ALASTAIR’S CONFESSION

​POV: Malia

​Time loses all meaning in the dark.

​I measured the passing minutes by the slow, agonizing pulse in my torn wrists and the steady thump-thump of my heart against my ribs. The dampness of the cell had seeped through my clothes, chilling me to the bone, but inside my mind, a violent furnace was burning.

​When the heavy bolts scraped back again, the sudden glare of light made my eyes water fiercely.

​Alastair returned alone. This time, he carried a small, velvet-lined leather case under his arm. He didn't look at me as he set the case down on a small metal folding table near the door. He unfastened the brass latches with crisp, methodical snaps.

​"You always were fascinated by your Uncle Callan," Alastair said quietly, his voice echoing off the damp limestone walls like a funeral knell. "You used to sit on his shoulders in the orchards. You thought he was a saint."

​My body stiffened against the iron chair. Callan. My uncle. The man whose mysterious death three years ago had shattered our family and set off the silent war for control of the Melbourne docks.

​"Don't speak his name," I hissed, my voice rasping through my dry throat. "You aren't fit to utter it."

​Alastair pulled a glass syringe from the velvet lining. Beside it lay a small vial filled with a pale, amber liquid that caught the dim light of the hanging bulb. "Callan was a sentimental fool," Alastair continued smoothly, tapping the glass vial with his nail. "He held the keys to the southern port network. A network that could have generated fifty million dollars a year if he had simply allowed us to route certain... undocumented cargo through the shipping lanes."

​The air in my lungs froze. "Human trafficking."

​Alastair didn't deny it. He didn't even blink. "Unregulated labor. High-demand transit. Callan called it a crime against humanity. He threatened to go to the Federal Police. He threatened to ruin the Kilsyth name over a moral crusade." Alastair turned to face me, his hands carefully filling the syringe with the amber liquid. "He left me no choice. I had his car disabled near the cliff road in Lorne. It was quick. Cleaner than he deserved."

​A tear slipped down my cheek, hot and stinging against my bruised skin, but my jaw remained clamped shut. The sheer horror of his confession settled heavy in the room. He had murdered his own brother for profit, and now he was looking at me with those same empty, calculating eyes.

​"And now, you," Alastair said softly, flicking the side of the syringe to clear a tiny bubble of air. "You discovered the offshore ledgers. You let Jarrah Calaby into our private accounts. You are repeating Callan's mistakes, Malia. And so, you will share his fate."

​He held up the syringe. The liquid inside looked almost beautiful, golden like honey under the yellow light.

​"A refined synthetic neurotoxin," he explained, as casually as if he were discussing a vintage wine. "It induces complete muscular paralysis within three minutes of injection. Respiratory failure follows shortly after. It leaves no trace in a standard autopsy; it appears as a sudden, massive cardiac arrest."

​He walked over to the folding table and pressed a small button on a digital timer. The red LED display flared to life: 00:45:00.

​"Forty-five minutes," Alastair said, setting the timer beside the syringe. "That is how long it will take for my transport to arrive to move my essential files out of Kilsyth. When the timer hits zero, my head of security will come down here and administer the dose. You will die quietly, in the dark, where no one can hear you scream."

​He turned and stepped toward the door.

​"You're a coward," I called out, my voice surprisingly steady despite the violent trembling in my knees. "You can't even inject me yourself. You have to hire another man to do your murder for you."

​Alastair paused at the threshold, his hand resting on the heavy iron door frame. He didn't look back. "A true leader knows how to delegate dirty work, Malia. Goodbye."

​The door slammed shut. The heavy iron bolts slid into place with a final, echoing thud that sounded like a tomb closing shut.

​Silence fell over the cellar, broken only by the soft, rhythmic tick... tick... tick... of the red LED timer on the table. 00:44:12. 00:44:11.

​Darkness swallowed me again, but this time, the panic didn't come. Instead, a profound, eerie stillness settled over my mind. I closed my eyes and pulled my chin down toward my chest.

​Jarrah.

​I closed my eyes tighter, blocking out the cold, the smell of damp earth, and the red glow of the dying clock. I summoned his image into the foreground of my mind.

​I remembered the feel of his rough, tattooed fingers pressing against the small of my back in the rain outside the Calaby docks. I remembered the scent of tobacco, salt air, and cheap leather that hung around him like armor. I remembered the dark, fierce promise in his eyes when he had looked at me in the shadows of the warehouse and whispered, 'If the world burns, Malia, we burn it together.'

​He is coming, I told myself, repeating it like a mantra with every pulse of my heart. He knows. He feels it. Hold on.

​I opened my eyes in the dark and looked directly at the glowing red numbers on the table. 00:38:05.

​I gripped the iron arms of the chair, ignored the tearing skin of my wrists, and began to pull.