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Not her, anyone but her. Take me instead, just leave her.
“Sorry. I know I’m a little off schedule. Aren’t I?” he apologized.
The killer’s words cut through my screaming thoughts. It gave me a brief wash of peace. Just one barest fragment.
And then that peace shredded into an ugly rage. My gut twisted. Hatred boiled in my chest.
No. This is all wrong. None of this makes any sense.
“I’m going to kill you,” I promised. I hardly recognized my own voice, so laced with venom.
Razai stepped into the low light, emerald eyes glittering and calm. “Then come and get me, Detective.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Razai smirked and shook his head like he was impressed. How did he look so casual holding a kidnapped, unconscious woman? “You really caught me off guard. I hardly had the time to get out of that stupid memorial and make it here.”
“Let her go,” I bit out.
“Who? Oh, her?” He jostled Azra like she was a fucking Christmas present and he wanted me to guess what was inside. Azra twitched, her face scrunching in discomfort against the duct tape on her mouth. “She’ll be fine right here. Still breathing, don’t worry.”
After the brief rush of relief knowing my sister was still alive, I let the rage take over. The familiar curl of his lips, the easy way he stood, the breathtaking beauty of him set fire to everything.
In that moment, I hated him more than anything else. All other emotions—love, happiness, grief—nothing compared to the way I wished I could set him on fire and watch while he screamed.
No one touches my family.
But the futility overwhelmed me too. “What the fuck do you want?” I all but shouted.
His brows rose. “Woah, woah, Detective! No need to get in a tizzy. We’re all friends here.”
“She and I,” I pointed between Azra and myself, “are friends. You are nothing.”
Razai held a hand over his heart. “You wound me,” he mocked. “And here I thought we had something special when you came on my tongue, moaning my name—”
“What do you want?” This time I did shout. “You stalk me for weeks! You convince me to come here to help you solve a mystery that you are behind! Are you a fucking psychopath? Do you get a thrill out of playing games? Of fucking with people’s lives?”
His expression turned stony. “A reason wouldn’t matter to you. All you care about is how betrayed you feel.”
I absorbed the sting. “Of course I feel betrayed. You betrayed me. All this time, I thought I’d been the one hunting. But the truth was that I’d been the stupid little fish who’d swallowed the hook and sinker.”
“I have to say, you surprised me a number of times,” he admitted. “I mean, I knew you were the one for the job. Don’t ask—just had a feeling. But you have balls taking a sip of Underground magic. Not afraid to play dirty. Take risks. I like that. You’ll need it.”
What the fuck was he talking about?
It didn’t matter. My main goal was getting Azra out of his hands. I’d take her with me and run. We’d start over, and I’d never put us in danger like this again. I swore on my own life.
“You have nothing to gain by killing her,” I reasoned. “Let Azra go. I don’t care what you do after that or if you decide to silence me. Just let her live.”
His sharp jaw worked as he considered my words. “You’d really sacrifice yourself for her?”
“If you have to ask, then you never knew me at all.”
He nodded in consideration. The tension in his neck and jaw relaxed for a second. I saw a flash of my friend—the side of Razai I’d come to know and care for. “This isn’t how I’d planned this, you know.”
Hope surged forward. Was he faltering? Did I have enough of a hold on him to make him stop? I urged, “It’s not too late to go back. You don’t have to do anything here. You can let us go—”
“Stop speaking as if you know what I have to do,” he snarled. His face twisted with hatred of his own.
