Chapter 107

Chapter 107
Just like that, her mind flickered with images she wished the drugs would erase: the screech of metal, the violent jolt, Jerome’s face twisted with rage as he pointed the gun at her. She shivered.

“It was Jerome,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how he found me. I was coming to see you then… Then he just appeared behind the cab. He ran us off the road into the drainage and then came after me with a gun.”

Quinton went very still.

The air around him changed, thickening, charged with something dark and dangerous. Neema felt it instantly.

“He wanted to kill you,” he said flatly.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But… Someone stopped him.”

His brows drew together. “Someone?”

She nodded, staring up at the ceiling for a second before forcing herself to continue. God, how she wished she didn’t have to be the one who told him his ex was involved. She didn’t have a choice, though. “The man from the lake. The one I told you about. He shot Jerome. Said he’d been hired by Jacqueline to scare me… Not to kill me.” Neema bit her bottom lip and waited.

Quinton’s jaw tightened further, his eyes hardening with every passing second. Neema could almost hear the gears in his mind grinding, connecting dots, building fury.

The nurse cleared her throat gently. “I’ll give you two a moment,” she said, already stepping toward the door. “Try not to get her too worked up.”

The warning was addressed to Quinton, but he didn’t even look at her to acknowledge her, his focus never leaving Neema.

When the door closed behind the nurse, the room felt smaller. Quieter. Safer, and somehow more dangerous.

“I’m so sorry,” he said suddenly, the words tumbling out of him like they’d been waiting behind his teeth. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t gone after him-”

“Stop,” Neema said, more firmly than she felt. “Don’t do that.”

He shook his head, eyes shining in her way Neema had never seen before. “This is my fault. I scared you. I pushed you away. And while you were trying to come back to me…” His voice cracked. He waved a shaky hand to encompass everything. “This happened.”

Neema swallowed, emotion clogging her throat. “Quinton, look at me.”

He did.

“I’m alive,” she said softly. “I’m here. And I’m sorry I left. I should have given you a chance to explain better because I understand now why you did what you did. That’s why I was coming to see you. Because I love you.”

The words hung between them, fragile and real.

Something in his face shattered. Neema held her breath.

After a beat, he leaned forward carefully, resting his forehead against the edge of the mattress, his hand curling around hers at last, warm and strong and shaking.

“Christ! I love you, too, Neema. And I can’t lose you,” he whispered, his voice almost muffled. “I won’t survive it.”

Tears slid silently down Neema’s temples into her hair. She squeezed his hand as best she could.

“You didn’t,” she said. “I’m still here.”

Sirens wailed faintly somewhere outside the hospital, a reminder of how close she’d come to not being able to say that at all.

 

Neema lay back against the pillows, watching the way Quinton paced at the foot of her hospital bed, his movements sharp and restless, like a caged wild animal. The IV machine hummed steadily beside her, the scent of antiseptic hanging heavy in the air, mixing with the faint metallic smell that always seemed to cling to hospitals. Outside the narrow window, evening light faded into a dull gray, rain streaking the glass.

Her father had already been in to see her after Quinton’s driver brought him, and after confirming she was still in one piece, Hasani had left so he could tell her mother. That was when her other visitor had entered the room.

The police detective stood near the door, not quite inside the room, not quite outside it either. He was middle-aged, with tired eyes and a voice that had clearly delivered bad news far too often.

“I understand this isn’t what you want to hear, Mr. Fay,” he said calmly, hands clasped in front of him. “But at this point, we can’t move forward with charges against Ms. Jacqueline Fay.”

Quinton stopped pacing so abruptly that it made Neema flinch.

“For God’s sake, stop giving her my last name! The damn woman should have dropped it the moment we divorced.” He huffed and then seemed to remember the rest, and his glare intensified. “What do you mean, you can’t move forward with charges?” he demanded. “She hired someone to terrorize Neema. She burned down Neema’s café. She put Neema in danger.”

The detective didn’t raise his voice. “All of that is based on what an unidentified third party told Ms. Madaki. The man who then fled the scene. We don’t have a name, a face, or a statement on record. Without corroboration, it’s hearsay.”

Neema’s stomach twisted. Hearing it framed like that, ‘hearsay’ made her feel suddenly small, suddenly fragile, as though what she’d survived could be dismissed with a shrug and paperwork.

“But Jerome was there,” Neema said, her voice quieter than she wanted. “He heard everything. The man shot him.”

“And we are pursuing Mr. Jerome Snider,” the detective replied, turning to her with gentler eyes. “He is being charged with attempted murder and vehicular assault. We are investigating the rest. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make him a very reliable witness in a case against Jacqueline. At the very least, he would want to make a deal, and no judge will believe what he has to say about this other man. They will think he's just trying to get himself out of trouble by blaming someone else.”

Quinton let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “So she gets to walk away. Again.”

“Mr. Fay-”

“No,” Quinton snapped, spinning toward the detective. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Don’t tell me the system needs more time. My girlfriend almost died, and she lost her job and her café. Not to mention the trauma. Who's going to pay for that?”

Neema’s heart lurched at the word girlfriend. She barely heard the rest, but she heard the growing anger.

“Quinton,” she said carefully. “Please, stop for a second.”

He didn’t hear her. Or maybe he did and couldn’t stop anyway.

“You’re telling me,” he went on, voice rising. “That, because the man who saved her life didn’t stick around to give you a neat little confession about the woman who caused so much chaos, they just get to keep destroying lives?”

The detective’s jaw tightened slightly. “I’m telling you that the law requires evidence, not speculation.”

Quinton took a step closer to him, fists clenched at his sides.

Neema’s pulse spiked. She knew that look; she had seen it before, the barely leashed rage that frightened her not because she thought he’d hurt her, but because she was terrified of what it was doing to him. The last time she’d seen it, Quinton had gone after Jerome. He couldn’t do something so reckless again.

“Quinton,” she said more urgently now. “Stop. Please. Sit down.”

He shook his head, breath coming faster. “This is why people like her get away with everything.”

Before Neema could try again, something happened. She watched his face change in real time. The color drained from his skin, leaving it ashen. The anger drained too, replaced by something else, something wrong.

“Quinton?” she whispered. Confused about what was happening.

He swayed.

For half a second, her mind refused to process what she was seeing. He reached out blindly, as if to steady himself, but his knees buckled.

“Quinton!” Neema cried.

He went down hard, collapsing to the floor beside her bed with a sickening thud.

Oh God!