The moment the car stopped moving, the silence was worse than the noise.
Smoke curled through the cabin. The airbag hung deflated, the smell of gunpowder and burned rubber thick in my lungs. My ears rang so loudly, I thought I had gone deaf.
I forced my eyes to open.
The driver was slumped over the wheel, unmoving.
"Nonno?" My voice came out hoarse.
My grandfather lay twisted in his seat. His eyes closed, blood seeping from a cut along his temple. His cane was snapped clean in two at his feet.
Panic clawed up my throat.
I was alive, but everyone else wasn't moving.
Outside, I could hear doors slamming. Footsteps approaching. Unhurried and confident.
I froze, barely breathing. My heart pounding so hard it hurt. Because I knew, with a cold certainty settling in my bones, that the crash hadn't been an accident. Nor the photographers.
My vision swam, but I forced myself to stay present.
The gun.
It was wedged beneath the driver's seat as a precaution. I reached for it slowly, quietly, my fingers slick as they closed around the grip. The weight of it steadying me in a way nothing else could in the moment.
The footsteps crunched closer. Louder.
I slipped the gun beneath my thigh, angling it along my leg, then let my head fall to the side. My body went slack. I let my breathing shallow, uneven, just enough to sell it.
A shadow fell across the shattered window.
"She's breathing," a man said outside. Calm. Professional.
The door handle clicked.
And the moment I sensed it opened, I moved.
My heel drove forward, catching him square in the chest. He stumbled back with a grunt, surprise cracking through his composure. Before the second man could react, I raised the gun and fired a few shots.
The sound was deafening inside the wreckage.
And he went down hard.
Another was already raising his weapon. I didn't give him the chance. I fired a few more shots, and he collapsed against the side of the car, sliding down until he was still. A few more joined.
My hands shook now as I reloaded my gun. But I didn't let myself stop long enough to feel it.
I pushed the door open wider and staggered out. The gun still raised, my eyes scanning the road through the haze of smoke and shattered glass. More cars idled farther back, their engines running. Waiting.
I ducked low, using the wreck as a cover. My breath coming fast and shallow.
They would come again.
I tightened my grip on the gun and disappeared into the smoke. But I didn't make it three steps before a hand closed around my wrist. So I twisted, bringing the gun up, but he was already there. Too close, his body slamming into mine, knocking my arm wide.
The shot went nowhere, swallowed by the smoke and chaos, then he was on me.
"Easy," Alexandre murmured, his breath familiar and warm against my eat, as if we were somewhere private instead of surrounded by wreckage and bodies. "You're going to hurt yourself, Lara."
I drove my elbow back into his ribs. He grunted but he didn't let go. Instead, he turned with the motion, using my own momentum to spin us. My back hit the hood of the wrecked car, air tearing out of my lungs.
"Get off me," I hissed, fighting and kicking. "I'm not Lara."
"Then stop fighting," he said, almost gently as he caught my wrist again.
I swung the gun up again. But he caught my hand mid-motion, fingers closing over mine, forcing the barrel down between us. For a heartbeat, we were frozen, faces inches apart, eyes locked.
His gaze flicked to my face. And I saw the way it softened, even just for a second.
"I don't care what name you go by," he said quietly. "You're still mine anyway."
Then he twisted.
Pain exploded up my arm. My fingers went numb, and the gun slipped free. It hit the asphalt. He kicked it away, and I watched it skidding away into the dark.
I went for it anyway.
But he tackled me before I could take a step. We hit the ground hard. The world spinning, my breath knocked out of me again. I fought like something feral was taking over me. Nails scraping skin, knee driving up between his legs.
He swore under his breath, but he still didn't release me.
Instead, he rolled us on the ground, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand. His weight pressing on me into the cold pavement.
"Stop," he said sharply. All the softness gone. "Isolda. Stop."
I thrashed anyway.
"Stop trying to run," he breathed, those green eyes blazing. "I love you."
"I'll kill you!" I spat.
He leaned down, his forehead pressing briefly to mine. An intimacy that made my stomach twist.
"No," he said calmly. "You won't. Because if you wanted me dead, I'd already be there."
I hated that he was right, but it wasn't like I was going to let him win. I can't let him take me away again. I can't. Because I didn't know what I'll do if he got us alone again.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but it wasn't close enough. Never close enough.
Alexandre released one wrist only to hook his arm under my knees, hauling me up before I could fight him. I struggled, but my body betrayed me. All the shock, the exhaustion and the grief crashing in, all at once.
"Let me go." The words tore out of me, as the last of the fight drained from my body.
My gaze went to the wreckage behind us. The car lay twisted at the base of the slope, its front end caved in like a crushed bone, metal folded inward on itself. The windshield was gone. The doors warped. And inside—
"Nonno," I breathed.
My grandfather was hanging still. Too still.
Alexandre didn't slow. His grip only tightened, one arm locked beneath my thighs, the other braced across my back, carrying me away from the wreckage as if it were already behind us. Finished and irrelevant.
"Don't," he said quietly, almost gently. "My men will see to it that he survives."
I didn't believe him. I didn't want to.
"But you?" His mouth brushed my temple as he spoke, his voice dropping into something dark and absolute. "You don't get to disappear on me again."
The door of his car swung open.
I twisted, panic surging back to me, my nails scraping against his coat. My body weak but still refusing to yield. It didn't matter, because he barely faltered. He simply adjusted his hold, crushing me closer to his chest as he lowered me into the backseat.
The moment the door slammed shut, I surged upright instantly. My fingers clawing for the handle, fumbling for the lock. Nothing. The glass didn't even rattle when I struck it.
Then his hands were on me again.
He wrenched me back by my shoulders, dragging me into him, his chest hard against my spine, his breath hot and uneven against my ear.
"Stop fighting," Alex hissed, the words vibrating through me. I hated how he still has that effect on me. "Or I swear to god, I'll chain you to myself if that's what it takes."
I froze.
No. Anything but that.
Through the tinted window, I watched as the red and blue lights finally cut through the darkness. Ambulances swarmed the wreckage. Men shouting. Doors opening.
Help had arrived. But it wasn't just for me.
The car began to move. Its motion slow and deliberate, as if the world itself were retreating.
The sirens started to fade, their lights shrinking, until even their lights shrank into pinpricks before disappearing altogether. The crash was swallowed deeper into the night.
I remained there, slack and unresisting in his arms, my body present while my mind began to drift. The edges of everything blurred. From the road, the hum of the engine, the steady rise and fall of his breathing. In their place came the fragments. All the faces, the voices. The moments my mind had buried deep, now surfacing without warning, each one pressing heavier than the last.
A knowing feeling settled in my chest, slow and suffocating.
I was leaving something behind, not just the wreckage on the road, but the life I had been living up until that moment. My vision swam, darkness starting to creep in as my thoughts began unraveling. I couldn't help but wonder, what would become of me this time?
Because my memories are coming back.