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“Do you have a better suggestion, Jacob? We have no idea where the van went, or where Gregg is. Until we do, we’d just be chasing our tails. It’s much better to gather all the information and make a plan. Trust me, we’ll have a much higher success rate if we do it this way,”Bree states, sounding much calmer than she has any right to.

“I just don’t know if I can sit here and do nothing,” Jake says, his voice breaking at the end as a tear slides down his cheek.

I reach up and wipe the tear away with my thumb, as Bree says,“I know this is hard. Believe me, I’ve been where you are, so I know waiting around is one of the hardest things in the world, but I promise, we’ll do everything we can to get Indie back to you.”

“Thank you,” I tell her when Jake doesn’t seem able to respond.

“We’ll talk soon,” Marcus says, before ending the call.

Marcus looks between me and Jake, wincing as he sees how devastated we both are. He squeezes my shoulder once more,giving me a tight smile as he stares at me, his eyes blazing with sincerity.

“I’m going to get Indie’s phone, and then I’ll help Peri and call Chloe. Why don’t you two wait in your office? I’ll call you when we have something.”

I smile at my best friend, letting him see how much I appreciate him as I lead Jacob from the room. His head is bowed, tears streaming down his face as he leans on me for support.

Once we’re in my office, with the door closed behind us, I pull him against my chest and wrap my arms around him, just in time for him to fall apart. I can’t stop my own tears from falling as the man I love breaks down in my arms.

All I can do is hold him and let him feel that I’m still here, that I’ll always be here for him. He knows we’ll stop at nothing to get Indie back, so I don’t bother saying the words out loud.

As his sobs die down, turning to silent tears, Jake finally claws back a little of the control he lost as fear and sadness overtook him. He pulls in ragged breaths, and when he pulls his head off my chest, looking up at me with his glistening chocolate eyes, my heart breaks all over again. He looks so small, so lost, so broken.

I reach over with my thumb and wipe away the tears from under his eyes, and I can’t help but smile when he does the same. He lets out a shuddered breath as he says, “I love her, you know. I love her and I never got the chance to tell her. I want to tell her.”

His voice cracks right alongside my heart, and I know exactly how he feels. I don’t think I ever stopped loving her, even when I hated her, but I should have told her. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but whatever the reason, it feels foolish now.

“I know. You’ll get your chance to tell her… We both will.”

Jake’s smile widens as he lays a hand against my cheek, rubbing his thumb over my face in a soothing gesture.

“I love you too.” He says the words with such conviction and certainty that I know he means them, but I can feel the love he’s giving me, too.

I lean into his touch as my lips lift into a genuine, bright smile, and I let him see just how much he means to me. “I fell in love with you when we were teenagers, and I don’t think I ever really stopped. Even when you hurt me and I wanted to hate you, I still loved you. I’ve always loved you. Same with Indie.”

Jake’s eyes light up, even with tears making them glisten, and he presses his lips to mine. It’s a searing, passionate kiss that says more than words ever could.

I imagined when we finally told each other how we felt, it would be more romantic than this. We’d be able to fall into each other’s arms afterwards, and get lost in our love. I never imagined we’d be missing a part of our heart.

“We are going to get Indie back, and then we can do this all over again with her here, too. I want to see the look on her face when we tell her we love her, and she realises this is what the rest of her life looks like,” I tell Jake, meaning every fucking word.

His face twists into a dangerous scowl, his eyes darkening as he draws on all the power he was raised with. “We will slaughter everyone who dared to put our girl in danger. We will make sure she never knows fear again. Then we will start our lives together, just the three of us.”

We seal our agreement with a kiss, drawing on the anger and danger that we’ve learnt to harness in this line of work. We will burn our enemies to the ground for daring to touch what belongs to us.

It takes an hour for Kellan to get back to us, and I feel each fucking second tick by at an agonisingly slow pace. I must have walked miles in the last sixty minutes, as I continuously paced the length of Miles’ office, struggling to remain still.

I want to do something, anything, but I know Bree was right when she said there really is nothing to do. I’d be running around aimlessly, like a headless chicken, achieving nothing more than I’m doing right now. But I have to do something, or the fear and anxiety will get the better of me.

I gave up on my heart returning to a normal rhythm over thirty minutes ago. No amount of calm, deep breaths is going to help me claw back control at this point, only Indie will be able to do that.

The mere thought of her name sends me into a shame spiral as guilt overwhelms me. I was here to watch over her, to keep her safe, yet she’d been gone for almost ninety minutes before Miles realised something was wrong.

Had he not arrived and demanded to see her, would I have even checked on her? She continuously asks me for her freedomwhile she’s at work, as she doesn’t want her work colleagues to think she gets special treatment.

She wants to just get on with her job, and because she fluttered those perfect eyelashes at me, I let her.

In reality, I’d been lost in my own head. I thought she was working in the back, and was safe, which is why I allowed myself time to think about how I was going to tell Mum and Dad about my relationship with Indie and Miles.

I was going over scenarios in my head, playing out how the conversations might go when I tell them, and it was getting me wound up.