Page 44

Vivienne

A l oud crash. A cry.

Vivienne jolts awake, her heart hammering in her chest.

The surface beneath her is soft—silky. A blanket drapes over her, and plush pillows surround her. The bedsheets feel familiar, luxurious, like the Egyptian cotton ones Lucan uses for his bed.

Egyptian cotton.

Realization hits her. She’s in a private jet. His private jet.

She and Kenji were going to head back to the airport and return home. But Lucan insisted on flying her back in his private jet. He was sure if he let her go into that commercial flight, he might never hear from her again.

Another cry slithers through the door. A frantic oh my god!

Her stomach twists, the clash, the scream.

She flips the blanket off, feet hitting the floor just as the door to the cabinet slides open.

Kenji stumbles in, his bluish-gray eyes wide with horror, his entire body trembling.

Panic spreads through her like wildfire. “What’s happening?” she demands, her voice shaking.

She fumbles with her loafers, her mind immediately jumping to the worst—they are crashing.

Cold sweat beads on her skin. She doesn’t want to die. Not like this—exploding midair, her body shredded into nothing but scattered bones…if they even find them.

“Come on, Sato, what’s happening out there?” Her voice pitches, breath coming out faster. “Are we dying?”

“He’s about to kill someone,” he says, his voice trembling.” Her stomach lurches. It’s not a crash, but a murder.

“W-ho?” The relief of not being the one dying is short-lived. Because someone else is about to.

“Come and fucking stop him.” Kenji grips her wrist, yanking her toward the door.

They both race through the meeting cabinet, the dining area, then he pulls apart a curtain.

Vivienne stops dead.

Her heart slams against her ribs. Her blood roaring in her ears.

Lucan stands at the open jet door, fingers wrapped around a flight attendant’s throat. The prettiest of the three. She dangles in the air, feet kicking, her mouth open in a silent, desperate plea.

Terror chokes Vivienne.

One flight attendant shakes like a leaf, eyes glossy with horror. The second pilot stands frozen, torn between acting and self-preservation.

One of Lucan’s soldiers watches, sunglasses on, arms crossed—doing nothing.

Vivienne’s gaze snaps back to Lucan.

A thick veins pulses along his neck, another branches into a Y at his temple. His sneer is razor-sharp, his expression murderous.

Then it clicks.

This isn’t Lucan.

This is the other one. Zev. And one inch forward, the girl will die. He will kill her.

“Zev!”

And suddenly, a loud shrill vibrates in the room. The echo is so thunderous, times seem to freeze in motion and everywhere goes quiet enough you can almost hear a feather move through the wind.

Her command, however, draws his attention sharply to her, and indeed, she is right. The softness is gone, replaced by something deadly and lethal. He looks crazed and whatever was once lively and kind, lost behind something dark and depraved. There is not a sliver of emotion.

“Go back to bed,” he grounds out, and her feet stagger backward at the power his words carry. “Now!”

“Let her go,” she says, fear etched into every word. “Please.”

“I said, go back to bed!”

“No!” she chokes out, her head shaking rapidly. “You are about to throw a woman fifty thousand feet down and you want me to go to bed and do what? Sleep?”

“Ladybird—”

“Please, I’m begging you.”

Emotion doesn’t work on him. It seems he can’t even interpret them. So even if she starts shedding tears, he wouldn’t even flinch.

His eyes shift from her to the woman, and his jaw clenches.

An invisible hand of the clock begins to tick, the air filled with tension, breaths bated, lips trembling…

and he finally does it; he releases his hold on her, and the lady staggers inward, falling to the ground as a series of cough echoes from her throat.

Her team members rush to her, grabbing her quickly and moving her into another cabinet.

“Zev—” Her words catch in her throat as he trudges to her, and in a fleeting second, faster than a blink, he has her pinned against a wall, his long fingers wrapping around her neck.

“What the fuck, man?!” Kenji yells, panic leaping into his tone, and from the corner of her currently burning eyes, Vivienne sees Kenji surge forward in defence. But he doesn’t even glance at Kenji, his deadly eyes are on her, threatening to obliterate her.

“I am letting you off with a warning.” His voice is raspy and harsh, his hot breath which smells like coffee hitting her face, his talons digging into her neck. “Never in your life, interfere with my business again, got it?”

Vivienne doesn’t even know how to answer that. She is scared, trembling and her tongue feels too heavy to speak.

“Answer me!” he growls, his heavy weight crushing her against the wall. “Do. You. Get it?”

“Mhmm.” She nods, the corners of her eyes burning with tears.

“I did not get that.”

“Y-yes,” she finally chokes out. “I’m, I’m sorry.”

His empty and cold eyes stare at her for what feels like forever and with a huff, he finally lets go.

Desperately, like she is trapped under water, she fights for air back into her lungs, her chest burning. Her back slides down the wall, her butt hitting the floor.

Through the curve of her lashes, she sees him walk away, more like cavort. Anger radiates off him, in the trembling off his fingers, in the bold veins at the corners of his neck and in his steps.

He disappears behind the drawn curtain, the sound of the bedroom door being pulled shut echoes, and two seconds later, she hears a crash. And something tells her that’s the wine glass she spotted on the tiny table in the room earlier.

“Are you okay?” Kenji asks, crouching next to her.

“Yeah.” Her voice is raspy, her weight resting on Kenji as he grabs her gently and hoists her to her feet. He walks them to the leather chair and sits her down.

“Vee.” The tone of his voice passes the message before he says the next words. “We need to get out of here.”

“No,” she says, outrightly and he jumps to his feet, eyes narrowed down at her.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I don’t know, maybe because we can’t fly out of the jet in motion. Otherwise, we might not make it from jumping fifty thousand feet off the surface of the earth.”

This is probably not a good time for sarcasm to be thrown around. This is alarming and indeed, she should be gone. But she is unable to understand what is going on here to even make a decision.

“He was just angry,” the desperate voice in her head says, “He would never hurt you.”

“I told you.” He sits back down. “I told you I didn’t trust him. I told you I had a bad feeling. Now look, he almost threw a woman off a jet in motion.” He looks at her for validation of his point. “Vee, he almost killed a woman!”

“You were here,” she says. “What happened? What did she do to him?”

“Are you for real?” he deadpans. “Does it matter what she did?”

“Just tell me what she did, Kenji.”

“She touched him,” he says, his gaze distant as if reliving the memory which was probably just ten minutes ago.

“He had dozed off, she came with wine, poured it in his glass and then she started touching him. Popped his first button and then his eyes snapped open and before I could even blink, she was dangling off the jet.”

“Are you serious?” Something bitter unsettles her stomach and she refuses to believe that is jealousy and anger, and most importantly, she doesn’t even want to believe it’s directed at the woman who almost died.

But why would she do that? Touch him without his permission?

It’s not as though he ever remotely showed any interest in her.

So why would she go ahead and touch a man without his permission?

What was her plan when she started to take off his buttons?

How shameless is she anyway, seducing a man when there was literally a teenage boy sitting in the same room?

Imagine if they were alone. Would she sexually assault him?

How disgusting. Maybe he should have just let go of her neck. And maybe flying off a thousand feet down the earth would teach her a lesson.

Oh, God.

She shudders at the kind of thought going through her mind.

“ What is wrong with me?”

“Where are you going?” Kenji demands when she suddenly rises from the chair and begins to head toward the bedroom.

“I need to check on him.”

“Are you crazy?” He grabs her wrist. “He almost killed you. And with the look of things, he still looks pretty murderous? Do you want to die?”

“I’m fine, Kenji.” She tugs his hand off her. “Let me just confirm something. I’ll be out real quick.”

“Vee!” he shouts, sounding tired and frustrated. “God, Vee don’t-”

The rest of his call falls against the door of the bedroom that she already slides shut on walking in.

And just as she had suspected when he went into the room, he broke something. The wine glass on the table earlier isn’t there anymore and there are shards of broken glass on the floor.

Her eyes widen in horror when she spots droplets of blood on the floor.

Following the pattern, she sees him at the corner of the room, blood trailing down his fingers and dropping from the tip of his nails.

“Oh, my god.” Careful not to step on glass even though she has her loafers on, she crosses the room to him. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t flinch as she stands behind him.

“You are bleeding.” The moment she grabs his hand, he pulls away and before she can take a step back, he has wrapped the bloodied hand around her neck, his thumb caressing her lips, painting them in the red of his blood.

“I almost killed her for you, you know that, right?” His lips are inches away from hers, and looking into his eyes feels like staring into the abyss. “I would’ve killed her for you.”

“What?” Her voice trembles, fear building in her chest as a sinister smile lifts the corner of his lips.