Chapter 17 : The Island

Eli laughed.

Not the laugh of a man with a gun against his skull. Something colder than that. The sound of someone who had already decided how the story ended and found the journey genuinely amusing.

"You are going to shoot me," he said. "In front of her. In front of those babies." He let the silence sit for a moment. "Go ahead, then."

Lucian did not move.

"Webb does not want the empire," Eli said. His voice was completely conversational, like he was discussing a trade deal. "He never did. Franchises can be bought and sold. Money can be replaced." He tilted his head forward a fraction, the barrel following. "He wants the bloodline. Those three children are Morgan heirs. The trust structures, the international holdings, the generational assets. Whoever controls the children controls all of it until they come of age." Another pause. "He has attorneys ready. All he needs is a viable custody claim and three men in federal prison to make it stick."

The room went very still.

Whoever controls the children.

I looked at the three cribs still sitting in the living area beyond the destroyed wall, cold Miami wind moving through the space where sixty thousand dollars of reinforced glass used to be. Three identical cribs placed by a man who had been planning this since before I left Ohio.

Gavin's hand was on his weapon.

Zane had stopped moving entirely.

Lucian's arm was rigid. I could see the tension from across the room, the specific stillness of a decision being made and held at the edge of execution.

His finger moved.

"Lucian." I crossed the room.

He did not look at me.

"Lucian." I put my hand on his arm. Not the weapon. His arm. "Not here. Not in this room."

"Mali." Eli's voice. Soft. Still trying.

"Do not speak to her," Lucian said.

"Not here," I said again. I kept my hand on his arm and my voice as steady as I could make it. "I am not asking you to let him go. I am asking you not to do it in the room where my babies sleep."

A long moment.

Lucian's eyes moved to my face.

Just for a fraction of a second, the cold executive calculation was gone. Something underneath it surfaced, brief and real and human.

He lowered his arm.

Gavin moved before Eli could process the shift. One step, a single controlled arc of motion, and the butt of his weapon connected with the side of Eli's skull with a sound that ended the conversation completely.

Eli dropped.

Gavin stepped over him without looking down.

Zane was already on his phone. "We need extraction on sixty-two. Yes. Now. Full package." He looked at Lucian. "Thirty minutes."

"Twenty," Lucian said.

I stood in the center of the room and the cold wind coming through the shattered wall hit me all at once, the full force of Miami night air at sixty-two stories. My legs were shaking and I had not noticed until the adrenaline found the gap.

Lucian's jacket came around my shoulders before I could reach for anything.

He pulled it closed in front of me, then pulled me in after it, pressing me against his chest with one arm wrapped around my back. I could feel his heart through the shirt. It was not as steady as his voice had been.

"Miami is finished," he said into my hair. "We are leaving tonight."

"Where."

"Somewhere Webb has no jurisdiction and no reach." He held me tighter. "Somewhere we should have taken you from the beginning."

I did not argue.

I did not have the energy left to argue, and somewhere underneath the exhaustion was the quieter truth that I did not want to.

Gavin and Zane moved me toward the shattered wall. A platform had been rigged just outside, the helicopter hovering with a steadiness that required a pilot of serious skill. Zane stepped on first and turned back, offering his hand. Gavin placed his palm flat against my lower back.

I took Zane's hand.

The rotor wind hit full force as I stepped onto the platform, and then I was inside, and Gavin was beside me, and Lucian folded in last with one final look back at the penthouse before the door sealed shut.

The helicopter lifted.

Miami fell away beneath us, the lights contracting into a grid and then a glow and then a suggestion on the horizon as we banked south over open water.

Zane leaned close to my ear.

"The island," he said. "No press. No Webb. No world." He squeezed my hand. "Just us."