Chapter 138

Chapter 138
Alina's POV

"You want to know why I'm standing beside Adams?" I said it slowly, giving them the answer they had been pushing toward. "Because Lowell's father — Sumia Wadarishi — personally orchestrated the murder of my parents."

The air on the terrace seemed to stop moving.

Megan's eyes went wide. Her mouth opened. Whatever she meant to say never came — just a short, clipped sound, something between a breath and a word.

Catherine went completely still, the color draining from her face in stages, her lips trembling. It took her a long moment to produce anything at all. "You — what are you saying?"

My chest felt hollow. All the warmth I had ever let myself feel had been methodically stripped away, and what was left didn't feel like a person so much as something that kept moving out of habit. "Sumia Wadarishi. Lowell's father. He ran illegal boxing money through a front company — used it to launder the funds and move them clean. My parents found the company. They found him. And then they died."

Megan took a half-step back, one hand catching the door frame of the terrace entrance. She studied my face for a long time, as though trying to determine whether I could possibly mean what I was saying.

"Are you certain?" Her voice was unsteady. "You're certain it was Mr. Sumia? Where did this come from?"

"Adams showed me a recording. My parents made it before they were killed." I held her gaze and kept my voice level. "They named Sumia Wadarishi as the man behind the company. I know my parents' faces. I know their voices. That footage wasn't fabricated."

I paused.

"So when Lowell told me to stay out of the Wadarishi family's affairs — I thought at the time it was because he didn't want me to see what they were involved in. But there was more to it than that." The words came out cold, each one carrying the weight of a conclusion I had arrived at slowly and couldn't un-arrive at. "He didn't want me finding out what his father had done to mine."

I looked between them. "Now that you know the full picture — are you still standing here to lecture me?"

Catherine's lips moved. She seemed to be forming something — a defense, an objection — but what came out was quiet, almost small: "Does Lowell know?"

I was silent for a moment.

"He runs one of the most powerful operations in this city," I said at last. "If Adams could find this, why couldn't he?"

"Alina—" Megan stepped forward, her voice pulling in two directions at once. "So you're saying — you're going to stay with Adams and go after Lowell?"

The wind moved across the terrace again, carrying the cold with it.

"That's not your concern," I heard myself say.

"But you could just tell him—" Catherine started, urgently, and I cut her off.

"Tell him what? That I found out his father had my parents killed? And then what — he helps me investigate his own father? Or I wait around for an explanation he may never give?"

Quiet settled over the terrace. Only the wind, and the faint bleed of music from the banquet hall somewhere in the distance.

I was done. This was between Lowell and me — I had no intention of pulling anyone else into it, regardless of whose side they were on.

"Go," I said. The word cost something, but I said it anyway. "There's nothing more to say. And there's no need to come looking for me after tonight."

When I looked up, both of them wore the expression of people who had just taken a blow they hadn't seen coming.

I glanced around. There were shapes in the shadows at the periphery of the terrace. If I was reading the situation correctly, Adams's people were close by.

For their sake, I made my face hard. "I've said everything I have to say. Why are you still standing here?"

I stepped around them and walked back inside, leaving Catherine and Megan in the cold.

---

Back in the hotel suite, I closed the door and stood against it for a moment — long enough to confirm that none of Adams's people had followed me in. Then I crossed to the sofa, sat down, and reached for my heels.

When I got them off, I noticed my ankles had been rubbed raw.

The suite was quiet. Just the low, steady hum of the climate control system. I leaned back against the cushions and closed my eyes for a moment, then got up and went to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water on my face.

The woman in the mirror looked worn. The shadows under her eyes had deepened, and the corners of her mouth had gone slightly rigid from holding the same expression for an entire evening.

I stared at my own reflection for a few seconds, then straightened up and reached behind me to find the zipper of the gown.

Warm hands closed around my waist from behind.

Every muscle in my body locked. The shock moved through me like a current. I spun around — already drawing breath to scream — and then saw the face, and swallowed the sound before it left my throat.

"Lowell?!"

He was standing right behind me, one hand still resting at my side, his eyes on my face — a look that held too many things at once, something elated and something quietly devastated.

"How did you get in here?!" I stepped back on instinct and came up against the edge of the vanity, putting what distance I could between us. My voice went up. "There are people outside — how did you get past them?!"

"I went around your guards." His voice was rougher than I remembered. His gaze stayed on my face, steady and soft in a way that sat wrong with the situation. "You forget — I know the security layout of hotels like this better than most."

I gripped the edge of the vanity behind me. My heart was going so hard I could feel it. I turned my head away from his eyes and called toward the door: "Someone—"

He stepped forward before the word was finished, and his hand came down over mine — not forceful, but enough to still me completely.

"Alina. Don't. Just — let me finish."

My hand trembled under his, but I didn't pull free. And I didn't call out again.

A few seconds passed. Just our breathing, out of rhythm, filling the quiet.

"I don't know why you're with Adams." His voice dropped lower, careful in a way that was almost uncharacteristic — searching, and underneath that, something penitent, as though he had already decided he owed me a debt he didn't yet know how to name. "But I'll give you whatever it takes. If you felt pushed to the margins in the family — I'll bring you into everything, no exceptions. If you need security — I'll hand you the armory and the west side operations. All of it. Just come back."

The words came quickly, like he was afraid of running out of time before I stopped listening. He didn't know yet — he still didn't know that what had driven me away wasn't only about being sidelined. It was about what his father had done.

But at this moment, he didn't seem to be thinking about reasons. Those eyes held only one thing: bring me back, make it the way it was, close the distance between us until it was like there had never been any.

I opened my mouth to answer. Before I could, he moved — one hand coming up to the back of my head, and his mouth pressed down on mine without asking.

The kiss was urgent and unguarded, like something that had been building pressure for weeks and had finally given way — every day of absence, every unanswered question, transmitted in the space of a breath.

I couldn't breathe. My hands went to his chest to push him back, but his arm had already tightened around me, the hold of someone afraid that loosening it by even a fraction would mean losing me again.

I turned my head in the gap between one breath and the next. "Lowell — let go—"

He didn't. He pulled me closer instead, his forehead dropping to rest against mine, his breath falling warm across my lips.

"I won't. I'm not letting go. Not this time. I'm not letting you leave again."

A beat.

"Alina. Forgive me. Come back."

I closed my eyes. The hand gripping the front of his shirt tightened, then slowly opened. The voice inside me that knew all the reasons to hold the line was losing ground, fast — fighting against the other voice, the one that had nothing to do with reasons.

I hadn't yet found words for what I wanted to say.

Then someone knocked on the suite door from outside.

The sound went through both of us. We looked toward the door at the same moment.