Third a Kiss
“Hey.” A feminine arm slinked around my waist, squeezing me gently. “You okay?”
I turned my head, smiling sadly at Jealousy. She wore a pink polka dot singlet and pyjama shorts, her blonde hair still messy from sleep.
Seemed the noise had woken everyone early this morning.
“Yeah, I’m okay. You?”
She eyed up Skittles and Pika commandeering my shoulders before turning her attention to the ominous blackness on the horizon. The faint smell of burning overshadowed the sea breeze.
God.
Please don’t let those animals be hurt.
Jealousy huffed under her breath, looking as morose as I felt. “For once, you know more than me about this current situation. Fill me in?”
I shrugged. “Not much to tell. Sully’s brother attacked Serigala.”
“Ah, yes, Drake. He’s a fucking asshole.”
“You know him?”
She shook her head. “Heard of him.” Falling quiet for a moment, she asked quietly, “And what’s on Serigala? Is that the island where he sends all that animal feed too? Does he have an army of pets that he keeps hidden?”
“It’s a rehab facility for lab animals and other abused cases.”
“Oh.” She gnawed on her bottom lip. “And the chances of it being blown to bits?”
My heart fisted. “Hopefully zero.”
“But if it is?” She flinched. “How many just died?”
Tears glossed my gaze as the sea lapped around our ankles and two parrots cooed sadly in my ears. “Hundreds. Thousands. Enough that it will destroy Sully.”
Jealousy dropped her arm from around my waist. “Oh.”
I nodded, unable to fight the liquid tracking down my cheeks.
Yes. Oh.
Whatever Sully was about to face—whatever war he was about to reap…he wouldn’t be the same man when he returned.
Whatever progress I’d made.
Whatever connection we’d built.
It might have been murdered along with so many other lives lost today.
That was why I was so afraid.
That was why I couldn’t stop the trickle of ice.
If Serigala had been attacked…it didn’t matter what I felt for Sully or what he felt for me…his loyalties were fierce to those who couldn’t speak. To the vulnerable creatures with four legs, wings, and tails.
He would fight for them.
He would extract vengeance for them.
As he should.
But…where would I be?
Would he let me fight beside him?
Or would he push me away?
I didn’t have an answer and as the sun rose higher in the sky and Jealousy kept me company while we watched more smoke billow and stronger scents of charred earth and flesh trailed over the sea…I did my best not to be worried.
But I was worried.
So, so worried.
Because we might be over…before we’ve even begun.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WEARING WHITE TO TOTAL carnage was a gruesome wardrobe choice.
Blood painted my t-shirt and slacks. Bone fragments and brain pieces, charred fur and dismembered animal parts. I wore it all as I dug through the smoking wreckage.
Thanks to my team of gardeners on Lebah—and their tanker of freshwater to grow my crops—we’d put out the fire caused by Drake’s bomb. We’d salvaged part of the veterinary practice, saved a few holding pens, ceased fire from chewing its way through the dog enclosure and pieced together parts of the rabbit warren.
But that was it.
Everything else: the barns piled high with feed and medicine. The high-tech surgery for large and small beasts. The hours upon hours of excavating, building, planting, creating had all been destroyed.
Along with so many, many fucking lives.
Four hours ago, I’d been ready to jump aboard the helicopter and fly after Drake. To make his body blow apart like Cuthbert the pig and the adorable otters who’d been so close to releasing back into the wild. I wanted to see his brains splattered in the soil. I wanted his blood coagulating beneath the hot sun. I wanted the stench of his decaying body ripe in the air.
I wanted him in motherfucking bits.
But vengeance would have to come after I’d offered triage to those left behind. The singed monkeys and charred beagles and every other critter that’d already survived so much.
Cal and I worked side by side with locals and staff.
The Indonesian people operated under the law of karma and they arrived in droves, pulling ashore in their fishing trawlers or hitching a ride on a sea vessel, coming to our aid thanks to the plume of smoke announcing war.
Their good deed today would help a good deed for them tomorrow.
None of us spoke, too disgusted and deadened by what we shovelled from the layers of toxic ash, recognising severed tails, paws, and fire-ravaged carcasses.
I’d thrown up when I’d come across a cow that’d only arrived two days ago. A roof beam had snapped, thanks to the bomb’s power, hurtling down to harpoon into the side of the animal. It’d been trapped against the wall as fire chewed its way up its legs and along its flanks.
Dead while standing, its eyes were still open, a snapshot of blistering agony as it’d burned alive.
I’d stumbled to the corner and expelled the dinner I’d shared with Eleanor. It’d splashed on my boots, coating me in yet more filth, blending with guts and viscera.
I hadn’t eaten meat in fuck knew how long, and the stench of animal flesh made me violently nauseous. My mind and heart shut down, unable to associate the butchered remains with the creatures I’d tried to give a better life.
It was my past all over again.
The lab experiments. The domestic violence. The brother who tormented his own sibling.
Fuck, the guilt.
It nibbled its way through my chest until it took a knife and fork to my heart and ate it piece by piece. I bled guilt. I sweated guilt. My head pounded with culpability and utmost shame.
I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, even as Cal patted me on the back and hissed in my ear that this wasn’t my fault. That I couldn’t have predicted that my brother would bypass my scouts on the sea and instead of coming after me go after the most vulnerable.
But I should have known.
It was fucking obvious.
It was his M.O.
I’d been such a stupid bastard not to see this coming. And I blamed myself, not just for this carnage, but for being too goddamn busy falling in love with Jinx to put parameters in place to prevent such a thing.
I’d been selfish.
I deserved this pain, but the rest of these poor victims did not. Their broken bodies and obliterated hearts were on my hands, no one else’s.
In this instance, Drake had been smarter than me. He’d never entered my waters. Instead, he’d flown over them in a chartered Tomahawk and dropped two unrefined and highly temperamental bombs on Serigala.
My pilots had already tracked the aircraft to a private airstrip in Java. I’d sent guards to interrogate and find where Drake was.
Had he flown to Indonesia to do this or had he sat in his goddamn La-Z-Boy in one of our parents’ mansions and pressed a button on a mass animal massacre?
Fuck!
My anger gave me strength to keep striding over bloody debris and horrendous homicide. My guilt wrapped me tight until any other thought or emotion was deleted.