The F King: A Bad Boy Romance(59)

“Yes, I do.”

Ryan’s face lost any hint of calm and he quickly closed the physically short but emotionally huge distance between us. His arms were around me and I never wanted him to let go. I held him back as tightly as I could and buried my face against his chest, shutting out the rest of the world for what might have been a second or an hour until he put his hands on my shoulders and held me at arm’s length.

“I’m Ryan. You’re Sarina. I know you. You know me. But life is going to be... very different. You have to know what you’re getting into. I’m not some cosmetics entrepreneur, you’re not a college student or a cop. I’m gonna go through hell and do some hellish things. I asked you, once before, to fight with me. If you’re gonna be with me now… you gotta be with me in this. Will you stay with me, Sarina? Will you remind me that we’ll have a life after this shit is done?”

I gulped. The last scrap of my mind that aspired to a law enforcement career tipped its hat and walked out the door.

“I love you, Ryan. I trust you. I won’t ever let you down again. You and me, OK?”

“Yes.”

Ryan kissed me and pulled me into another hug that might have lasted forever, if somebody hadn’t cleared their throat. The tattooed-suit-wearer was standing there with the computer-worker he’d called Dan.

The door to the stairwell opened, and Eric walked through as the lights on the elevator started counting up. It felt like the eye of the storm was moving on and things were about to get bad.

“We good?” the tattooed-suit-wearer asked.

“Yeah. Sarina, this is Jace Barlow. Jace, this is Sarina B… Beckett.”

Jace nodded at me but I didn’t even know how to respond, recognizing the face now that I had a name to go with it. The millionaire from Port Magnus?

“It’s time,” Jace said. “They’re locked down. Dan, get the blinds.”

The elevator dinged and the big guy named Austin stepped back through as Dan pulled on a cord that twisted the vertical Venetians so that we could see through it. I immediately recognized the Trafford Tower.

Ryan guided me towards the closest desk to the window and pulled out his phone. Everybody lined up next to us. He tapped a few buttons and set the phone down.

I looked at it and saw a picture of a big red button there, like the kind you imagine the President might have installed somewhere in the Oval Office.

“This is it, Sarina,” said Ryan. “You press this button and there’s no going back. The old life ends, you’re not a cop anymore. It’s not a symbolic button. You press it and people die. The people who did this to my mom, to you… to me. Are you with me?”

My heart leapt into my throat, and I stared at the button with new fear and respect as the weight of expectation poured on top of me from all sides. It was like something out of a science-fiction movie… press a button and change reality as you know it.

I looked up at Ryan, straight into his eyes… and found myself there. His fight was my fight, because I loved him. Everything else came second.

I pressed the button.

The display on the phone was replaced by a countdown.

10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… 0…





For a moment nothing happened. Then, through my feet, I felt the shudders like a train going past nearby.

Out the window, I saw flashes of light bursting out through the windows of the Trafford Tower. Floor by floor, in sequence, they went, and I heard the explosions like gunfire, one after the other. The lights ran from bottom to top along each side of the building, and then a fireball burst out from the ground floor… then the first floor… then the second floor.

The rumble of that train grew more powerful with each explosion, but it was nothing compared with the otherworldly roar when the tower started sinking right in front of us, as if the dust cloud that swirled out at street level hid a portal to another dimension that was swallowing the building whole.

I couldn’t have blinked if I had tried. My eyes were wide open, bulging in shock as if they were going to take a vacation from my head. Row after row of blown-out windows flashed by in their race to the dust below. I looked to my right and saw my expression mirrored on four faces, then to my left and saw Ryan looking almost impassive.

“How… how is this possible?” I asked.

“My friend, Billy D. owned W. Darrin & Co Construction. After the earthquake, I gave him enough money to subsidize his bid when the tender went out on the Trafford Tower. That helped his chances of winning the contract to check the building and make any repairs required. He did, and so for the past year and a half he’s been secretly prepping the building for demolition with explosives I provided. I paid him a shitload of money, he got paid a shitload of money for the contract, and he sold his business for a shitload of money because of all the work he had lined up in other contracts around the city. He’s disappeared with all that money now.”