She looked at him directly and when he loosened his grip enough for her to speak she said what she had already decided to say.
"My husband will come for me. In a way you will not anticipate and cannot prepare for. And when he points a gun at you this time I will not ask him to lower it." She held his eyes. "If someone is his enemy then they are mine. Which makes you the first name on my list, Jokull Ozanne." She paused. "I curse the day I ever considered you someone worth loving."
Something broke open in his face. Not remorse. Something worse than remorse.
"Say one more word," he said, "and I will destroy your entire family. Every single one of them." He stepped back. "And do not think I do not know who you are. You are a Mendoza. Did you think you could hide that from me forever?" His jaw tightened. "Tesni is the one I feel for. Because I am going to make her life a living nightmare for everything her family has cost me."
Aine said nothing.
She looked at him with the same golden eyes that had made Ravi afraid on a hill, and she stored every word he had just said in the place where she kept things she intended to act on.
"Hayland." Ravi stood in the doorway of the room and looked at him for a moment before he could arrange his expression into anything useful. "I thought I had lost you."
Hayland shifted slightly against the pillow, his voice steady despite everything. "I have been by your side for years. I trust your equipment."
"Tell me what happened."
"When I opened the gate I made sure not to cross the sensory beam." He paused to breathe. "When the car accelerated I let it displace me just enough. Your gate's metal caught the vehicle at the entrance when I used the remote to close it. The driver was standing right there." A small pause. "I shot the second one and cleared both of them after."
Ravi looked at him for a long moment. "He has Aine."
The room was quiet.
"What are we doing?" Hayland asked.
"The only leverage he has over her is her sister. He knows that." Ravi straightened. "I am enrolling you in Jade High the moment you are back on your feet. Keep eyes on Tesni until I bring Aine back."
Hayland nodded once. "Understood."
The breakfast spread sat untouched at the centre of the table.
"Congratulations, darling." Hilda smiled across at Tesni, warm and carefully assembled. "Your first day of college. This is something to celebrate."
Tesni looked at her. "You can still smile."
"Of course. You still need to—"
"Really." Tesni set down her fork. Then she stood up and her hand came down flat on the table hard enough to rattle everything on it. "Really, Mum?"
Hilda blinked. "What is the matter?"
"Do you have any idea what is happening right now?" Tesni's voice climbed with every word. "Aine is somewhere none of us can reach and you are sitting there talking about congratulations and celebrations." She looked at her mother with eyes that had been carrying too much for too long. "What are you actually doing to find her? What are any of you doing? Aine always said the truth about you and I defended you. She was right. You are just a lazy bitch tailing her father for money."
Tesni, that is enough—"
"Do not." She turned to her father. "And do not you dare open your mouth right now either. Not after everything your decisions have cost this family."
Hilda's voice dropped into something cooler. "I am ashamed to be spoken to this way at my own table."
You are ashamed?" Tesni laughed, the sound of it carrying nothing resembling amusement.
My sister is missing and you are worried about how you are being spoken to." She shook her head. "Aine has been gone long enough and every day that passes you are both still sitting at this table eating breakfast like the world is fine." Her voice broke at the edges. "She is not fine. She is out there and nobody at this table is doing enough."
She pushed her chair back and left the room before anyone could answer her.
The breakfast sat untouched at the centre of the table.
"Enough, Tesni." Mendoza's voice came down hard across the table. "Before I do something I should not."
Tesni turned to look at him with an expression that had moved somewhere beyond anger into something colder and more final.
"What could you possibly do?" She let out a short laugh that carried nothing warm in it. "Disown me?" She looked between them both. "Save yourself the trouble. I have already disowned all of you. You stopped being my parents the moment you stopped acting like it." She straightened. "The only family I have is Aine. And thank God she advised me early enough to build something of my own so I do not have to depend on either of you for a single thing."
She went upstairs without waiting for a response.
Her bags came down with her when she returned. She moved through the entrance hall with the efficiency of someone who had already made every decision that needed to be made and was simply executing them now.
"I am done with this family," she said. "Completely and permanently done."
"Tesni." Hilda appeared at the bottom of the stairs, her composure finally showing its cracks. "Please. We have already lost Aine. We cannot lose you too."
Tesni stopped at the door and turned around slowly.
"Do you actually care?" she asked quietly. "Because I need you to think carefully before you answer that." She held her mother's gaze. "I heard you. The night before we moved here. Your whole conversation with that man." She paused. "Every word of it."
Tesni's Flashback
The voice had drifted through the gap in the door and Tesni had stood in the hallway and listened without moving.
"Thank God I never signed her up for the orphanage."
"I told you to treat her properly," the other voice said.
"I was never prepared for her." Hilda's voice, lighter than it ever was when Tesni was in the room. "But when that multibillion man saw us he felt enough sympathy to marry me. She has been the greatest tool in everything I have built."
Tesni had stood in the hallway and listened to the shape of her own life being described as an instrument.
Then she had smiled to herself, quietly and privately, picked up her bags and walked out before anyone realised she had heard a single word.
Tesni looked at her mother across the entrance hall.
"That's who you call your instrument ",Tesni said and left with her bag