Fell For The Wrong Billionaire

Chapter 9: The Promise He Couldn't Keep

I heard a grunt, low and sharp, carried through the trees on the wind.

I stopped walking, my breath caught halfway in my chest. Then I heard a crack, something heavy connecting with bone. Every instinct told me to run the other way. I moved toward it instead, flashlight off, boots sinking silent into the snow.

The abandoned ranger station rose out of the trees ahead, windows dark and broken. In the clearing in front of it, three shapes moved fast in the thin moonlight.

I dropped behind a fallen tree at the edge of the clearing.

What followed didn't look like fighting to me. Fighting was wild, desperate, swinging fists. This was something else. Precise. Economical. Kairo caught the first man's arm mid-swing, redirected it, and had him on the ground with a sound I felt in my own chest before I understood what I'd watched. The second man came at him from behind. Kairo turned into the attack instead of away from it, and a knife went spinning into the snow six feet away before I even registered it leaving the man's hand.

He didn't kill them. I clung to that, shaking, as he pinned the first man down with a knee against his throat — enough pressure to hold, not enough to crush.

"Who told you she was here?"

"Go to hell."

Kairo's grip tightened. "Who sent you?"

The man's mouth shut like a door closing. His eyes darted past Kairo toward the trees, hoping, I guessed, for the second man to help him. He didn't get the chance.

His whole body seized. A sudden, violent convulsion, eyes rolling back, foam gathering at the corner of his mouth before Kairo could even move to stop it.

Kairo tried to pry the man's jaw open. "Don't you dare."

It was already too late. Whatever had been in that capsule worked fast.

The second man, blood streaming from his nose, used the distraction to run.

Kairo's eyes went from the dying man beneath him to the one disappearing into the dark and back, a half-second too long deciding between them, and by the time he chose, the second man was gone.

Kairo knelt there over the body, breathing hard, hands stained dark, the clearing gone dead silent except for the wind moving through the pines.

I don't know how long I stayed behind that tree. Long enough that my knees went numb. Long enough that I forgot to be quiet with my own breathing.

Then he turned his head and looked directly at me.

"Talia." He was on his feet before I'd even fully stood, crossing the clearing fast, his hands already on my shoulders, my face, checking. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

"Did anyone touch you?"

"Kairo, I'm fine." I caught his wrists, made him stop moving his hands over me like I was something broken. "I followed the tracks. I heard fighting. I thought something had happened to you."

"Something did happen. You just watched it happen."

"I know what I saw."

"Maybe you shouldn't have seen it."

"I don't care what I should or shouldn't have seen." My voice cracked. "I care about what's actually going on. Who were they?"

He glanced back at the man in the snow. "They were here for you."

I stared at him. "Me? Why would anyone come here for me?"

"I don't know yet."

"That's not good, Kairo. Nobody knows I exist out here. I've lived on this mountain for years. Nobody comes looking for me."

"Somebody did tonight."

"Why?"

"I can't answer that. Not yet."

"You keep saying that. Not yet. I can't. Not right now." I stepped back from him, arms wrapping around myself. "How long is 'not yet' supposed to last?"

He was quiet a moment. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped into something rawer than anything he'd let me hear before.

"Everything I've done since I met you has been to keep you alive."

The words landed harder than anything he'd said all night, precisely because there was nothing careful about them. No qualifiers. No half-truth dressed up to look complete.

"What do you mean? Alive from what? From who?"

"I can't lay all of it out for you right now.”

"Then when? You keep asking me to wait. I've been waiting since the night I found you bleeding on that road."

"I know." He stepped closer, and I let him, even with my heart still hammering, even with blood on his hands. "I know exactly how long you've been waiting. I need a little more time before I can give you all of it. I know I haven't earned that."

I studied his face — the same face that had gone terrifyingly calm holding a man down in the snow, now looking at me like I was the only thing left in the world worth being careful with.

"Okay." It cost me something to say it. "A little longer."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. My patience isn't unlimited."

Something almost like a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, gone as quickly as it came. "Noted."

We didn't talk much on the walk back. Kairo kept himself between me and the tree line the whole way, eyes scanning the dark with a wariness that felt different now — sharper, like something in him had shifted permanently in that clearing.

"You're doing it again," I said, mostly to break the silence.

"Doing what?"

"Watching the trees like they're going to attack you."

"They might."

"Seriously..."

"Trying to be honest."

"Well. Small steps."

He almost smiled again. I felt good about that.

The cabin came into view through the trees, porch light glowing gold, and for one relieved second the sight of it felt normal.

Then I saw the front door.

Open.

Hanging slightly ajar, a thin seam of darkness where warm light should have spilled out onto the snow.

"Stay behind me." Kairo's voice had gone flat.

"Kairo…"

"Behind me Talia"

I didn't argue. He moved up the porch steps first, gun already in hand, and I followed close.

Inside, nothing looked disturbed at first glance. Furniture in place. No signs of struggle. The fire burned down to embers exactly the way we'd left it.

"Nothing's stolen," I said slowly, moving through the front room, checking shelves, drawers, everything sitting exactly where it should. "Nothing's even out of place."

"Check again," Kairo said, moving toward the back door, testing the lock. "Someone that careful doesn't come here for nothing."

"Maybe they were looking for something specific."

"That's the point."

I made my way toward my bedroom, some instinct pulling me there before I understood why. The closet stood open. The box of Mara's things sat on the shelf exactly where I'd left it, still holding the photographs, the letters, the jewelry I'd set aside.

Except one thing was missing.

"Kairo." My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

He was in the doorway in seconds. "What is it?"

"Mara's journal." I stared at the empty space in the box where it had sat since the funeral, untouched, unopened, waiting for a courage I hadn't found yet. "It's gone."