Fell For The Wrong Billionaire

Chapter 5: Darkness Between Us

Not yet, please, not yet hung in the dark between us. My heart pounded against my ribs.

"Not yet, what?" My voice came out thin. "Kairo, talk to me."

He didn't answer. I heard him move, quick and sure-footed even in the pitch black, like the dark was something he'd already memorized. A flashlight beam cut through the room, and his face came into view, eyes already on the windows.

"Get away from the glass."

"Why should I?"

"Get dressed. We're going to check the line."

"Right now? In this storm?"

"I need to know if this is weather."

"You're really acting weird."

He didn't answer that either. He was already pulling on his boots, movements quick and economical, the same way he'd disarmed the alarm — like his hands knew things his mouth wasn't going to explain.

We found the second flashlight in the kitchen drawer. He checked the chamber of his gun before opening the door, thumb and two fingers, a motion so practiced it barely looked like a decision at all.

"Do you really need that?"

"Maybe." He held the door for me. "Stay close."

The cold hit like a wall the moment we stepped outside, wind driving snow sideways hard enough to sting my face raw. I pulled my collar up and followed him along the tree line toward the power pole at the edge of the property, my flashlight beam bouncing wild and useless off the snow with every step. He didn't need to look down to know where he was going.

Kairo crouched at the base of the pole, running his light along the wire, and didn't move.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer right away. He just kept looking at it, the beam steady on one small stretch of black cable, like the wire itself might explain something if he waited long enough.

"Kairo."

"It's cut."

"By the storm?"

"No." He reached up and turned the wire slightly in the beam so I could see it too — a clean, deliberate severing, nothing like the frayed, torn edges I would have expected from wind or ice. "Storms don't leave clean edges. This was cut with a tool."

"That's not possible. Who would even—"

"Talia." His voice had gone flat, all the warmth stripped out of it in a single word. "We need to get inside. Now."

Before I could reply, he pulled me up by the arm, his grip firm but careful, like he was aware of exactly how much pressure he was using even in a hurry. We didn't run exactly, but we didn't walk slow either, both of us glancing back toward the tree line the whole way to the porch, snow filling in our tracks behind us almost as fast as we made them.

Inside, Kairo moved fast. He dragged the oak dresser from my bedroom to brace the front door, the legs scraping deep grooves into the floorboards I'd have to sand out later, if there was a later that involved sanding floorboards.

"What exactly is that for?"

"It should slow anyone down."

He was already checking window latches, drawing curtains, setting chairs beneath the windows at strange angles, tilted just enough to overbalance at the slightest touch.

"What is that supposed to do?"

"If someone tries to get in this way, they knock it over first. Buys us a few seconds."

By the time he'd finished, my cabin didn't feel like my home anymore. It felt like something built for the sole purpose of being defended, every familiar piece of furniture repurposed into a small, silent weapon against whatever was out there.

We ended up by the fire, the only warmth left in a cabin gone cold and dark. I sat on the floor with a blanket around my shoulders. Kairo sat a few feet away, close enough to the fire, far enough from me.

Neither of us spoke for a while. The wind found every gap in the cabin walls and turned each one into a low, thin whistle. Somewhere behind me, the dresser creaked once against the door, settling, and I felt my whole body go tight before I recognized the sound for what it was.

Then I noticed his hands. Shaking. Not cold-shaking — the fire was close enough to warm both of us, close enough that I could feel it on my own face. This was something else. His fingers curled and uncurled against his knee, over and over, like he was holding something back that had already gotten loose somewhere behind his eyes.

"Kairo?"

He didn't answer. His eyes had settled on the fire but weren't looking at it — the kind of stare that goes straight through a thing and lands somewhere else entirely.

I moved closer and pulled my blanket around his shoulders too, my hand resting there a moment longer than it needed to.

He turned his head slowly and looked at me like he didn't know what to do with what I'd just done. Like kindness was a language he recognized but hadn't spoken in a long time and wasn't sure he remembered the grammar of.

"You don't have to do that." He didn't shrug it off.

"Well, I wanted to."

He let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for years, not minutes — long and slow, like something finally finding room to leave his chest.

"It's been a long time," he said, "since anyone did something like that for me."

I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. We sat there a while, the fire popping, the storm raging outside, the blanket a small, fragile bridge stretched between his chair and mine. The wind kept working at the walls. Somewhere out past the porch, a branch gave way under the weight of snow and cracked like a gunshot, and neither of us moved, though I noticed him counting the seconds after, waiting to see if it happened again.

Then he spoke, so quiet I almost missed it under the wind.

"Have you ever wondered why your mother died?"

The fire popped. I stared at him.

"What did you just say?"

He didn't repeat it. Not like he needed to. The words were already sitting in the room between us, impossible to take back.

"I never told you that." My voice had dropped to almost nothing. "I never told you my mother was murdered, Kairo. I never told you she died at all."

"Talia…"

"How do you know that?"

"I didn't mean for it to come out like that."

"How do you know anything about my mother?"

He'd known before I said a word. Before he ever came inside, before I'd pulled him half-frozen out of the snow, before any of this. That landed somewhere low in my stomach, cold and sick — and underneath it, something worse. The sense that this had never been an accident at all. That I hadn't found him on that road so much as I'd been standing exactly where something had already decided I'd be.

"I can't explain it right now."

"Then when?" I was already on my feet, the blanket sliding off my shoulders and pooling at my heels.

"Talia, please…"

"You knew something this whole time, didn't you?"

He didn't answer. That was answer enough.

"I want the truth. Haven't I earned that much?"

"You have." His voice had gone low, wrecked, like each word cost him something to hand over. "You have, and I swear to you, I will tell you everything. Just not…"

Three slow knocks echoed through the cabin door.

We both went silent, the argument dying in my throat. Not the sharp, panicked rap of someone caught outside in a storm. Measured. Patient. Almost polite, and somehow that was worse than anything frantic could have been.

Kairo was on his feet before the third knock finished, gun already in his hand, body angling between me and the door in one smooth motion that left no room for me to argue with it.

"Kairo…"

"Quiet." His voice had dropped to almost nothing. "Get behind me."

"Who is that?"

"I don't know yet."

I moved without deciding to, my back finding the wall beside the fireplace, my eyes fixed on the dresser braced against the door like it might start sliding on its own. The fire cracked and settled behind me. Kairo didn't blink, didn't shift his weight, the gun held level and steady in a way that made the silence stretch even tighter across the room.

Then a voice came through the wood. Calm. Unhurried.

"Mr. Sinclair," it said. "I know you're in there.”