Chapter 19
Roarke hung back after he knocked the vase over, stepping behind the closet door as the sound would likely bring out both the boy and his parents below. He needed a vantage point on both. The child was young, but that didn’t mean Roarke trusted him at all. For all he knew, the kid could be a natural shot, raised on a hatred of his other family. He had to think in all corners, from all angles, just like Isabelle.
He watched the parents rush up and stand in the hallway, taking in stock of the broken vase. Roarke had another one in his hand, waiting for Clark to get in close enough. The boy stepped out of his room and Isabelle rushed over to him, shushing him and pushing him inside the room, closing the door behind him and standing in front of it, shielding the wood with her own body and looking around wildly.
He got a sick satisfaction from watching her look so off guard, so nervous. He liked having an upper hand on her, he liked seeing her squirm. He wanted to make it last forever, the image of her alone and scared and facing the unknown. He wanted her to have a taste of her own medicine, the torture she leveled on him and everyone he cared about. It let it last as long as possible before Clark got close enough. He was within arm’s reach now.
Roarke swung, without thinking about it or counting to three. He swung for all the anger he’d felt, everything he very nearly lost and did lose. He swung for all the pain he was enduring, for the danger Clark put Hanna in and the child he carried. He swung for the all the betrayal he felt. He leveled him right in the head, shattering the vase across the hardness of his skull. Clark crumbled to the ground, not even conscious enough to groan as he smacked the floor hard, smashing his nose.Blood began to seep out, likely it was already broken.
With the hand he had not used to break everything he was feeling against Isaiah Clark’s vulnerable head, he pointed a gun right at Isabelle’s head. She was caught off guard by that too. He smirked, a little too pleased with it all.
“You have something you want to share with the class, Isabelle?” he asked, nodding to the door behind her.
She pressed herself against it harder, gripping at the edges of the wood. She would be shot rather than let him into that room. Roarke had to give her that, she had a mother’ instinct. And it made it all the sweeter, knowing she had endangered his own child, now he was threatening hers.
“You look so pleased with yourself,” she sneered at him. “You finally were the smarter one.”
“Don’t try to turn this around,” he said in warning. “You’re in the deep end now and I’m the only goddamn life vest for miles. You do what I say and we take care of this now or I shoot you and put another bullet in that little shit’s head too.”
He was bluffing. He couldn’t hurt that boy. But Isabelle thought him a monster and hopefully that was enough to get her to relent. She need only believe there was a chance he would hurt her son, there was even the slightest possibility he meant what he said and she would give up. He watched the thoughts go through her head, perhaps imaging the mental image he gave her of her son, dead on the floor and bleeding all over the place.
She swallowed and put her hands in the air, taking one step forward.
“Okay,” she said, evenly. “Okay.”
“We go downstairs and you tell those two idiots to let Hanna go,” he said. “Then you come with me.”
“Okay.”
He nudged her with the gun, telling her to go first. He wouldn’t take his eyes off her. There was no safe way to handle her, there was no version of her that was not dangerous. The only way to deal with it permanently was to kill her or put her behind bars. He wouldn’t do the former. He couldn’t. He understood that now, pointing the gun at her and knowing he would never be able to fire.
Hanna had changed that in him. There was a time he would have turned on her, he would have done whatever he had to end it all, to laugh while watching her die. It was a dark time and he never wanted to go back to that, he never wanted his child to know what he’d almost become, who he’d almost been, the lengths to which he’d been willing to go. That time for him had not been about safety and protection; it had been about anger and the burning need for revenge. That was gone now. He was different, he wanted only safety for him and Hanna and all his friends. Shooting her while she was vulnerable would taint that freedom.
They stepped up to the two men who still had Hanna at gunpoint. It was a moment of silence in the standoff and Roarke knew what was coming before Isabelle did it. He expected one last play from her and he got his expectation fulfilled.
“Shoot her,” she snapped, but Hanna had been ready too.
Roarke fired a shot off, hitting one square in the shoulder while Hanna leveled her elbow right into the crotch of the other man, knocking him back in a whimper. She stood up and moved towards Isabelle who took steps to take her on but Roarke pressed his gun right against her neck, pushing her back until she was flush against the wall, trapped like a rat.
“I’ve got a lot of friends who will be happy to see you in their handcuffs,” he said, smiling.
She looked at him with so much hatred and he felt his heart break, just a little bit. Had she hated him the whole time? Had she been so angry at him, so resentful? How had he not seen it? He thought about all the ways he hadn’t been there for her. He would not be that way with his own child, he would not miss out on the warning signs, the cries for help. He would be there for Isabelle’s child as well. Both his parents would be going to jail and he wouldn’t let him fall in the hands of Caracals who would teach him nothing but hate and anger for his own family.
He looked at Hanna as she stepped forward, letting out a breath and subtly placing a hand on her stomach and nodding. Everyone was okay. Everyone was going to be fine.