LOGINAxel’s POV. Once I heard the shattering glass on the floor, I knew something was wrong. But as Kara’s shrilling scream follows it, I turn around quickly to find her clutching her ears, pink paint shattered in patterns at her feet. She’s shivering by the time I get to her, as if she had seen a ghost. When I turned around and saw her grabbing her hair and forcing her eyes to the floor, I dashed to hold her without a second thought. “Kara,” I call softly and try to hold her hands, but she pushes me off, flinching away from my touch. I stop for a moment, finding her movement strange. She never pushes me away. But as if she had thought I was somebody else, she looked back up at me quickly, her eyes meeting mine and shattering me. They had fear in them. After many years of knowing Kara, I don’t think I've ever seen this side of her. Scared. Terrified. The Kara I know has always been a strong, independent woman who wouldn’t stand nonsense and wasn’t afraid of anybody. “Axel….” She murm
Kara’s POV. Axel’s mother made sure we had a good time before the crack of dawn the next day. Terra called Axel in the late hours of the night, wanting to discuss business, and as soon as the day broke the next day, Axel told me about a business he needed to attend to urgently. What got my heart fluttering after we arrived in the city was how Axel kept to his word. He never left me out of his sight, even when he needed to meet with Terra for some business, and I demanded that I stay back at the house. And as I sat in an empty office watching Axel and Terra talk about business on her conference table through the glass walls separating us, I realized how calm my life has suddenly become since the kidnapping. Everything seems so quiet and peaceful now. I haven’t heard back from Jade, as Axel had predicted, even from Derrick, to my surprise. Derrick would usually be calling me by now, either proposing one business partnership or another in his attempts to get me back under his wings.
Kara’s POVI stand up with an urgency and hurry over to him. I’ve seen Axel angry many times before but nothing like this. I’ve seen him upset many times when Derrick harassed me, or when some companies I tried to partner with tries to use me and take advantage of me, but nothing like this one. Whatever just happened is bigger than what I’m used to. “Axel, what happened?” I ask frightfully. Axel looks from his phone’s screen that has gone dim, lights out to see me. Goddamnit Axel. I’m losing it by the second. Every second he just stood there looking at me without saying a word was throwing me further and further into edge. Is he gonna tell me what happened or not? Or do I need to smack it out of him? “Axel, what’s going on?!” I add more octave to my voice. “It’s…… it’s my mother, Kara,” he stammers incoherently, my heart hammering in my chest, “She had a heart attack.”I froze as the words hit me and instantly go from worrying about him to pitying him. I knew Axel has never been
Kara's POV. I woke up to the shrill sound of something frying from the kitchen and the tantalizing aroma that came with it. I squint my eyes as I try to adjust to the brightness of the room. The room seemed too bright for morning, and for a moment I actually wondered what time it was. Afternoon, perhaps? I finally pry my eyes open to the morning brightness seeping into the room through the open window. I groan tiredly as I try to sit up. Then a big smile crosses my lips, accompanied by a vibrant blush that stains my cheeks because my mind did a quick thing where images of past events flash through my brain like lightning. The image of Axel seated on the edge of this bed as he tended to me while putting me to bed, his hands gently caressing my skin and hair, flashed through my eyes. I get off the bed after getting myself away from my thoughts. Axel's room is extremely flashy, and a bed too wide for a man living alone, in my opinion. But Axel has the
Kara's POV. I sit around the threshold table in Terra's kitchen, eyes glued on the empty coffee mug I've just finished. After the incident earlier, Terra made us some dinner. Axel and I are still seated on the kitchen center table, even though we finished eating a little while ago. I, for one, couldn't find my appetite. But I guess it's expected when you've just been kidnapped and almost died. Axel has been supporting me since then. He would help me off my feet to walk into the bathroom, where Terra had run me a bath and helped me bathe. Thanks to Terra, I was able to change clothes. Axel helped apply some balm back onto the bruises on my skin after washing off the ones I had used before my bath. Then he'd helped me go to the kitchen, where we had dinner. I try to make him understand that I'm fine, and I can still perfectly use my legs, but he won't let me. He still believes I'm hurt or that I sustained some internal injury. "I still think you sh
Jade's POV. I could stand there all day and listen to Mel talk and talk about this man. If she isn't talking about how I'd let him get to us, then she's talking about how he is some rogue soldier who is very dangerous and how unfortunate it was that he caught up with us. And also, how lucky I am to have gotten away? Her talks made me feel sick. Instead of looking for solutions to our problems, she's adding salt to the wound. I do not know what her scolding is intended to do. Make me feel better about my failed plan? Rewind the last one and a half hours when I still had Kara in my hands? Or cower in fear and go out to turn myself in to this strange man she couldn't stop talking about to save her life. Why is she so shaken up by him? "I don't understand why you're so worked up about one man." I shot at Mel, getting infuriated by the passing minute because it looks like she's making an issue out of nothing over this Jerome guy. Sure, he's a retired army or what







