Free to destroy his dynasty one goddess at a time.
* * * * *
I left Sully’s villa early and padded barefoot to my old home on the beach.
I entered the space where Sully had fucked me in the shower and over the sink, violence still hovering in the air from his lies at sending me away.
I embraced that violence and passion as I placed Skittles in the cotton balls on the vanity, and Pika chose a perch on the tap.
As I turned on the shower, it felt like Sully was still here, and I kept my eyes closed as water sluiced over me, remembering his aggressive touch, his possessive kiss, the hunger in his every stare.
I missed him.
I lusted for him.
But most of all…I wanted him back.
Even if his memory was wiped clean and he no longer loved me. Even if he sent me away all over again—I could exist in a world where Sully survived even if we weren’t together.
I finished my shower—the first in a while—and dressed in clothing made for a woman instead of shirts crafted for a man. I brushed my hair from lugs and knots that’d steadily been forming dreadlocks while I’d mourned Sully’s stillness, donning a grey dress with a black hem and neckline, and applied kohl to my eyes.
Only once I no longer looked like a creature dragged from the bottom of the sea did I place Skittles back on my shoulder and welcome Pika to fly beside me all the way to Dr Campbell’s surgery.
Stepping inside, sniffing antiseptic and medicine, I braced myself to go to war with Calvin Moor.
It was no secret that we weren’t best-friends. The truce he’d given me, when we’d last been in Dr Campbell’s surgery before Drake marched Sully and me away, had been given in genuine generosity.
Would that stand when he learned what I wanted to do?
The interconnecting door to patient rooms suddenly swung open, revealing the very man I’d come to see. Lying in a bed, scowling in annoyance, Calvin glowed with health—the exact state I wished Sully could be.
The man wheeling him, a local to Indonesia with long black hair tied in a topknot and intelligent eyes froze. “Ah, you must be Ms. Grace.”
Calvin stiffened on his bed, propped up with pillows and frustration wafting off him. “Jinx…what the fuck are you doing here?”
“I…” I looked between the two men. What had I interrupted? “I was coming to see you actually.”
“Wish you’d waited until tomorrow, then you wouldn’t see my fucking embarrassment at being wheeled around like an invalid.”
“You are not an invalid, sir. You are recovering from multiple gunshots—”
“I was ready to leave this place a week ago. It was you and Campbell forming a conspiracy against me and locking the doors that kept me here against my will.”
“Etti was only following my orders,” Dr Campbell muttered as he followed them through the door. “Ah, Eleanor. What a pleasure.” His face fell. “Is Sinclair okay? Have the Geneva doctors got it under control?”
Cal never took his gaze off me as I flinched. I couldn’t help it. Sully’s name was a trigger to me. A fatal shot to my heart. “He’s steady.”
“No improvement then?” Campbell asked gently.
“No.” I sniffed and braced myself all over again. “I came to talk to Cal. It can’t wait.”
Cal smirked. “They’re finally taking me to my villa. I’m free of this place full of bleach and beeping bloody machines.”
I could understand his loathing toward the beeps. I was forming my own love-hate relationship to the one announcing Sully’s faulty heart.
The Indonesian man held out his hand. “I’m Etti. I’m a vet, but my patients have been two-legged of late.”
I shook his hand. “You were on Serigala…”
He winced. “I was. But I was one of the lucky few and very grateful when Jim requested my help.”
I looked at Dr Campbell. “How is Jealousy?”
Cal stiffened. A barely noticeable inhale.
Dr Campbell nodded with professional calm. “Same as Sully. Stable and sleeping.”
“Is she showing any signs of waking?”
“Not yet.”
Seemed everyone was trapped on this island.
I was trapped in a never-ending circle.
Sully was trapped in a prison of his mind.
Jealousy was trapped in a never-ending sleep.
And Cal was trapped in a bed until he healed.
But there were lives in the balance that didn’t need to be trapped.
Girls who’d been purchased for sin and who’d been living in secret for the past two weeks on Lebah. Goddesses who had to be freed before the police returned with a warrant, regardless if Sully woke to his crimes or not.
“Look, you guys can discuss happy topics, but I’m leaving. I need to be outside, right now.” Cal swiped the sheet off his body and swung his legs to the edge of the bed. “I can walk.”
Dr Campbell groaned as if he was over having this fight with Calvin. “As I said so many damn times before, yes, you are feeling better, and yes, your system is healing, but if you overdo it, you’ll only set yourself back.”