Chapter 99
DEREK’S POV
I paced back and forth beside the bed, anxiety knotting my stomach as I waited for Arielle to awaken. She lay there, unconscious, her chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm. The dim light of the storage room cast eerie shadows across her face, emphasizing the bruise on her cheek, a cruel reminder of the torture she had endured at the hands of Aiden.
As I stood there, my mind wandered back to the planning, the moments of desperation and determination that had brought us to this point. Flashbacks flooded my mind, like vivid snapshots of how it all went down.
I had taken hours, locked up in my room, to plan on a meticulous way to free Arielle with alerting Aiden.
I had sought out the guard, a man burdened with guilt and the weight of his loyalty to my brother. W
