He raised the remote high in one hand, and yelled, something garbled and unintelligible. He pressed the button.
Akira screamed because she didn’t want to die yet. She dived down between the men and towards her niece.
So she saw what happened the next instant, only in flashes.
There seemed to be some sort of explosion. Kharaan screamed, clutching his hand, no, the empty stump where his hand holding the remote had been. Blood was pouring, gushing out of the wound.
He went down, invoking Allah’s name in vain. In abject, mortal agony.
Shots were fired, while Akira crouched around her still unconscious niece, making her body a human shield, and prayed devoutly that nothing would hit the two of them. Nothing did.
Because as suddenly as the shooting had started, it stopped.
The room reeked of gunfire, smoke and sulfur. Akira coughed loudly, while she sensed movement all around her. She still didn’t dare raise her head up in case the wrong side had won.
“Princess, your dress is totally ruined.” She heard a voice speak laconically. Totally at odds with the organized chaos that still reigned in the room.
Her arms went still and tight around her niece… who finally stirred and moaned brokenly.
Akira raised her head, not allowing her breath to leave past this moment.
Brand was standing, barely. In torn, wet clothes, blood pouring out of his face, in ugly streaks. His pant legs were torn, and there were glass shards sticking to his arms. His Kevlar chest was riddled with holes, and he looked dead on his feet.
But he was grinning at her.
Shanaya Mallik opened her eyes and looked at her aunt, who was holding her so tightly her chest hurt.
“Maasi, bad men came for me,” she whispered crying now.
“I know, sweetie. I am sorry.” AkiraAkira hugged her, tightly.
Still staring at Brand who was staring back at her too.
“They said I was going to make things explode. I didn’t, did I? I don’t like explosions.” Shanaya was talking through tears. Remembering the night when her mommy had died in a car explosion. A huge ball of fire that was very hot and that made her skin tingle.
“No, sweetie, you didn’t. Nothing’s happened. Nothing.” Akira murmured, while she let the girl off enough to see her.
Brand dropped down beside the two of them.
“Maasi, why are you looking at that man funnily and crying?” Shanaya was puzzled.
Akira had no answer to that.
She was looking at two of the men who’d come into the still-smoking stateroom.
One was Geraldo De La Hoya. Looking like death warmed over and screaming over and over again to the other man to save him. To spare him, he was sorry. He was so sorry. He wouldn’t do this again, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
The man who was looking at Geraldo groveling at his feet was impassive. Unforgiving.
He was Santiago Sebastian Delgado.
Fifty
She couldn’t believe what she’d done.
Akira curled her knees around herself and looked at the child sleeping soundly on the bed beside her. She was ten years old, and was one of the sharpest kids in her school, with a smile she’d inherited from her mother – sweet and infectious.
She had Aloka’s sweet disposition too. And the capacity to trust everybody. Anybody.
It was how Murad’s men had been able to spirit her away from the Panchgani boarding school where she was housed. She’d told Akira sleepily that the men told her they’d let her meet her Akira maasi and since she hadn’t seen maasi in so long, it sounded perfectly reasonable.
Her grandmother’s visit had made her very mad, you see, because Naani had told her Akira maasi was gone again and she hadn’t even come to visit.
Akira listened with growing horror as Shanaya innocently explained things to her and Sebastian - who’d been largely silent throughout the proceedings. She hadn’t been able to look the former Premier in the eye, ever since she’d seen him aboard La Reine along with the police.
The implications behind this move, behind his appearance were so huge that she didn’t want to think about them right now.
So she’d allowed the Monaco police to escort them all off the ship and to the hotel. Holding onto her baby girl, who’d wrapped her arms and legs around her aunt and promptly gone back to sleep due to the shot administered to her by one of the first-responder medics at the wharf.
Akira mechanically stripped off the gown once she was personally escorted to her room at the Hilton, a different suite this time thank God, where she showered and scrubbed her body to within an inch of pain. Anything to keep the tears at bay.
Her sense of relief mingled with the sense of betrayal, and she’d refused to think about anything except going through the motions.
Her self-control came close to breaking when she found Shanaya safely ensconced in the bed, covers drawn up.
The last person to hold Shanaya had been Brand’s men, when the police wanted to take her statement. She hadn’t had that much to tell them anyway, but she’d tried to help as best as she could. And they hadn’t asked that many questions either.
Which tracked considering the magnitude of this story.
Akira was adamant about informing her own parents – Elahe and Ashwin – of the situation and less so when it came to Shanaya’s absentee dad, Yudi, vacationing in the Maldives with his current girlfriend. Her mother was whitefaced during the video call and her dad was already making calls to the embassy and arranging for Tatkal visas so they could fly out to Monaco ASAP.
Akira wanted to ask them not to but she couldn’t.
For once, she wanted to see her parents too badly. Wanted her dad’s comforting arms around her and hold on while she tried to find some semblance of control and sanity.
The drive back to the hotel was accomplished with minimum fuss even though the whole city was in an uproar. The explosion that had taken the other launch out had visible from the shore.
The police barricades drawn over the whole north section of the pier just added fuel to the fire.
Akira couldn’t bring herself to go outside to the balcony where the unfamiliar sounds of sirens kept rending the night air. She sat on the bed, dressed in a sweatshirt that one of the cops had been thoughtful enough to give her, and a pair of shorts that she found in her wardrobe, all hanging neatly in this new room.
She bypassed the clothes Brand had brought her.
Brand, whom she hadn’t seen after the second she’d seen Sebastian.
Akira shuddered again.
And a low moan escaped her, while she dug her nails into her knees.
The deluge that was never far threatened to surface, to overwhelm her. The TV was on mute but it showed flickering pictures of a Chinese martial arts movie with subtitles. And she’d been staring at it sightlessly without being aware.
Shanaya turned and continued to sleep, startling Akira from her misery. She swallowed the hot iron ball that was lodged in her throat, her chest, and continued to stare into the nothing of the television screen.
The knock that sounded seconds later startled Akira enough to jump.
Shanaya whimpered in her sleep and Ari passed a trembling hand over the young girl’s hair. Calming her, soothing her. It worked and the child went back to sleeping deeply, her small chest rising and falling evenly on the covers.
What have I done?
How much therapy is my child going to need for what I put her through?
The thought refused to budge even when she walked to open the door, taking from the bed stand, the knife that she’d never had a chance to use properly. They hadn’t asked to bag it as evidence and she hadn’t given it to them. Holding the knife steady in her right hand, she gripped the knob tight in her left.
“Who’s it?” she whispered, mindful of the sleeping child.
“It’s Sebastian. Can we talk? It’s important.” Delgado’s gravelly tones came in, calm and serious, and she wasn’t sure, pleading?
<
br /> Akira closed her eyes and debated refusing his request. But she didn’t. She was owed this much, at least this much, by this man.
“Alright.” She unlocked the door and stepped out, closing the door softly behind her.
Sebastian wore the same clothes that Brand’s men wore. Black cords, insulated tee, and boots. He looked like Brand’s man too. Battle-hardened and weary. His warm brown eyes held a century of regret in them.
And she could not, for the life of her, understand how she could feel sympathy for a man who’d only lied to her and used her as a means to an end.
His eyes swept down now, to the knife she held so tightly to her and he said, “That’s Brandon’s.”
A heft of pain went through her as she heard his name. From the lips of the man who was supposed to be dead.
“Yes, it is. You came here to take it back to him?”
“Akira, I understand you are upset…” he began cautiously.
“Oh, you understand nothing, Sebastian,” she interrupted grimly. “But you said it was something important, so here I am. My niece needs me and I don’t have time to waste talking to you, so talk.” Her hands hung limply to her sides, the knife dangling against her shorts.
“Would you believe me if I said how deeply sorry I am for all this mess?”
“No.”
“I am, even if you never believe me,” he said quietly, “Even if you think me to be some soulless monster that plays with people’s lives for his sake.”
“You’re not soulless, Sebastian. That was…that was him.” She couldn’t say Murad’s name. Not yet. Not when the terror was so fresh in her, it threatened to drown her.
“But you think I am a monster.” Sebastian pressed.
“I don’t particularly think about you at all, Sebastian. I have Shanaya to worry about. If that is all --” Akira put a hand on the doorknob, half-turning to go back in, and he stopped her with a hand to the door.
The look she gave him was equivalent to a hands-off.
“Yesterday, you would have given anything to talk to me.”
He was dangerously calm; she could see it in the tightening around his eyes. She didn’t give a damn. This man, his…partner, had wrecked her life enough. She was done playing by their rules.
“Yesterday, I was sure I was doing the right thing. And yesterday my niece was safe in her school playing with her friends. Things change, Sebastian, between yesterday and today. Now remove your hand or I will remove it for you.” Though the words were toneless, her body quivered with her rage.
And Akira knew she wasn’t done being angry at Sebastian Delgado.
Sebastian stepped back immediately. “God, I am sorry, Akira. I know you’re feeling very shaky right now and…”
Akira laughed then; a broken sound. “You have no idea how I feel, Sebastian. Please, go away. You can be rest assured I will never come within a hundred feet of you again. I’ll even take out a restraining order against myself, I promise.”
“Akira, I…”
Whatever he’d been about to say was stopped by the strident ringing of his cell phone. He immediately took it, and stopped her motion with the other hand. Her eyes glared at him but she didn’t use the knife.
He only mouthed, “Okay, I’ll get her,” and then used the end button on his mobile.
“What is it?” She was compelled to ask.
Sebastian hesitated. Then said, “It’s Brand. He’s just out of surgery.”
Akira’s eyes widened but she refused to feel a glimmer of grief for that lying scumbag, who’d not even come looking for her after bloody chaos. Exactly like last time. “I see.”
Sebastian continued warily, “He’s lost a lot of blood. They aren’t sure he’s going to make it. He…he asked for you. So, maybe you would…”
“You can't ask that of me.”
The words were a bottomless whisper. She could feel her face go numb even as she stopped speaking. She’d never considered the fact that maybe he hadn’t come looking for her because he was injured.
“Please.” His plea was equally low.
She cast a desperate glance at the bed. “Shanaya.”
“She’ll be safe, Akira. I’ll stay with her myself. Will you go to my friend?”
From a tunnel above her head, Akira saw herself nodding.
Only the knife clattered from her grasp.
~~~~~~
Brand was floating. It was a pleasant sensation. He’d been so tired for so long that floating, giving up felt nice. Maybe this was heaven…
He felt a hand pass over his brow.
He knew that touch. He loved that touch. He dreamed about it. It was comforting and exciting at the same time.
Akira…
“Brandon, can you hear me?”
Of course he could hear her. He wasn’t deaf, or dead, was he? Or was he?
The Akira he knew would never sound like that. So soft, so hopeful. She sounded like…like she cared about him. And that was a ludicrous idea. He’d done terrible things to her; she would hate his living guts. She’d kick him when he was down.
She wouldn’t hold his hand so tight it felt like she was trying to break his bones.
“Brandon, can you hear me?”
He wanted to nod. He started to. But maybe if he did, his dream would be over. And she would go away.
“Brandon, please, open your eyes. Please. You have to open your eyes.”
No way, no way was he going to.
He could feel her kiss his wrist, his fingers. He wasn’t giving this up. This was even better than the floating and the cotton-cloud dreams. This was heaven. Maybe he was dead and this was his reward in the after-life.
But would the after-life be so painful, in other ways?
There was a fire in his throat that was beginning to burn him. His right leg felt like a great concrete block was sitting on it. How could he feel pain in heaven?
“Brandon, please, for me.”
Her whispered words demanded his concentration. He wanted to give it to her. He wanted to give her the world. Tell her he’d do anything for her. He was sorry, he was a worthless bastard, but he’d do anything for her.
But the pain…
~~~~~
“He squeezed my hand. He squeezed my hand.”
Akira looked wildly at Luke, and the doctor who were also in the intensive care room with her. She sat on the edge of his bed, had been while dawn turned into day, talking nonsense to him. Talking till her voice got hoarse.
But Brand didn’t responded. He just slept on in his coma and she was so afraid he wouldn’t come back.
That he wouldn’t want to.
So she talked some more. Because he had asked for her. Even the nurses told her so.
“His heart-rate is still not stable, but his pressure is holding,” Dr. Francois murmured reading from the paper he’d printed from the ECG, checking his vitals.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Lucas asked.
Ari looked hopefully at Brand’s still form, covered in mourning white.
“Yes. It could be a sign of recovery or it could be…” The doctor shrugged.
“Maybe, Akira should talk to him some more. He seems to respond to her.” Luke suggested, running shaky fingers through his already rumpled hair.
The doctor shrugged again and left taking Lucas Manchester with him.
Akira remained, holding Brand’s hand, willing him back to life.
An hour later, his heart rate jacked, going into cardiac arrest. And the medics rushed back in to the room.
Akira looked on in terror, from outside, her heart completely stopped while they worked on him. Defibbing him, so his heart would start beating on its own.
It did.
She went back inside, on shaky legs, because nobody was very optimistic anymore.
Sebastian paced the corridor, surrounded by three men. Luke was making phone call after phone call.
He looked so lifeless.
That was her first thought, even as sh
e took Brand’s cold, heavy hand and squeezed it with all her strength. Willing him, willing him to take her life force and just live. He didn’t return the pressure.
Tubes were attached to his chest, to his nose. He was breathing through one. There were bandages on his face, where he’d suffered knife cuts. A deep gash on his forehead had needed stitches. His right leg was broken, multiple fractures and in a cast, and his hands were swathed in bandages.
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