Chapter 26: Staring into the Past

Karen's POV

To me, the dark barrel of Croft's tactical sidearm didn't exist, and neither did Victoria's enforcer, who was standing in the hall with his hand over the remote detonator connected to Chloe's ventilator.

My whole world had shrunk down to the two feet of salt-stained air between Valkyrie and me.

She stood in front of Lachlan like an iron shield. Her knuckles white from the way she held onto the boy's sweater, her dark hair wild from the coastal wind. Although her breathing was short and shallow, her eyes, deep, stormy eyes that used to soften each time I drew her into my arms, were colder than the Bass Strait.

“Why are you running the Aegis trades, Valkyrie?” I asked, my voice low and raspy, vibrating through the dark cottage. “14.2% of Vance Global. You've been draining dark pools for six months from a rusted pump shed in the mud. Tell me why.”

She didn't flinch, didn't look at Croft's gun or the enforcer holding her sister hostage.

"Mr. Vance, you're on someone's private land," she said.

Her voice was like a blade of razor wire—lacking any warmth, having no history, and entirely free from the woman who used to sleep with her head resting over my heart.

"Val—"

“I asked you to leave,” she interrupted, her voice dropping to a terrifying tone that cut deeper than a knife. "You have no legal right to be in this house, no business in Port Campbell. Get off my property before I have Dr. Croft call the local constable."

A cruel, painful laugh almost shot out of my throat, but it turned to ash as soon as it reached my tongue. I took half a step forward, disregarding the metallic click as Croft raised his weapon higher.

“A local constable?" I whispered, my gaze fixed on hers. "You're running an offshore ghost entity intended for the purpose of forcing a hostile board audit on my mother! You hold 14.2% of the voting stock in my family! Do you think this is merely a matter of local property boundaries?"

"You must be mistaken," Valkyrie said coldly, stepping closer to me until I could sense the faint, agonizing radiation off her skin. "Aegis Capital is an independent offshore investment firm. What happens on Collins Street has nothing to do with you breaking into my home at midnight, threatening my family, and frightening my son."

She looked straight into my eyes without blinking, her face an unreadable mask of ice.

"Leave, Kaelen,” she repeated, each syllable measured and sharp. "Now.”

"You want me to walk out that door?” My voice cracked with a sudden and dangerous outburst of emotion.

"After I spent four years believing you sold my life's work? After I learned that my mother used a dummy file to place a knife to your sister's throat? After standing on that porch looking into my son's eyes for the very first time?"

Lachlan's fingers closed more tightly on the back of her skirt. The boy didn't cry; instead, he looked up at me with his brilliant silver eyes, his young mind focusing in a terrifying silence as it worked through the chaos raging in the room.

Valkyrie’s jaw tightened into a stiff and harsh line, but I could see a very faint tremor in her lower lip. The echo of our past was shouting between us—each peaceful morning spent in the penthouse, each promise made to her before the world came crashing down, each tear she cried while secretly carrying my blood across the country.

“You don't get to bring up my son,” her voice finally losing its flat edge, breaking into a quiet but deadly chill. “You gave up the right to say his name the night you let your mother's security guards drag me out into the rain four years ago. You didn't stand for me back then, and now, you have no right to act as his protective father.”

"I'm his father," I grumbled, my chest rising and falling as I put a hand into my coat pocket.

Croft tensed, pressed his finger harder on the trigger, but I didn't pull out a weapon.

I pulled out the thin, plain platinum wedding band which I had kept locked away in the drawer of my desk for four years. I reached out and slammed it down with a loud, metallic noise on the scrubbed timber table between us.

It rotated once in the moonlight before dropping flat.

Valkyrie looked down at the ring, and for a single moment the ice in her eyes broke completely. A look of raw, suffocating agony spread across her, so intense and devastating it knocked the air out of my lungs.

"I kept it, Val," I whispered, moving directly into her space, my hand hovering inches from her face, longing to brush aside the dark hair clinging to her wet cheek. "I kept it because I never stopped looking for you. I know what Victoria did; I know about the St. Jude records. I'll burn down her empire for what she made you suffer, but I'm not leaving this coast without you and Lachlan."

"Kaelen, watch out!" Devlin’s voice suddenly screamed in my pocket through my encrypted earpiece. "The local grid has just been bypassed! It's a secondary intercept!"

Before I could move, the front window of the cottage exploded in a shower of shattered glass and splintered wood.

A heavy, black tactical tear-gas canister bounced across the rug, hissing and spattering a thick, blinding cloud of white chemical smoke into the living room.

Lachlan screamed, and Valkyrie jumped sideways, throwing her body completely over the boy as the room broke into chaos. Croft fired twice in the dark into the fog, the loud cracks reverberating off the walls while the back door was kicked off its hinges.

Three heavily armed men, wearing unmarked black tactical gear, broke through the blinding smoke and entered the cottage.

The main operative didn't aim at Croft nor at me; instead, he went straight through the fog, grabbed Valkyrie by her dark sweater, and pulled her roughly towards the broken front door.

"Target acquired!" the operative shouted over the noise of the wind. "Transfer the girl to the main transport! Victoria's order!"