Chapter 48 Chapter Forty-eight
Sin
This time, Saint let me drive. He’d been worried about me plunging us into a ditch earlier, but now he cared less.
Left to me, I would’ve taken the Tesla. It was sleek, fast, and silent, but tonight wasn’t about showing off.
“You gave her a phone, right?” I asked, my eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Saint let out a low grunt. He was struggling to contain his fury.
Saint was much calmer between the both of us, but when pushed to the wall, he could be lethal.
“Try to track her location. Serena is smart. If she figured out she was being moved from the villa, she would’ve grabbed it just to make finding her easier.”
Saint made a noncommittal sound, clearly doubtful.
I tightened my grip on the wheel. “Are you comfortable not knowing where our woman is?”
He didn’t answer immediately. After a long beat, he finally pulled out his phone and got to work.
I couldn’t understand any of this. But I would get to the root of it. For now, finding our biological mother and Serena was the only thing that mattered.
“It says Mexico,” Saint said suddenly.
I forgot I was the one driving and whipped my head toward him.
“Mexi-what?” My voice rose. “It’s been less than thirty minutes. How the hell could they have gotten there? What would they even be doing in Mexico?”
“There’s only one explanation,” Saint muttered, staring at the screen. “They used the jet.”
“Without Father’s consent?” I hissed. “What is she thinking? She’s trying to hijack everything with the Rivers' name on it.”
The car swerved slightly as anger flared hot in my chest. I corrected the wheel, my grip on it so tight that my knuckles went white.
Saint stayed quiet for a moment, then spoke again, his words barely audible because his voice was so low.
“She’s not just running, Sin. She’s taking control. And if we don’t catch up soon… we might lose both of them for good.”
“Try to pull out CCTV footage from the past two hours. We need to mark the security team she flew with.”
“No need. I got a text from Serena. We need to fly, immediately. She says she doesn't know the exact location but that they're in a bay area.”
I swerved the car to the left.
“Tell her to call us only once. A few minutes should be enough for us to get her location.”
Saint typed quickly, and we waited for her response.
The phone buzzed once in Saint’s hand. My whole body locked.
“Answer it,” I snapped.
He already had. He put it on speaker and said nothing, just like I told him to.
My brother’s face turned to stone, that terrifying blank he wore when he was two seconds away from committing murder and wanted no one to see it coming.
Static crackled through the car. Then I heard it. A thin, tiny, shaky breath.
“Saint?” she whispered. My hands crushed the steering wheel. Hard enough that the leather groaned under my grip.
Saint whispered back. “I’m here. We're here.”
There was another sound under her breathing. The wind. With water slapping against wood. A gull was crying loudly, and metal was clanging somewhere far off.
Two things crossed my mind. The dock. A bay. I drove faster.
“I only have a second,” Serena said, her voice frayed raw. “They took Mrs. Hale downstairs. I think… I think it’s some kind of storage place. There are boats. I can smell diesel.”
Saint’s fingers were already moving over his screen, tracking, triangulating, doing what he knew how to do best.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
The pause she gave was too long. My pulse slammed in warning.
“Serena.” Saint called out her name.
“I’m okay,” she lied. I knew it was a lie. I knew the shape of it, because I used to tell ones like that.
“Listen to me,” Saint said. “Keep talking.”
“I can hear waves under the floorboards. And…” Her breath hitched. “And there’s a bell. It rings every… every few minutes maybe? I don’t know. I’m trying not to panic.”
“You’re doing well, little flame,” Saint said, his voice softer now. “Stay with me.”
I nearly laughed at that. Soft. That was the thing about Saint. People only saw the ice. They never saw what was buried beneath it. The hunger. The fury.
The way he could go from calm to catastrophic in one heartbeat if anything or anyone dear to him was involved.
His phone flashed. I only needed to look once to read the coordinates.
“There,” he said.
I glanced at the screen for another risky second, trying to understand the blinking point by the curve of the coast.
It was a private marina with warehouse access. And registered under one of Christabel’s shell companies. At least it was what the info online said.
I tried not to think hard about it until I was ready to ask questions.
The call crackled again.“She knows I have the phone,” Serena said suddenly, her words tumbling now. Fear slicing through them. “I think she knows. She keeps smiling at me like she already won.”
My teeth ground together. Christabel. Even thinking her name made my blood taste wrong.
“Listen carefully. Do not provoke her. Do not try to run unless you’re certain you have an exit. Stay near Mrs. Hale if you can. We are coming.”
A sound came through the line then. A slap. Serena gasped. Something in me tore clean in half right then.
“Time’s up,” a woman purred into the phone.
Christabel. I knew that voice. I'd known it the very moment I opened my eyes after my birth.
“You should have learned by now,” she went on, “that what belongs to me stays with me.” She was speaking to Serena, but it still felt like it was us she was addressing.
The line went dead.
I swerved the car again so violently the tires screamed.
“Sin.” Saint’s hand shot out, bracing against the dash. “Control it.”
“Don’t tell me to control it.”