Protecting Lucas
1719 Words
The vial of cyanide sits on the center console between us like a tiny glass bomb. Damon’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel. The Mercedes eats highway miles at ninety, headlights carving tunnels through the dark. I keep glancing at the rearview mirror, half expecting Victor’s black Range Rover to materialize behind us like a nightmare that refuses to stay buried.
“He won’t follow us straight home,” I say, more to convince myself than him. “He’s too smart for that. He’ll wait. Make us sweat.”
Damon doesn’t answer right away. His jaw is locked so tight I can see the muscle jump under the skin. Finally he speaks, voice low and shredded. “Lucas is at the safe house. Mrs. Ellis is with him. Two of my best guys are on perimeter. They’re locked down.”
“And if Victor already knows where the safe house is?”
“Then we’re already too late.”
The words land like punches. I swallow bile. In the last life I never met Lucas. Never knew he existed until after I died—when the news articles called Damon “the grieving uncle who lost everything.” I read them obsessively in this second chance, piecing together the boy who became Damon’s only soft spot. Eight years old now. Dark hair like his uncle’s. Big gray eyes. Drawings of spaceships and monsters taped to the fridge in Damon’s penthouse. I’ve only seen photos, but I already love him the way you love something you’ve sworn to protect before you’ve even held it.
“We’re not too late,” I say. “We’re moving. That’s something.”
Damon flicks on the high beams. “You should have told me about the note sooner.”
“I told you the second I read it.”
“You should have told me the second Victor texted you this morning.”
I twist in the seat to face him. “And what? You would have locked me in a tower? Told me to stay quiet while you handled it? This isn’t your war, Damon. It’s mine. He killed me once. He doesn’t get to kill the people I—”
I stop myself.
The people I what?
Care about?
Love?
The word feels too big, too soon, too dangerous.
Damon glances at me. His eyes are storm-dark. “Finish the sentence.”
I look out the window instead. Streetlights streak past like falling stars. “The people I came back for.”
He lets out a rough breath. “You came back for revenge.”
“And for you.” The admission slips out before I can cage it. “I didn’t plan on that part. But here we are.”
Silence stretches. Thick. Electric.
Then he reaches over, takes my hand off my lap, and threads our fingers together on the gearshift. His palm is warm. Callused from years of gripping steering wheels and stress. I don’t pull away.
“Lucas is going to like you,” he says quietly. “He already asks why Uncle Damon reads so many books with kissing on the cover.”
I laugh despite everything. A small, cracked sound. “Blame Luna Veil.”
“Blame my wife.”
The word wife still feels like borrowed clothing—too tight in some places, too loose in others—but hearing him say it now, with Lucas hanging in the balance, makes it fit differently. Sharper.
We take the exit toward the industrial district. The safe house is an old converted warehouse on the edge of the river—unremarkable from the outside, armored from the inside. Damon slows as we approach. The gate is already open. Bad sign.
He kills the lights, coasts in neutral the last fifty yards.
Two black SUVs are parked crooked in the loading bay. One has a shattered windshield.
Damon swears. Pulls the gun from under his seat—a sleek nine-millimeter I didn’t even know he carried. He chambers a round with a soft metallic snick.
“Stay here.”
“Like hell.”
“Aria—”
“If Lucas is inside, I’m going in.” I reach for the door handle. “You can shoot me or you can let me help. Pick fast.”
He stares at me for a heartbeat. Then he nods once. Sharp.
We move together.
The side door is ajar. Inside, the lights are dim—emergency strips only. The smell hits first: gunpowder and copper. Blood.
Damon goes first, weapon raised. I follow close, heart in my throat.
The main room is chaos. Furniture overturned. One of Damon’s security guys is slumped against the wall, hand pressed to his shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers. He lifts his head when he sees us.
“Boss… they took the kid.”
Damon’s face goes blank—the dangerous kind of blank that means someone is about to die very slowly.
“How many?”
“Three. Masks. Military gear. They knew the layout. Knew the panic room code.” The man coughs wetly. “They left this.”
He nods toward the kitchen island.
A phone sits there. Screen lit.
A live feed.
Lucas—small, terrified, duct tape over his mouth—is sitting on a metal chair in what looks like an abandoned factory. Concrete floors. Exposed beams. A single hanging bulb swaying above him.
Victor steps into frame. Smiling. He crouches so his face fills the camera.
“Hello, lovebirds. I see you found my gift.” He gestures at Lucas. “The boy is fine. For now. But children are fragile. And I’m not a patient man.”
He straightens. “You have until dawn. Bring me the drive your clever little wife stole from my server room last month—the one with the real financials, the ones that prove I’ve been bleeding Blackwood dry for years. Bring it to the old steel mill on Pier 17. Alone. No police. No backup. Just the two of you and the truth.”
He leans closer to the camera.
“If you’re late, or if you try anything stupid, I start with fingers. Then toes. Then—” He smiles wider. “Well. You get the idea.”
The feed cuts.
Dead silence.
The security guy groans. “They hit us twenty minutes ago. I tried… I’m sorry, boss.”
Damon kneels beside him. “Not your fault. Get pressure on that wound. We’re getting him back.”
He stands. Looks at me.
I’m already moving toward the stairs that lead to the panic room—now just an empty concrete box with the door hanging off its hinges.
“They knew the code,” I whisper. “How?”
Damon follows. “Someone inside. Or someone who’s been watching us longer than we thought.”
I turn to face him. “Victor said ‘your clever little wife.’ He knows I took the drive.”
Damon’s eyes narrow. “You never told me you took anything from him.”
“I didn’t take it from him. I took it from his accountant’s laptop during the merger talks six weeks ago. Copied it. Wiped my tracks. I was going to use it as leverage later—after the contract marriage was solid.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I didn’t trust anyone.” My voice cracks. “I came back alone. I stayed alone. Until you kissed me like you meant it.”
Damon steps closer. Cups my face with both hands. “I meant it.”
“Then help me get Lucas back.”
He nods. “We’re not giving Victor the drive.”
“No,” I say. “We’re giving him something better.”
I pull my phone. Open the encrypted folder I’ve kept buried under three fake apps.
Inside: every email chain, every wire transfer, every photo of Victor meeting with offshore bankers. Enough to bury him for life.
But there’s more.
A single audio file.
I hit play.
Victor’s voice fills the small space—cold, amused.
“…the Kane girl was a loose end. Poison was clean. No trace. Blackwood never suspected. Pity she was just a nobody. Would’ve been more satisfying if she’d mattered.”
My own recorded voice—shaky, from the bug I planted in his office months ago—answers.
“She mattered to me.”
Victor laughs. “Then you should have protected her.”
The recording ends.
Damon’s face is stone.
“That’s from before I died,” I say. “I had a friend in IT slip a recorder into his pen during a meeting. She died in a car accident two weeks later. Coincidence, I’m sure.”
Damon’s hands drop from my face. “You’ve had this the whole time.”
“I needed insurance. In case you turned out to be like him.”
He exhales. Rough. “I’m not.”
“I know that now.”
He pulls me against him. Hard. Buries his face in my hair. “We’re not trading anything. We’re ending him.”
“How?”
“We go to Pier 17. We get Lucas. And then we make sure Victor never walks out of that mill.”
I nod against his chest.
“But first,” he says, pulling back, “we call in every favor I have. SWAT won’t touch this without cause. But I know people who don’t need warrants.”
“Mercenaries?”
“Friends in low places.”
I almost smile. “You really are the villain in someone else’s story.”
“Only yours,” he says. “In yours I’m the guy who gets the girl back.”
We move.
He calls his contacts while I grab the spare Glock from the safe. It feels heavy. Familiar. I learned to shoot in this life—range every Saturday for six months. Just in case.
By the time we’re back in the car, dawn is still three hours away.
Victor thinks he has us cornered.
He’s about to learn what happens when the dead come for payback.
And they bring backup.
The engine roars.
We head for Pier 17.
Lucas is waiting.
And so is the end of Victor Hale.
- Writer
