before me, which have always been my escape, fail to do their job for the first time in my life. I have to focus. If my work here is compromised, everything is. If I can't get this security system to do its job, we're all fucked. But my stupid fucking brain can't let me be, as it keeps coming back to that boy in the server room and his number in my system.

The doors open behind me; relaxed yet deliberate footsteps approach. Not Gage's, damn him. My heart picks up its pace.

"Lucas, I need to—" I turn and freeze.

Kaen, of all people, stands before me, one eyebrow raised, eyes level with mine.

"What are you doing here?" I jump out of my seat. He's supposed to be meeting with my father and that councillor after. Are they done? How long has it been? Did something go wrong?

"We need to talk," he says. "About your pops."

My heart falls almost to my knees. "No."

"Come on," he shifts his weight to one leg and lays his hand on the back of a chair. "You don't even know what I'm about to ask."

"He wants you to bring me to him," I take an educated guess. "The answer's no. And tell Sienna that next time she wants to make me do something, she can come talk to me herself."

Something in Kaen's expression darkens, and I admit I feel a small pang of fear at that. I remind myself that this is a man who has killed and tortured more people than I can count, probably hundreds more than I found when I first looked him up years ago. He's likely the most dangerous of all the Hydra, and is far from stable. The viper that I shouldn't poke. Yet, call me stupid, but I'm not cowering before anyone.

"Who do you think I am, Imari?" He asks, putting four fingers of his free hand in his pocket and crossing his legs, relaxed posture in complete contrast to his expression. "Do you think I'm just some dog sent to intimidate you?"

He gives me no chance to answer.

"I'm the one who convinced her to let me talk to you," he says instead. "She didn't want to hear any of it at first."

He pauses to let me speak, but I don't know what to say. Deep down, I knew she would never sick him onto me, but I guess my anger and pain were stronger than my reason, my mouth faster than my brain. Then again, I never thought she'd do what she did to me and Valerie the other day, so who knows if I can ever be sure of anything she says or does.

"Why?" I finally say, bringing my mind to the topic at hand. "Why you?"

Kaen stands straight, then, and looks levelly at me. "Because I know what you've been through."

I blink, not sure I heard him right. "Excuse me?"

He pulls out the chair he's been leaning on and gestures to the one I just vacated. "Sit down."

When I don't move, he sits in his chair and waits, holding my gaze. I can only take a few quick heartbeats of this knowing look before I buckle and take a seat. All the while, my mind is racing at a speed that could challenge a supercomputer. He doesn't know, he can't know, not even my uncle knows, not even Valerie or Sienna. I made sure no trace of it remained, made sure nobody was left alive who could speak of it. Except for him.

I should've slit his fucking throat.

"It's alright," Kaen's words, so uncharacteristic of him, bring me back to the present. "Nobody told me. I figured it out."

I blink again, once more at a loss of words.

"Not that I know exactly what happened, but I can discern enough." The man before me leans forward, eyes not leaving my own. "You can spot that pain after you've held it."

Another pang in my chest. I feel my dry throat constricting as my breath hitches. My body doesn't feel like my own. I float above it, moving my mouth like I'm controlling a character in a video game, or a string puppet in a marionette show. My next words come out in a croak. "I couldn't spot yours."

His lips curve upwards in the tiniest smile. "You just didn't know where to look."

Never in my life did I expect this man to bring me to tears, for him to understand something my closest friends could never, but I guess life can be unexpected like that. My tears don't fall, but cloud my vision as I look down and ball my hands into fists.

"I should've killed him," I whisper under my breath. "I should've blown his brains out."

I don't say that I couldn't, that I was too young, too scared.

"I know," Kaen says. "Me too."

My blurry eyes snap to his. "Your dad?"

His jaw flexes and he gives his head a nearly imperceptible shake. My stomach collapses in on itself as nausea climbs up my throat.

"Your mom?" I whisper.

He doesn't move. He doesn't need to, for I now see that pain in his eyes, and recognize it for what it is. We sit in silence for a long time as my tears fall.

Somehow, many things about him click into place. His mania, his sadism and masochism, his obsessive determination to put an end to this. Not that one needs to have been through what he has been through to have that, but it gives him all the more reason. I don't blame him one bit.

"Imari," he finally says, his insanity hanging by a thread in his eyes. "After we're done with this, I promise to help you destroy him."

My breath hitches again. I feel like a drawstring about to snap.

"But, first, we need to do this," he continues. "We can't go after him without having dealt with Vasilios first, and without having Diego think we're allies."

I wipe the last of my tears off and take a shuddering breath. Do I want this? After all he's done to me, after escaping him within an inch of my life, do I really want to face him again, just to bring him down? Am I still that little boy, scared of murdering his father?

If not me, then who?

"You won't be alone," Kaen says. "I won't let you face him on your own."

I wonder if this is what Sienna sees in him, the hidden softness under that hard exterior, under that image of insanity. Never in a million years would I have thought to have this conversation with Kaen, of all people, before anyone else in my life. Yet it feels like the most fitting person ever.

"I'll do it," I say, finding my voice. "I'll meet with him."

That minuscule smile again. "Do you want Sienna there too?"

I shake my head. "She doesn't know."

He nods. "I won't tell her, but I think you should."

"Did you, about yourself?"

Silence as he sets his jaw and, for the first time, looks away from me. It is into that silence that the door flies open, and Gage barges in looking like he is about to commit a war crime, if there is such a look. Kaen and I practically leap out of our seats.

"It's Sienna," he almost yells. "And Jesse. There's been an explosion."

━━▲━━ 

"I can't fucking reach her!" Valerie yells as she throws her phone on the couch and paces around Tiago's studio in the Hydra mansion. It's the first time I ever set foot in here, an open space with a small couch, a desk overflowing with art supplies, paints, miniature sculptures, some drawers and cupboards, and artworks and sculptures—a lot of them unfinished—scattered about.

Valerie's chin quivers as she sobs and bites her bottom lip. "Imari, I can't reach her!"

"I know," I try and fail to keep my voice level as I look through Sienna's phone encryptions on my tablet. There's an easel in the centre of the room covered in an off-white tapestry. I sit on the stool before it and the jars of paintbrushes on a trolley beside it. "Neither can I."

Valerie and I decided to stay here while Tiago left to scour our safehouses. It's been five hours since Kaen and Gage stormed out of HQ without another word after Elijah explained what happened over the phone. When Sienna and Jesse's bodyguards came to, they found the place empty save for the secretary and Bennett's corpses, the former with a bullet hole in her forehead. All signs point to Sienna and Jesse having been taken, and the bodyguards kept alive for the sole purpose of letting us know.

What we don't know is whether they're alive or not.

I try not to think about that, but I can't stop my hands from shaking as I try to find a way to trace either Sienna's and/or Jesse's phone. Everything is offline. It's like they've disappeared from the map.

"Try harder!" Valerie yells at me. "You can find anyone anywhere, Imari. Don't bullshit me and get the fuck on with it!"

"Valerie!" I yell back, then force my voice to lower. "I'm trying. I'm not a miracle worker."

She falls onto the couch and buries her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.

"I'm sorry," she says, voice muffled. "I just can't lose her. I can't."

"You're not going to," I say, willing myself to believe it. "We'll find her, but we can't just barrel through this."

She nods and lifts her red face to the ceiling. My heart breaks for my two best friends. One whom I may never see again, the other on the verge of breaking. And the first never even knowing the reason why.

No. I can't think like that. Sienna is alive. She has to be. She is alive, and I will find her. I will find her and sit her the fuck down and talk to her. Her and Valerie. I'll be damned if we don't lay all the cards out on the table, because I'm not going through this again.

The studio door is nearly torn off its hinges as Tiago rushes in.

"Empty," he says as he leans over his desk, head bowed. "Fucking empty!"

With one fell swoop, he knocks everything off of his desk. The paints splatter across the wall and floor, brushes drag on his artwork propped against the wall, destroying it. Things shatter as they hit the ground; some of them glasses that held his brushes, more of them ceramics he had worked on.

Not that the probability of them escaping without letting their bodyguards know was high, but there was a chance that they had no time and were forced to leave them behind. If they somehow got to a safehouse, it could explain why I can't reach them. But they didn't. And that minuscule hope dies like a smothered candle flame.

Valerie comes up to him and slowly slides her hand along his back. I expected him to flinch, so strung up was he. But he instead just turns and wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. I feel like I'm intruding on something private.

All our cards are going on the table. All of them.

"No luck?" Asks Tiago when he and Valerie break apart.

I shake my head. "They should contact us soon though."

He furrows his brow.

"Whoever took them, I mean. If they're not in the safehouses, they were probably taken hostage."

The look in Tiago's eyes says what his mouth doesn't have to. Or they're dead.

"There's no point in killing them," I answer his silent words. I've said this to Valerie a million times in the last hours, and to myself. "If they wanted to kill them, why leave the bodyguards alive?"

"Bait," is Tiago's response.

"What good is bait if it doesn't lead anywhere?" I went down that line of thinking with Valerie as well. "They need somewhere to bait us to, which means they need to tell us where they are. And what's the point of using them as bait if they're dead? They knew about Sienna's dealings with Bennett, which suggests they're more knowledgeable than to think Sienna and Jesse are worth more dead than alive, and that they're digging themselves a deeper hole if they kill them. They have Kaen on their tail, for fuck's sake."

I don't say that there are fates much worse than death, though all three of us know it.

"It was supposed to be him," Tiago says. "They didn't know he'd be on their tail, he was supposed to be caught with her. He and Jesse switched last minute."

"All the more reason to keep them alive," I counter. "They know they're in deeper shit now than they thought they would be."

That's the thing about Kaen, isn't it? Unlike most of these guys, his reputation precedes him. Everyone knows the Hydra is not to be fucked with, but where most of their brutality is concealed, Kaen's is well-known. More than that, his sadism simply knows no equal, although I heard Elijah's might rival it. Bottom line is that you don't want to mess with the Hydra, but you want to mess with Kaen least of all. And those people, whoever they are, inadvertently did just that.

I lock eyes with Tiago, willing him, who is facing the loss of not only the woman he loves—a woman he loves—but also his brother, to see the reason in my words; willing myself to do the same. Then my phone buzzes.

I pick up and put Elijah on speakerphone. He doesn't waste time on greetings.

"I'm sending you coordinates," he says as my phone vibrates with a new text message. "See if you can get into any cameras there."

His voice is clipped and angry, it feels like one wrong move is all that is keeping him from exploding. I put them in and do as he asks.

"Where are you?" Tiago asks his brother.

"Where I need to be."

I'm hoping that's code for 'I tracked down where the explosives came from and thus can't say where I am', but either way everyone falls silent as I work.

My tablet splits into four broadcasts.

"What the fuck?" I say out loud.

"What is it?" Valerie looks over my shoulder.

"I take it you got in?" Elijah asks. I nod, forgetting that he can't see me.

"Why are there four working cameras in an abandoned police station?" I ask.

"There should be more," Elijah says as Tiago looks over my other shoulder. "Look underground."

I blink. "Under—?"

"Yes."

"That's not how coordinates work, Elijah. I need to search for—"

"Just fucking do it, Imari."

Clenching my teeth and inhaling deeply, I lead my two companions to my computer. Luckily, my makeshift office isn't too far from Tiago's room, and I get to work quickly. When I'm finally in, I swear I feel my heart spasm in my chest. Valerie gasps, and Tiago's hand on the back of my chair clenches into a fist.

"Well?" Elijah says. A gun cocks through the speaker. My mouth moves on its own.

"We found them."

Author's Note

Hey everyone! Thanks for reading as far as you have. As some of you know, I took a little survey of how this story should continue; whether you wanted me to finish it or not before rewriting. So thanks for all of your responses!

Between the comments here and my discord DMs, the results were a tie. So, in order to keep everyone happy, I decided to finish it first. If you'd rather read the rewritten version, look out for it soon. But if you'd like to stick around for this one, I won't leave you hanging. But beware that this ending will be rushed.

Since I'm turning this into a series, the ending is not the ending to the whole story, and the rewritten version might end differently. But I'm hoping to keep all the major storybeats the same, so the vibes and character arcs will not change. The big thing I'm editing is the plot. So, don't worry, Kaen stans, he won't turn into a teddy bear or anything.

I also may not get to all the spice scenes that I wanted to in this draft, but I will with the next one, as I'm plotting it out more thoroughly. I also may add alternative non-smutty scenes for those who don't like them and are here for the plot and characters. Though I think my spice is important for character exploration and development, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, and I don't want to alienate my readers. 

Anyways, I'm going to stop yapping and get on with writing (or so I tell myself). Thank you again for reading, and I'll see you either next chapter or next rewrite! 

— D