Briar Valley: The Complete Duet

34. Micah

CHAPTER 34

MICAH

LOVE WILL TEAR US APART – ODINA

Sabre HQ is in chaos.

Pure, uncontrollable chaos.

Several screens play news footage from today’s postponed trial while others are set on scathing news reports, ripping the company to shreds for their negligence. It isn’t Sabre’s fault, though.

It’s ours.

We did this.

Because of our pure stupidity and weakness, Willow is gone. Vanished. She’s dissolved back into the thin air from which she appeared.

In the corner of the room, Aalia sits sobbing. She’s been a wreck since we found her in the bathroom, bloodied and unconscious. The doctors looked her over, and luckily, she only has minor injuries.

“I want fucking answers!” Ethan bellows.

The entire room cowers beneath his authority. Not even Hudson or Kade bat an eye as their employee whips his subordinates into shape. Everyone is working at a million miles an hour.

Zach doesn’t look up, his head in his hands. “I can’t believe we let this happen.”

“I know, Zach.”

“She was right fucking there! Right there! We let this happen.”

“I know,” I repeat angrily.

“Taken from right under our goddamn noses?—”

“I said I know!”

Furious, I stand up and storm away from him. I don’t need to listen to his running inner-commentary to feel like complete and utter shit about this. And I don’t have time to feel guilty. I’m too busy being terrified.

He’s got her. That sick, twisted motherfucker has got our girl, and we cannot rest until we get her back. We all know what he’ll do to her now that he’s gotten her… And there’s still the baby to think about.

He’ll kill her.

I just know it.

I move to the back of the room where Killian is pacing up and down in a storm of destructive rage. He’s preoccupied by searching through printed out screenshots of the surveillance footage.

I’m sure Sanchez threatened Arianna. It’s the only reason she would’ve had to walk out that door and make herself exposed.

“Why would she do this?” Killian hisses.

I take the papers from his hands and touch his shoulder. “They must’ve threatened her little girl, Kill. You know she’d do anything to protect Arianna.”

“Even jeopardise her own life? The life of her unborn child?”

“You know how she is. Her daughter comes first.”

“Fuck!” he growls, punching the wall hard enough to split the plaster. “We should’ve gone with her.”

“She didn’t want us touching her.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter! We should’ve gone!”

Unable to argue against his logic, I remove my hand from his shoulder and let my head slump. The self-loathing is all-consuming.

I can’t take a single breath without it crashing over me in tidal waves. We failed. And this time, it may just cost us everything.

“Guys.” Ethan stops next to us. “We’re going to find her, I promise.”

“It’s been hours,” Killian barks. “Where is she?”

“We’ve tracked the vehicle all the way out to Twickenham, but they changed into a new truck with fake plates. We’re doing our best to track where it went next.”

“Your best isn’t good enough.” Killian glares at him.

Turning on his heel, Killian storms out of the room, taking his rage with him. It feels like a bomb has gone off in his absence. We’re all reeling and trying to wrap our heads around what’s happened.

“How did we let this happen?” Ethan covers his face with his hands.

“You didn’t.”

“We had over a dozen agents posted around the court, yet he still got to her. How is that not my fault?”

Unable to offer him any comfort, all I can do is shake my head. We’re all asking ourselves the same thing right now.

It feels like there is nothing we could’ve done to stop Sanchez from finding a way to use his wealth and power to infiltrate the securest courtroom in the country.

“Lia was working for him this whole time,” Ethan hisses. “She’s been in contact with us for months. How the hell didn’t we see this coming?”

“How could you?” I ask tiredly. “She wanted to help prosecute Mario.”

His eyes screw shut. “This is my fault.”

“No, Ethan. We all did this. All of us have failed Willow.”

“I have to make it right,” he says determinedly.

Returning to his tables full of operatives all working at computers and pouring over maps, I glance around the packed room. Even Harlow is here, doing her best to help.

Agonising hours pass, full of frustration and dead ends. Sanchez’s men were prepared and took all the necessary precautions to avoid being traced.

The trail goes cold again, and Zach snaps, forced to leave the room to take a break. My heart aches as he passes me. I can feel the breadth of his soul-punching pain. It’s in me too. The self-hatred.

God, if I could take a blade to my wrist right now, slice it down to the bone and bleed myself dry just to bring her back into our lives, I’d fucking do it. Without hesitation. I’d die for that quick fix.

Leaving the room, I step out into the stairwell for a breather and find Zach smoking on the steps. Sitting down next to him, he puts a cigarette into my outstretched hand and lights it for me.

We sit together in silence, smoking and freaking out. He doesn’t need to speak for me to know what he’s thinking. It’s the same thing that’s on repeat in my mind, a silent, frantic prayer up to the heavens.

Dear God, please let her be okay.

Don’t let him touch her before we come.

“I love her so much,” Zach rasps in a broken tone. “I can’t lose her now, Mi.”

“You won’t. We’re going to find her. Both of them.”

“What if we’re already too late?”

I touch his knee. “Don’t say that. We’ll find her because we promised that we always would. I’m not going to break that promise any time soon.”

“We made so many promises.” He smokes his cigarette dejectedly. “And we’ve broken them one by one, over and over. We couldn’t keep her safe.”

“We tried our best. All of us. This guy is just too good.”

“Too good?” he scoffs. “He’s a fucking psychopath. Can you imagine what he’s doing to her right now?”

I’ve been trying my best not to imagine that. We all know what he threatened to do if he ever caught Willow again. She disobeyed him by testifying. He’ll be furious beyond words.

“You think he’d hurt a pregnant woman?” I ask in a tiny voice.

Zach crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. “I think he’s spent his entire life exploiting vulnerable people, and he won’t hesitate to do the same all over again.”

I continue smoking my cigarette, breathing in the noxious fumes. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. I have to chant it internally. If I don’t entertain the thoughts, I can imagine she’s still okay.

She has to be.

Lord, she fucking has to be.

“Guys,” a voice calls down the stairwell.

We both look up, finding Ryder looking down at us from the floor above. He moved into the city last week, taking his truck full of belongings with him. It feels like a lifetime ago.

“What are you doing here?” I call back.

“Brought Arianna and Rachel in. They wanted to be here where it’s safe.”

We join him on the floor above. The room we exited is still a bustling nightmare inside, but now Arianna has joined in the crying chaos.

“I want my mummy,” she sobs hysterically.

Aalia’s doing her best to calm her down but failing miserably. Passing Zach, I approach Arianna slowly, my hands outstretched to placate her. She only screams even louder.

“I want Giant!”

“Someone go fetch Killian.”

Zach vanishes to find him. Accepting a hug from Rachel, she runs a hand over my wild, mussed-up hair and whispers in my ear.

“Willow’s a tough cookie, Micah. We’ll find her, and she’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” I croak back.

“She survived ten years with that piece of shit.”

“That was before she ran away and began the process of divorcing him. Not to mention got pregnant with another man’s child and engaged to us three idiots. He’s going to kill her.”

Rachel falls silent, her face pale. “We don’t know that.”

“Don’t we?”

The door slams open again, admitting Zach and a red-faced Killian. He takes one look at Arianna, and his expression shatters into a devastating look of pure grief.

“Peanut,” he calls.

Arianna’s head snaps up. “Giant!”

“Come here.”

Rushing over to him, she’s swept up into his arms and spun in a small circle. Arianna clings to his neck, her hysteria dying down into quiet, hiccupping sobs that shake her tiny body.

“Where is Mummy?” she demands.

“She’ll be back soon, peanut. I promise.”

Arianna’s tears continue to fall. “She promised to never leave me. Was I bad? Did I do something wrong?”

I run a hand down her back, her words pushing the dagger in my heart even farther in. “You did nothing wrong, Ari. This isn’t your fault.”

“Micah’s right,” Killian consoles.

Taking a seat, he pulls her onto his lap and cuddles her close. She looks even smaller compared to his massive frame towering over her, but her sobs are steadily calming down.

“Guys, we have something.” Ethan approaches us. “Mind if we talk over there?”

With Arianna looking a lot calmer, Killian reluctantly hands her off to Ryder for a cuddle then joins us to approach the packed table on the other side of the room.

A newcomer has joined the masses of people, sitting without a laptop and anxiously picking her nails. I recognise her from the trial. She’s still wearing her formal clothing and low heels.

“This is Meghan.” Ethan gestures towards her. “She was supposed to testify today along with Willow and Lia.”

Meghan grants us a tiny wave. “Hello.”

“So?” Killian growls out.

She wilts even further. “I… I know Lia a little from the outside world. We used to b-be friends when we worked for Mario.”

“Tell them what you’ve just told me,” Ethan says calmly.

She blows out a breath. “Eight or nine months ago, Lia vanished. We worked together at his new club in Soho. She disappeared overnight, and I knew that she’d been sold.”

“Sold?” Zach repeats.

“To someone,” Meghan clarifies. “Everyone knows it happens, but none of us talk about it. We just do our jobs and get paid, hoping that it won’t one day happen to us if we’re good.”

“Who was she sold to?” Killian demands.

Meghan’s hands shake in her lap. “Dimitri Sanchez.”

Cursing up a storm, Killian throws his head back to look at the ceiling and take a cleansing breath. He’s on the verge of smashing this entire office to pieces.

“Wait, hold up.” Everyone’s attention shifts towards me. “She was sold to Sanchez?”

Ethan nods. “It appears he was in the market for a replacement after losing Willow. She isn’t working for him. She belongs to him.”

We all wear matching expressions of shock and disgust. That sleazy bastard was literally tormenting Willow for months, playing the doting husband and father, while torturing another woman.

“Today was the first time I saw Lia in months,” Meghan adds. “I couldn’t believe it. She was caught off guard to see me there. I don’t think she expected me to testify now that the club’s been shut down.”

“I don’t get what this has to do with finding Willow.” Killian loses patience, his hands thrown into the air. “We’re wasting time!”

“Kill, slow down.” Ethan holds up a hand. “That isn’t all. Meghan, carry on.”

“Lia came from a well-off family, you see,” Meghan continues after clearing her throat. “She didn’t work for Mario because she had no other choice. It was all about getting the drugs her family wouldn’t fund.”

“Shit,” I curse.

“Her family’s dead now,” she rambles nervously. “There was a car accident a few years back. She inherited the family home in Lancashire.”

We all freeze, catching on to her words.

“A family home?” Zach repeats. “In England?”

Meghan nods. “Mr Sanchez would need a bolthole, right? Somewhere to take Willow that isn’t tied to him?”

“And the scumbag wouldn’t stop to consider that we’d dig into Lia,” Ethan finishes. “She isn’t even a human being to him. Perhaps he’s using her for somewhere to stay off the radar.”

“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Killian jumps to his feet, looking ready to find that address and jump in the first available vehicle he can find.

Ethan strides over to one of his operatives, sitting behind an array of open laptops. “Find me everything you can on Lia Hartley.”