Page 156 of Cara

My eyes widen. Not Xavier.Me. “Youknew?”

“You really thought he’dtradeyou? Give you up to them? After everything they did to you?”

It even sounds ridiculous when he says it, because I know Xavier. This isn’t the first time he’s changed the course of my life at the expense of his own. The gutting realization that he walked into that building knowing he wouldn’t be leaving it, I can’t handle it, especially when Isabella begins to sob for her mom, and I'm forced to reconcile that she’ll never find her.

Both of her parents aregone.

To stop her trembling, I draw a warm bath, guiding her in. She cries louder, calling for the few people she knows well. No amount of reassurance will calm her. “Please, Izzy. You need to warm up.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Bo presses behind me.

Whatdidhappen? I’m still asking myself that question.

“He threw us… into the harbor.” As I utter the words, I'm shaking my head, unable to believe them.

“I saw that,” Bo clarifies, stunning me. “Your phones have trackers. Yours died when you hit the water.”

With my heart banging against my ribs, my ears drowning out any sense of peace, I leave Isabella in the bathtub and step out of the bathroom, surveying the room.

Dante is gone.

Mimi’s laughter has faded to silence.

All light that once existed in my life has been snuffed out, irreplaceably trampled on. The muscles in my stomach clench. My throat contracts, straining… to keep from screaming.

It’s useless.

One flash of Xavier’s face—and Icrumble.

Whatever got me here is gone. The sheer scale of my pain makes Bo shrink back in disbelief, makes Isabella’s sobs fade to silence. I’m pacing, slamming my fist against my chest as if that will stop the breaking from happening, clutching at anything to keep myself upright.

The lies I told myself to keep my sanity are finally slipping through my fingers, abandoning me for good as the weight of my grief becomes unbearable. “I… I think theyshothim! He’s dead. I think he’sdead!”

Bo’s arms shoot out to support me, lifting me to prevent my collapse. “Sophie, no. Sophie,please.” He pleads the words torturously, like he knows this might actually be it.

My final straw.

Agony seizes all of my limbs, infiltrating every inch of me,already drained by fatigue. Rage feels just as heavy, just as paralyzing. My eyes remain wide open, reliving something I can never forget.

Then I notice the computer open on the desk.

And all that misery spirals into something else when I wrench myself away from Bo’s embrace, collapsing in front of the laptop. My fingers tap manically, striking the keys until the program Dante once showed me pops up on the screen.

The red tracker flashes in sync with my increasing pulse, seeing the word ACTIVE pinned above the only functioning tracker left. “It’s active,” I breathe in disbelief.

The target is on the move, bordering the warehouses my husband owned just this morning.

An empire now back in my father’s grasp.

Bo places three documents on the keyboard. Passports. “Listen to me,” he says calmly, too calmly, as if he knows I’m one word from madness. “We need to run, Sophie. You know it’s what he’d want.”

That flashing red is my only link to salvation.

Paradise awaits across a large and vast ocean, a life with my loved ones within reach, yet those four years of freedom felt empty without his. And if he never gets it, neither will I.

That morbid conviction is suddenly all that I am. It fills the gaps, replaces my agony and exhaustion with something so dark and so vengeful that I willingly give myself up to it rather than feel whatever this is, letting the numbness overtake whatever is broken inside of me. Xavier’s steady resolve makes sense once I’ve reconciled myself with what’s next.

“I'm going to him,” I whisper, my words frost-bitten.