“And what if I take the deal and you can’t find her?”
“Then you’re as free as a bird knowing that you did everything you could to save her.”
I let out a shaky breath. Her freedom or mine?
I don’t hesitate for a second. “Deal.”
Chapter 4
The second I pull into my driveway Noah comes tearing out the front door with a crazed look in his eyes. He’s not happy and he sure as hell has a right to feel that way.
What the hell have I done?
I sold my soul to the devil just as Noah had all those years ago. If anyone is going to want to tear me apart over the decision I just made, it’s going to be him. How am I supposed to tell him? He’s going to be shattered. We’d only just rid ourselves of Anton’s darkness and here we are again.
Dread sinks heavy into my stomach as Noah tears his way across the yard and barrels into the side of my car. I hardly have a chance to cut the engine before he’s ripping my door open and grabbing me with both hands. “Where the fuck have you been?” he demands, getting down in my face. “It’s three in the morning. Do you have any idea how scared I was for you? You could have been laying in a fucking gutter somewhere for all I knew. What the hell is so hard about answering your damn phone?”
My soul shatters and the sobs come tearing out of me in heavy waves. The anger on Noah’s face instantly falls away. “What happened?” he demands, shaking my shoulders as the horror begins to seep into his features. “What did you do?”
I shake my head, unable to even comprehend the past hour or what it means for my life moving forward, as long as Ari is found safe, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. “I’m sorry,” I cry, falling into him. “I had to. I had no choice.”
“Spitfire,” Noah murmurs, dropping to his knee in the doorway of my car as he pulls me back to get a look at my face. “Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t go to Anton.”
I meet his stormy green eyes to find them pleading, begging for me to say anything except what he’s fearing will come out of my mouth. Tears fall down my cheeks, dropping into my lap before Noah rubs his thumbs across my face, trying to take my pain away. “I had to,” I whisper, repeating myself. “I had to.”
Noah falls back, staring up at me still sitting in my car as though I’m some kind of stranger “I told you I would find her,” he tells me. “You had options. So many fucking options. You should never have gone to him, Henley.”
I climb out of my car and drop down into his lap, ignoring the way the wind whips against my skin, freezing me from the inside out and sending my hair flying up around me. “I didn’t have a choice,” I tell him, searching his eyes. “You know it just as well as I do. Anton is my only option. You can search for her as much as you like but we all know you’ll never find her. She’s not a lost puppy wandering the streets looking for food. She’s my little sister who has been taken away. They could be anywhere, way out of our reach and we’ll be wasting time searching here. She needs me now more than ever and I did what I had to do to get her back.”
“Henley,” he groans.
“No,” I demand. “Anton will get her back and you know it just as well as I do. He has the reach and the means to do impossible things. You know it, Noah. I know you do.”
“The police would have found her.”
“In how long? Two months? Three? That’s not good enough. Don’t you remember when she first came to us? She was starved. She had no clothes. I can’t wait for the cops to get their act together. I need her back now and I don’t give a shit what it’s going to cost me.”
Noah’s back straightens as his eyes narrow on me. “What did you agree to?”
“I…”
“Answer the fucking question, Henley. What did he make you do?”
I let out a breath before raising my chin and owning it like a bad bitch, despite my heavy heart. “I agreed to take over the ‘family business’ seeing as though Rivers isn’t around to do it. If he’s able to find Ari and return her to me, then I will move into his home after the summer and he will train me until I’m competent to take over his Empire.”
I have witnessed Noah in some of his worst moments. I have stood by his side and watched as his heart shattered when thinking he was going to be a father, I’ve been there when he thought he’d lost his best friend and when he’d lost his home, but none of that compares to the way he’s looking at me now.