"I can give you one of my branches," Mendoza said quickly. "Any one you choose."
"No." Ravi's gaze settled and stayed. "I want something dear to you. Something that will make it impossible for you to disappear." He smiled for the first time, thin and without warmth. "Something difficult to let go of."
"Like what?"
Before Mendoza could say anything more Aine felt it. The quiet vibration against her side. Her phone, still inside her purse. She kept her eyes forward, kept her face completely still, and slowly, carefully, worked her hand into the bag.
She answered without looking down.
"Aine." Jokull's voice came through, low and immediate. "Where are you?"
"Place that gun down," she said clearly, her eyes never leaving Ravi. "Do not dare point it at my father."
"Where are you, Aine?"
"Do not kill my dad."
"Will you shut your mouth?" Ravi's composure flickered for just a moment.
"You will regret it if you try," she said.
"Who wants to kill your father?" Jokull's voice sharpened on the other end of the line, all pretence of calm gone. "I am on my way."
It happened fast.
Someone closed the distance between them in seconds and snatched the purse clean from her side. They tore it open, shook it out and let everything inside scatter across the wet ground. The phone landed face down in a puddle, Jokull's voice swallowed by the rain.
Ravi looked at her with something between amusement and contempt. "Do not be smart with me. I hate smart kids."
Aine said nothing. She stood perfectly still in the downpour and looked back at him.
Ravi turned to Mendoza with the patience of someone who had already decided how this evening would end.
"I will tell you what I want for the substitute. Are you ready?"
Mendoza's jaw was tight. "Yes."
"Give me one of your girls." He said it the way someone might order something from a menu, simple and without ceremony. "You can come for her once you have paid every penny you owe me. You have my word."
Tesni's breath came apart beside her. "Aine." Her voice dropped to barely anything. "I do not want to be the one."
Aine reached for her hand in the dark and held it. "Dad will not allow anyone to take us," she said quietly. "He will not."
Mendoza stepped forward, his face a mask of blood and rain and something ferocious underneath both of it. "You can have my company. Every branch, every asset, everything. You can even have me." His voice did not shake. "But not my girls. They are too young. You will not touch them."
Ravi looked at him for a long moment. "You do not have the right to change what I want." His eyes moved between the two of them. "Aine. Or Tesni. That is what I came for."
"Then take me," Mendoza said. "Take me instead."
The boot connected with his face before he finished the sentence.
The sound of it cut through the rain and Tesni flinched so hard she nearly went down. Mendoza hit the ground and did not get back up immediately, his hands pressing into the wet road beneath him, his breathing ragged and open mouthed.
Ravi looked down at him without expression. "Get me the gun."
It was placed in his hand immediately. He checked it once with the ease of someone who had done it ten thousand times and wrapped his finger around the trigger, the barrel levelled and ready.
Mendoza raised his head from the ground. His face was destroyed but his eyes were clear and completely without fear. "Blow my mind rather," he said. "Do it."
Aine could not breathe.
The words moved through her chest like something physical. She stood in the rain with the water running into her eyes and down her neck and soaking through everything and she thought only one thing.
I have already lost my mother.
I cannot lose my dad too.
"Take me."
The words left her mouth before anything else could and they fell into the rain with a weight that silenced everything around them. Even the men standing in the dark seemed to go still.
Ravi turned slightly. He looked at her for a long moment, then checked the gun in his hand almost lazily and smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the kind that confirmed everything you had already feared about a person.
"Well." He tilted his head toward Mendoza. "Your daughter just saved your life today, old man." He gestured to his men without looking at them. "Bring her up."
The black cloth came over her face before she could see who put it there and then there was nothing. No rain. No light. Just the sounds of boots on wet ground and engines running and her own breathing loud inside the dark.Tesni lunged forward.
Her hands found Aine's arm for just a second before Hilda caught her and pulled her back, her grip firm and unyielding.
"Mummy—"
"It is already too late," Hilda said, her voice scraped hollow. "There is nothing we can do."
"Mummy." Tesni collapsed into her and wept. She wept without restraint, without any of the composure she had carried through the entire evening, her whole body shaking with it while her mother held her in the rain.
The cars accelerated into the dark and were gone.
What remained was silence, and her father unconscious on the ground, and the long terrible night stretching out ahead of them.
Headlights cut through the rain from some distance away. A car pulled to the side of the road and a door flew open before it had fully stopped.
Jokull ran toward them.
He took in the scene in a single sweep. The blood. Mendoza on the ground. Hilda and Tesni standing in the rain, soaked through and broken open.
"Please," Tesni said the moment she saw him, grabbing his arm with both hands. "Please help me get my dad to the hospital."
Jokull looked around. His eyes moved over every face. Then he went very still.
"Where is Aine?"
Tesni's face crumpled. "They took her."
The words hit him somewhere deep and wordless. He stood in the rain for a moment that stretched far longer than it should have, his jaw working, his eyes going somewhere far away.
"Who took her?" His voice came out carefully. Too carefully.
"Please," Hilda said, stepping forward and pressing her hand against his arm. "Please help me get him to a hospital first. Please."
He looked at Mendoza on the ground and something moved across his face that he did not let stay long. He nodded once and moved.