Chapter 911
Skye didn’t retreat. Rather than match his strength — which would have been suicide — she stepped into his guard, using the slick mud to her advantage. As his hand came toward her, she pivoted, seized his wrist, and used his own momentum to pull him off balance.
He stumbled forward on the wet stones. Before he could recover, Skye drove the heel of her palm into the soft spot beneath his ear — a move Alistair had taught her during their late-night sparring sessions. It wasn’t a knockout blow, but it was enough to disorient him.
Zhao roared and swung back blindly, but Skye was already moving. She grabbed the decorative silver lantern staking the path’s edge and swung it hard into his kneecap.
The crack was sickening.
Zhao crumpled to the ground, clutching his leg. Skye snatched the knife sheathed at his belt — she had clocked the outline of it earlier — and in one fluid motion drove the blade into the car’s fender, inches from his ear. The steel vibrated with the force of the impact.
𝘐n𝗍𝗲𝗇ѕ𝗲 𝘳𝗈𝗺𝖺n𝖼e о𝗻 𝗀𝖺lո𝗼𝗏e𝗹ѕ.𝗰𝗈𝘮
The other three thugs stepped forward, then stopped dead as Skye turned to face them. Her hair was plastered to her face, her dress was muddy at the hem, and she was holding nothing but rage. Behind them, she saw Liam shift his grip on his cane, ready to intervene if the odds turned overwhelming — but Skye held her ground.
“Anyone else want to negotiate the guest list?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut clean through the rain.
“You… you savage!” Beatrice gasped, clutching her pearls.
Skye retrieved her shoes without bothering to put them back on. She walked to Alistair, took the umbrella from his stunned hand, and held it over him.
“Let’s go inside,” she said softly. “You have guests to thank.”
Alistair stared at her. The emptiness in his eyes had been replaced by something else entirely — a spark, a lifeline. He took her hand and intertwined his fingers with hers.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” he murmured.
“Too late for that,” she replied.
They walked past a pale-faced Beatrice and entered the manor.
From the shadow of the oak tree, Liam Kensington watched the doors close behind them. He pulled his phone from his pocket, his thumb hovering over a contact labeled Private Investigator.
He typed a single message: Get me the phone records for Beatrice Thorne. And find out who Boss Zhao answers to. Now.
He didn’t follow them inside. He turned and walked away into the rain — a solitary figure dissolving into the grey landscape.
The interrogation room smelled of bleach and despair. The two-way mirror reflected Skye’s own exhausted face back at her — dark circles beneath her eyes, hair pulled back in a severe bun.
Beside her, Julian Vance looked as though he had aged ten years in forty-eight hours. He gripped the back of a chair, staring through the glass at his brother.
Ethan sat at the metal table in an orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on his frame, rocking back and forth and humming a discordant, childlike tune. He hadn’t spoken a coherent word since the arrest.