Page 51

The house feels empty without her, as if a vital piece of the foundation is missing. I go to my bedroom and get dressed for the night.

As expected, there are roughly about a dozen missed calls from Alaric.

I make my way to the garage and grab the keys for the McLaren Speedtail. The color of it matches my mood for the night. It’s black and blue, darkness swallowing the night.

I drive in complete silence.

Thoughts of her echo in my head like a song only I can hear.

She has no clue how obsessed I am with her.

She’s still under the impression that I let her go out on her own tonight. But I’m not a man who likes leaving things up to chance.

Unbeknownst to her, my security team will be keeping an eye on her the entire night. The car she’s driving is also bulletproof and has built-in GPS that will let me track it in real time.

It’s a little extreme, but I did warn her that I would do everything necessary to protect her.

The streets are nearly empty at this time, so I push down on the accelerator.

The streetlights turn into a golden blur as the car leaps forward like a predator.

The twin-turbo V8 roars as I shift gears.

The rush of speed is intoxicating, but it’s nothing compared to the high I get whenever I think about Emma.

I don’t return Alaric’s call until the gates of Elysium come into view.

“I thought you died or something,” he says. “Where the hell are you?”

“I’m pulling up in front of the club as we speak,” I say.

“Good. Meet me at the usual spot,” he says.

I hand my keys to the valet and head inside.The club is the same as always, but the glamour seems to have faded. Now that I’ve experienced true paradise, everything else dulls incomparison.

Alaric stands to greet me.He looks a little pissed off that I’m late, but he’s still happy to see me.

At the sight of my oldest friend, a rush of affection takes over me. Something vibrates in my chest. My heart feels like it has more love than it can contain, and it’s starting to overflow.

“Took you long enough. And why on earth do you even own a cell phone if you don’t—” His words cut off when I wrap my arms around my best friend.

I hug him for the first time in over a decade.

For probably the first time in his life, Alaric is speechless. He holds me back tightly, like this is a moment he’ll never get again.

He’s been there for me when I was at my worst. He’s the only person who never gave up on me.

When we pull apart, I see that his eyes are glistening. He swallows.

“Dude,” he says.

“I know. I don’t understand it myself,” I say. There’s no noise in my brain anymore. For once, there’s only peace.

He looks at me like he has so much to say but doesn’t know how to express it.

“I’m so happy for you, man,” he says, wrapping his arms around me again. “You learned how to open your heart chakra.”

“My what?” I ask.

He pulls away and narrows his eyes at me.

“I sent you a YouTube video about how to heal the seven chakras,” he says. “Did you not watch it?”

“Oh yeah, I watch every sixty-minute video you send me,” I say.

“You should,” he says. “It would make you a more well-rounded person. There’s so much more to life than work. Did you know that when you have an imbalance in one of your chakras, it literally manifests in your body?”

I try to keep myself from rolling my eyes.

Alaric is so quick to believe everything he comes across.

A few months ago, he was trying to convince me to visit this shaman in Bali he met online.

The year before, he booked tickets for us to go to South America to attend an ayahuasca ceremony.

We went on the trip, but I absolutely refused to let him take me to any ceremony where people get rid of past trauma by throwing up in buckets.

“She helped you heal,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“Emma,” he says. “I don’t know how she did it, but she helped you heal.”

He’s not wrong about that. She helped me when I thought I was beyond the point of help. She looked at the ugliest parts of me and told me that it was okay.

“Yeah,” I say. “She makes me feel like I can be a better man.”

We sit down by our usual spot by the window.

“You’re going to propose tomorrow, right?” he asks.

I smile. “Yeah.”

“You’re actually going through with it?” he asks.

I study him for a moment.

He’s flipping through the menu, but there’s something strange about him tonight.

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“No reason,” he says.

I narrow my eyes at him. He puts the menu down.

“She’s a lovely girl, but I think you might be putting her on a pedestal, man,” Alaric says. “Everyone is flawed in one way or another.”

“She’s a perfect angel,” I say.

He drops his head in his hands. “This is hopeless.”

“What are you trying to say, Alaric?” I ask.

He opens his mouth to say something.

Before he can speak, the waitress appears to take our order.

He orders enough food to feed a small family. It’s not unusual for him to eat this much after a workout. Elysium has a fitness center, where he does theseextensive workouts that include two hours of weight lifting followed by an hour of swimming.

But having known Alaric for a long time, I also know that he’s an emotional eater. He eats to bury his feelings.

“What’s going on with you?” I ask.

“My workout was brutal today,” he says. “I’m hungry.”

“I still don’t understand why you come here for your workouts when you have a home gym,” I say.

“It’s more motivating when other people are around,” he says.

“Can’t relate,” I mutter.

The appetizers are served. It’s clear that he’s avoiding having a conversation, but I let him eat in peace. He demolishes the breadsticks and French onion soup at record speed.

“Are you sure you don’t want any?” he asks between bites.

“I already had dinner,” I reply.

A few minutes later, the main course is served.

His eyes flick to mine. He flinches when he sees me looking at him.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on,” I say.

“I have good news and bad news,” he says, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “The good news is that we found information on Emma’s stalker. The bad news is that he’s much more dangerous than we thought.”

I sit straighter in my seat.

“What did you find?” I ask.

“Do you remember our trip to New Orleans?” he asks. “You kept telling me that you had a feeling we were being followed.”

“The red pickup truck,” I say. “You said it belonged to a cop.”

“An ex-cop, yeah,” he replies, stabbing the pasta with his fork.

“It turns out that you were right to be suspicious. He was a corrupt cop who was fired when they found him stealing smuggled drugs from the evidence room. He did shadier things too, like falsifying reports and planting evidence, but there was never any proof of it. So they let him go. After losing his job, this man searched for other distractions. He hung out on online forums pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

He used a VPN to cover his tracks, but my team uncovered his identity. ”

“Adam,” I say. Emma’s stalker.

Alaric nods. “Yes.”

“What was he doing in New Orleans?” I ask.

“He’s been watching us,” Alaric says. “He’s been tracking our movements. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he always seems to be one step ahead.”

Emma and I weren’t even together when I made that trip to New Orleans. And when I returned to Ravenwood, that’s when he tried to get me out of the picture. He showed up again in Chicago. I still remember the icy deadness in his eyes as he watched Emma and the kids on the skating rink.

He’s not going to give up until he gets what he wants. This is a man with too much time on his hands.

Sadly for him, I won’t let him even breathe the same air as her.

My body vibrates with fury. This guy has been a threat to Emma for far too long. I can’t wait to kill him with my own hands.

“Do we have his location?” I ask.

“He’s constantly moving,” Alaric says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we learned that he lives in an RV.”

“What else do we know about him?”

“He shows traits of narcissism and sociopathy,” he says. “We’re dealing with a highly intelligent criminal who’s good with technology.”

“So how do we draw him out?”

My hands ball into fists. I want to solve this problem tonight . This man is a cockroach that has been allowed to exist for far too long.

“Even if we were to find his location, I can’t let you kill him,” Alaric says.

“Why the fuck not?”

“He’s not just after Emma,” Alaric says.

“We accessed some of his accounts and found that he’s been talking to multiple minors.

He forms relationships with them and gets them to trust him before meeting them in person.

I suspect that Emma was the first girl he tried this on, so he formed a weird attachment to her. But she was only the beginning.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

He clears his throat. “We found some sick pornography on his computer, Klaus. This man is a pervert.”

My eyebrows draw together as the dots connect in my head. It feels like too big of a coincidence, but it’s not impossible.

“Do you think he’s a part of the dark web ring?” I ask.

“That’s what all the evidence points toward,” he says. “These children aren’t just being picked up out of the streets. They’re being lured in by predators who are pretending to be online friends. And once they’re in that situation, they’re trapped by guilt and shame.”

“What does this mean for us?” I ask.

“It means we need to be methodical about this,” he says. “We need to outsmart him and get him to reveal what he knows about the organization.”

“How many victims does he have?” I ask.

“Dozens,” Alaric says. “This is a full-time job for this man.”

“How many?”

“He’s spoken to ninety-five teenage girls over the past few years,” he says. “And a large percentage of these girls have gone missing. We need to do everything in our power to save further children from being exploited.”

The Resistance deals with vile human beings all the time, but nothing’s ever impacted me like this. I was always able to approach things rationally, but I’m feeling too much right now.

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Alaric says.

“No, I’m glad you told me,” I say.

We sit in silence for a few minutes. Alaric picks at his meal as I digest everything he just shared with me.

Emma once shared that she tried to go to the police to file a complaint against her stalker. That was when he tried to poison her grandmother. We can’t rule out the possibility that he still has friends in the police force who provide him with resources and information.

Dessert is served. It’s gingerbread cake with a light icing on top. He ordered a plate for me as well.

“I know it’s your favorite,” he says.

I take a distracted bite.

The taste instantly takes me back to happier times—when the only things I was worried about were school assignments and soccer games. It was a simpler time when my sister was still a part of my life, lighting up my world with her bright laughter and easygoing nature.

“I can’t wait for the holidays,” Alaric says. “I spend the whole year dreaming about Helena’s gingerbread roll with the cinnamon icing. She only makes it for Christmas and refuses to share the recipe.”

“I don’t know why, but I always dread the holidays,” I confess.

“I think everyone does a little bit,” he replies. “It’s a lot of pressure, especially when you’ve gone through so many life changes.”

I nod, taking another bite of the cake.

It tastes like the loss of innocence. But now, it also tastes like new memories and new love. I see Emma in the kitchen decorating cookies with the kids. I see her smiling across the room at me.

Alaric clears his throat.

“There’s something else I wanted to talk about,” he says.

“I’m all ears.”

“It’s about Emma,” he says. “I learned something about her that you might not know.”

“Alaric, we don’t have to do this,” I say. “She told me about her father. Just because the two of us don’t know every single detail about each other’s life doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be together. That’s what the rest of our life is for.”

He looks at me with a pained expression on his face.

“I have to tell you this, though,” he says.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” I say. “If there’s something that she wants to share with me, she’ll do it in her own time.”

“Klaus, you’re about to marry that girl. That’s a pretty big decision to make.”

“I’m finally happy again, Alaric. She makes me happy.”

“And I love that for you, but?—”

“Let’s end this discussion here.” I push my plate away.

He purses his lips together. There’s resolution in his eyes. Whatever he wants to say, he’s going to say it.

“Did she tell you what she does on the weekends?” he asks. When I only stare at him, he adds, “She works at Elysium, man. She’s one of the girls here.”