All Chapters of After He Let Me Fall : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

NYLA "Kael, please don't go." I said, meaning every single word that came out. Kael stopped at the bedroom door and turned around and I was already standing, which I hadn't planned either. "I'll be back," he said. "You don't know that for certain. It is dangerous, and you know it." He crossed back to me without hesitation. He stopped in front of me and tilted my chin up with two fingers. "I can't stay away from you for too long. That is not something I'm capable of anymore." "Kael, just listen." He kissed me before I could finish whatever I was about to say and I let him, because arguing with him when he was like this was genuinely pointless and also because I didn't actually want to argue. I wanted him to stay and I knew he couldn't. When he pulled back he smiled widely, admiring me for a while, he was so close to the extent that I could see every detail of his face. "I'll be back," he said again. Just for me to hear. Then he walked out and the door closed behind h

KAEL "There's something else," she said. She stood and disappeared down the hallway. I heard a drawer open, then another. When she came back she was holding two things. The cloth bundle I already knew about and something smaller. A key. Old, brass, with a number stamped into the base. She set both on the table between us. "After I found them I went to the study like I told you. Behind the panel I found the drive. But beside it, tucked into the same space, was this." She touched the key lightly. "I didn't know what it opened. I still don't. But your father had wrapped it in a piece of paper with four words written on it." She looked at me. "I've always believed he meant when the time was right. When whoever found it would know what to do with it." She pushed it toward me. "I think that's you." I picked up the key and turned it over. The number stamped into the base was worn but legible. A storage number. The kind used for safety deposit boxes or private lockers at instit

KAELI arrived at the penthouse told me everything before I'd taken three steps inside.I called the head guard immediately."Where is she," I said."Sir, Miss Leclair instructed us to stand down. She called directly and—""I gave you one instruction before I left. One." My voice stayed flat. "Which direction did the car go."He gave me the street. I was already heading back to the elevator.In the car I called my tech man. "Live ping on the penthouse driver's registered phone. Movement trail, last ninety minutes. Send it through now."I drove while I waited. It was already dark and quiet at this hour, which made the absence of their tail lights more obvious and more frustrating. They had a head start and Courtney had clearly known exactly how much time she needed.My phone buzzed. The trail came through moving northeast but then it curved back west and stopped somewhere I didn't expect.I looked at the location and understood immediately where she was taking Nyla. She was heading to

COURTNEY "I would never do that." My response was the most true thing I had and I needed Nyla to hear them first before anything else had the chance to be settled between us. She was looking at me with eyes that carried too many things at once and I understood every single one of them because I had imagined this moment in so many different versions over the years and none of them had prepared me for what it actually felt like to be standing in it. "I could never hand you to anyone," I said. "Not to Harlow, not to Grimes, not to a single person with bad intentions toward you. You are the one thing in my entire life I have never been willing to trade away." I looked at Kael then because he was the other person in this room who deserved to hear it directly. "And I would never harm her. Whatever you think you know about me, whatever you were told, bringing Nyla out of that building tonight came from one place. Fear. I have been running from these people long enough to underst

NYLA The phone screen was still facing me. And everyone had gone alert."Kael, should we answer it?" I looked at Courtney and Courtney looked at the phone and I watched her make a decision in real time. Her jaw set, her shoulders pulled back slightly, and she answered it. She put it on speaker without being asked to and I understood that was definitely intentional. She wanted witnesses."Hello, Courtney." The voice that came through was not what I expected. I had built Harlow into something monstrous in my head over the last hour and the voice didn't match the monster. It was warm and entirely unbothered, the voice of a man conducting a routine conversation with someone he had complete confidence in."Hello," Courtney responded. "Courtney," he said. "I've been waiting." "I know." Her voice was completely flat. "I hope the drive wasn't too long. That part of the city gets congested even at night." A pause. "How is she?" Courtney's eyes came to me and stayed there. "She's fine.