CHAPTER 005

The Weight Of A Failing Heart

Max’s Point of View

The ache was back again. In my heart, keen and inexorable, as a knife turning with each breath. I leant back in my chair, one hand on the pane, and I was forced to hold myself. I could not spare it. No one knew the truth. Only the doctors. And they knew not to speak of it.

Two months earlier they had sentenced me. A hole in my heart. Not something they could cut or sew up. Something my power or money could not take away.

Six months left, they said. Maybe less. I laughed when they told me. Smiled because I was not supposed to die. Not like this. I had expected bullets. Knives. An opponent at last making a blow. But nature? Fate? Karma?

That was harder to fight. I shut my eyes and breathed the pain. I could relive the time it began. The evening I throttled a man who had the temerity to tamper with my shipment. My hands had clasped round his throat till his breath came out. I did not feel when his body dropped.

I ordered for his family as well. No survivors. That was my law. Something about him had lingered. A shadow I could not explain .And then the pain began. I shook my head and drove the thought away.

There was no space for doubt. Only control. A knock sounded at my door. I sat up, drawing my shoulders back, the mask sliding over me like armour. “Come in. ”Ryan came in, long and sturdy, with his dark eyes inscrutable. “Boss,” he said, his voice casual. “You have made waves.

The marriage—it is everywhere. People are talking. You bound yourself to the wife of another man. And you did it when she was in prison. He sat down in the opposite chair, one eyebrow up. The nerve of him.

Any other would be bleeding on my floor. But not Ryan. I only allowed him to question me. He had long deserved that.

I remembered it clear as day. Two children chasing me, punching each other, and kicking me in the ribs. I was lying on the floor, in ruins and blood. And Ryan—young, scrawny, but full of fire—had come in. He had broken bones that day. Dragged me up. Walked me to safety.

He had been with me since then. My brother in all but blood. No one could test me better than he could. Still, I kept my tone sharp. Do not confuse your location, Ryan. You can talk, but never imagine that I justify myself to anybody.

Ryan sat back with a twitch of a smirk on his lips. “Did you find what I asked for?” I asked and disturbed the silence. He sighed.

“Not yet.” I banged my palm on the desk, and my chest pained.“ Then why are you here? I want every detail. Every scrap. Do not say it cannot be done. Ryan held my gaze. Calm.

I have had the finest men excavating. They found nothing. He is a ghost. No past. No family. Nothing. ”I snarled. “I killed him with my own hands. I felt the life leave him. "I shall ring our contacts in Colombia," he said. Ryan spread his hands. “Boss, maybe you went too far. Perhaps it was not what you imagined. What were you going to do this time you were wrong?

The air shifted. The rage inside me surged. I was never wrong. Never. His sophisticated looks and baritone voice fooled his underraters. “Ryan. Do your job, if you price your head. Find me the truth.” He went, and the office was quiet again.

Her hair is damp, her eyes red-ringed. Anyone can trace him, if anyone can.“ Good,” I muttered. Do not return without answers. He stood up to his full stature, towering, with hard features hewn of stone. Her hair is damp, Yet behind that facade was a predator. And that was why I trusted him.

I opened my laptop, and the light of the screen was throwing shadows on my desk. I pulled up the cameras. My chest pained again. Ana. She sat huddled in the corner of her room, in the cream dress left by the maids. Her little face was drawn with concentration, her lips with will. She had cried recently.

I stared, but not at her tears. I stared at the shape of her. The way she sat. The stubborn line of her jaw. The reason I had selected her was at the fringes of my mind. It was not merely that Mia required someone. It was not only that she was broken. It had started before. The dream. An angel.

She had come the night after the doctors had sentenced me. Light wings round me. I was calm, the first time in years. The dream had come back, night after night, till it had made me insane. I had searched for her. And I found her. Ana. Real. Flesh and blood.

She had been held captive with Chase Grayson and was rotting in silence. And I had made my mind up she would be mine. But how should I ever be able to explain that to anybody?

How was I to explain it to myself? I unsubscribed and changed feeds. Mia. My daughter was sitting with her tutor, pencil against paper. I did not want that day to come. So much like me. Distrustful. Closed off. Fierce when cornered.

She was mine. Entirely mine. And one day she would enquire about her mother. My chest pained again. She could never know the truth. The world could never see me as she could.

I had to stay the one who kept the darkness at bay for her. But suppose I were the darkness? My chest ached again. Sharp. Burning. I laid a hand upon my heart and closed my eyes.

The time bomb in my head would not cease. Six months, maybe less. Every second slipping away. I had built empires. Broken men. Burned families to ash.

But I could not fight this. I awoke and looked at the black image on the laptop screen. How long had it been before my world fell?

And when it came, who should stand in the ruins with me?