Chapter 6

Quinn didn't know how much time had passed before she opened her eyes.

A white ceiling. The sharp, clean bite of antiseptic in the air.

She shifted, and the movement jolted the man sleeping slumped against her bedside.

The next second, Holden had his arms around her — tight, desperate, his voice stripped of everything that usually armored it. "Thank God. Thank God you're okay."

"If you'd died — what would I do? What would any of this be worth without you?"

Quinn pushed against him until he released her. The effort cleared her head enough to take him in.

He looked wrecked. His hair, usually immaculate, had gone to pieces. The skin under his eyes was bruised with exhaustion. He hadn't shaved in days.

Even after the explosion that had almost killed them both, she had never seen him come apart like this.

Quinn turned her face away. "Shouldn't you be with Serena? She's the one you threw yourself in front of."

"Serena's fine. It's you I'm—"

He stopped. He clearly remembered, in the same moment she did, exactly why Serena was fine.

Something moved through his eyes. Guilt, and a horror at himself that he hadn't earned the right to display. He reached for her hand.

"I didn't think. I swear to you, I didn't think it would go like that. You're the only person in this world I want to protect—"

"Give me a chance. Let me make it up to you."

Quinn lay there and thought about the last time he'd said those words. Down on one knee, face twisted with remorse, begging her to come back. I was wrong. Give me another chance. We can be the way we used to be.

When she hadn't agreed, he'd had her kidnapped and dragged back.

He hadn't changed. He never would.

Quinn let out a quiet, contemptuous sound and said nothing.

But Holden had made up his mind to win her back, and for the days that followed, he was relentless. He cooked every meal himself, cleaned the room, took over her laundry. At the smallest sign of discomfort, he'd stay up through the night. The days had a strange, muffled peace to them — as if time had folded backward to before Serena.

It didn't last.

The day she was discharged and returned to the estate, Serena was waiting.

She fell to her knees the moment Quinn walked in, sobbing hard enough to shake. "Mrs. Blackwood, I know I wronged you. Not Noah — please, it was my fault, not his. Please give him back to me."

Serena crawled forward on her knees, her voice raw: "Noah's a good boy — he wouldn't just disappear on his own. You took him. You have to have taken him!"

"If you want to punish someone, punish me. He's innocent!"

Quinn pulled her hand free and looked past her to Holden. Her voice was steady and cold. "You believe her?"

"I've been hospitalized for days. I haven't left your sight. But you still think I somehow hid your son somewhere?"

Holden's jaw was tight. He was clearly fighting to stay controlled. "You just got out of the hospital. I don't want to do this the hard way. Just tell me where Noah is, and we'll leave it at that."

The pain in Quinn's chest was an old one now — she was almost used to it. Almost.

"I told you I didn't send that tip to the press. You didn't believe me. I'm telling you now I didn't take Noah. You still don't believe me." She looked at him with something beyond anger. "Holden. You never believe me."

His composure cracked. He seized her wrist and pulled her into the security room.

The footage was already cued up.

On the screen, a woman in a hospital gown slipped into the children's suite in the middle of the night and lifted the sleeping boy. The build, the hair, the way she moved — it could have been Quinn. Except the face was covered, a mask from chin to nose.

"Is that me, or isn't it?" Holden's voice was shaking. "Don't tell me I never believe you. How am I supposed to look at that and believe anything else?"

"You used to save lives, Quinn. Dozens of them. You were one of the best people I'd ever met. How did you become this?"

On the basis of a silhouette and a hospital gown, he'd already decided.

Quinn laughed — a short, brittle sound. "If your mind's already made up, I don't have anything to say."

Something shifted in Holden's face. The certainty flickered for just a moment. He stood rigid.

He had never imagined she would look at him like this — with nothing in her eyes that resembled what they'd once had. There had been a time when she would talk with him all night, about anything, about nothing. The memory of it surfaced and disappeared in seconds.

He drove it back down. "Last chance. Where's Noah?"

"I don't know."

"Fine. I'll make you talk."

A guard stepped forward with a leather whip, thick as two fingers.

The first stroke came down across her back.

"Tell me where he is."

Quinn coughed blood. She caught herself on her hands and started dragging herself toward the door, silent, without a word.

Holden looked at her struggling to move and felt all the rage of the three years she'd been gone come pouring back. He didn't stop.

One stroke, then another.

Quinn's back was a wreck. Her fingernails had broken against the floor. She still hadn't said a word.

"Sir! The young master's back!"

An excited voice from outside the door. Holden's head came up — and the look that broke across his face was pure, unguarded relief. He dropped the whip and ran out.

He left her there on the floor.

It took her a long time to pull herself upright. When she finally managed it, she picked up her phone.

A familiar number had sent her a message.

Everything's in place. Holden will watch you die.

Soon.

Very soon, she would disappear from his world in the most devastating way possible.