Chapter 29 29

Chapter 29 29

RHYS

That went downhill pretty fast. Who would have ever expected that Vanya's death was being plotted? It was difficult for me to process the scene, the dialogue and everything: it kept replaying in the back of my head, yet I couldn't make sense of it.

Who could have killed Vanya and what was the person trying to achieve? I couldn't sleep, so I remained in the bedroom pacing back and forth. Anytime a mafia leader was killed, a bloody war ensued, claiming more lives. And to think that all fingers were being pointed at me, a higher power must have been behind this, and I didn't want to imagine less.

I paced until the boards beneath my feet sounded like thunder. My room felt too small for the noise in my head. Vanya had fallen like a star torn from the sky and everything around us had started to burn.

They were already saying I had done it. The underworld had a tongue that polished lies into gold overnight. By morning the whispers were shouts. E. Rhys had killed the Scorpion at the hospital. The headline slid into every corner of the city like oil. It stuck.

I kept walking. Walked until I hit the window and stood there, palms flat against the cold glass. Outside, the rain had softened to a steady ache. Cars smeared into grey streaks. People moved like ants with no idea a nation was about to rearrange itself.

Georgia came back in without knocking. She moved like someone who had been scalded and was still learning how to touch things again. She was small in my doorway, and for a second, I forgot how to be anything but savage.

"Go to bed," she said. Her voice was low. There was a silk of tiredness over it, but not the pull of surrender. She was still a woman who stepped into danger and did not ask if she might die for it.

"Do not ever speak to me again," I said. The words came out keener than I meant. They cut both of us. "This is your fault."

She laughed then. It was not a warm sound. It was the sound of someone forced to bear a bad joke until they understood it. "My fault? You think so easily? I am the one who wanted to end kidnappings. I am the one who wanted girls to be free. How can that be a crime?"

"It is a crime when the world decides to hang your righteousness on my neck," I said. "It is a crime when the men who worship me now point their guns and say I murdered their leader."

"You did not kill him," she said. Her hand found the edge of the wardrobe as if to steady herself. "I know you. You did not do that. Vanya deserved to die, yes. He deserved worse. But not like that. Not pinned on us."

The room gathered the words and held them. I wanted to break her voice into smaller things and hide them in places she could not find. I wanted to ask her to make it stop. I wanted to say I was sorry.

"You have never given me peace," I said. The sentence tasted like iron. "You bring trouble into my life and then smile like the sun. You drag me from one wound into another. I married you and thought maybe the world would soften. Instead, you lit it."

"If you wanted peace," she shot back, "you would not have married a journalist."

I turned quickly. The accusation hung there like a thrown knife. She stepped forward so close I could see the small scar at her jaw. Her eyes were raw, but she did not bow.

"I did not marry you to be your prison," she said. "I married you because I loved you. I did not sign on to be the reason you sleep with a weight in your skull. If you wanted a simple life you would have chosen a simple girl. You chose me."

"You are a problem," I said. My voice broke on the last word. It was easier to blame the woman in front of me than to blame the man inside me who had led armies and still could not protect himself.

"And you are a problem," Georgia said. "You hunt criminals the way other men hunt profit. You thought marrying me would fix that? You thought marriage would clean your hands? You are a volcano, Rhys. You cannot pretend you did not see the lava."

We stood like that for a long time. Neither of us left. The house held its breath.

By sunrise, the city was full of talk. The small stations had picked up on the story. The tabloids had their taste. I watched her go still as she scrolled, fingers moving like her breath. She posted words into tiny papers and online squares, telling the world I had nothing to do with it. Her fingers were a weapon she had mastered. I wanted to be proud and I wanted to hate her all at once.

A man from the mansion came in fully armed, paint of fear under his eyes. He did not wait to speak. He told me the men were moving. Vanya's boys were restless. They smelled blood and they wanted proof. It took hours to pull the calm around the estate into something that looked like order. There were broken fences, gunfire in the distance like angry thunder, and men bleeding on the road.

"You must go to the council," the messenger said, voice flat. "They want you to answer. The judge calls for you."

The underground council was not a court. It was a stage where verdicts were preened and sentences had teeth. I knew their hall. I had been in it many times. A man going before the council risked being judged by those whose knives were longer than the law. They would listen, nod, and then spit out the result.

"I will go," I said. The words were unanimous in my mouth. They had to be. You do not refuse such calls.

Georgia shook her head. She had been standing by the window now, the morning light washing her face into a paper cut of softness. "If you go now," she said, "they will use it. They will kill you in the name of justice. Let them stew for two weeks. Let them breathe. Call them back and show up then. Ask for time."

That was the most dangerous thing anyone could say to a man like me. A coward might accept the reprieve. A leader would not. But a leader who wanted to live might choose a quieter strategy.

"Do you want me alive?" I asked her.

She did not answer quickly. She wrapped her fingers around the phone and started to press on it like the screen might yield more truth if she dug into it. "I want you alive," she said finally. "I want to keep the children safe. I do not want more blood because I could not sit quietly for two weeks."

"You ask me to beg for my life," I said. My mouth was dry. The idea of asking the council for a delay felt like bending to a thing I had never bowed to before.

"Ask," she said. "Ask like your life depends on it because it does. Ask for two weeks. Promise me a plan."

I thought of my men, of loyalty, of the code stitched into our bones. I thought of the girls whose faces I had seen in photographs, hollowed by fear. I thought of Georgia, the way she moved when she would not be silenced. My hands folded into fists.

"Two weeks," I said. I let the words leave like a wound. "Two weeks. And if I am called a coward, then let it be on my grave."

The messenger left and the house closed in. Tiana came out holding the twins by their hands. They were small as things carved from wood but their eyes were old in a way that made me want to protect them until my bones turned down from fighting. Shanaya's belly was round under her dress, a secret beating against the world. Emily clutched at her sister like she could glue her to life.

"We are leaving," Tiana said. There was a map in her hand and a plan folded in the lines of her mouth. "We will take them out of the country."

"We sold the company," I told them. "The money is theirs. They will have land, a house. They will have people who will teach them how to laugh."

"Will you come?" Tiana asked. She looked at me like she was unsure of a man who had once been all decisiveness.

"I will not," I said. I could not abandon the things I had built. A leader does not vanish when his men look at him and wait for the shape he will make.