cries desperately.
But a glacial crevasse separates me from my parents and there is no way I am crossing it. My body trembles. “I’m not going with you.”
My mother’s face lights up in vibrant blue flashes as the jet’s navigation lights blink above us. “Todd will take Aksel back, make sure he’s safe.”
“And what about Sophia?” Aksel snarls. “Who’s going to make sure she’s safe?”
My father studies Aksel as if seeing him for the first time.
Aksel is taller than my father, muscular, with broad shoulders, and large hands, tightly fisted around mine. He resembles a battle-hardened soldier rather than a high school senior. He glares brazenly back at my father.
“We do,” my father answers icily.
“Like you did before?” Aksel asks vehemently, stepping toward my father. “Like you did tonight?”
“We have to get in the air,” my mother says, stepping between my father and Aksel. “We have to get in the air before they can track us—that’s how we stay safe.”
“But you’re not safe!” Aksel interjects furiously. “Sophia hasn’t been safe, and you can’t protect her!”
“And you can?” my mother snaps. “You don’t understand.”
“Sixty seconds!” the airman yells.
“I understand she should stay!” Aksel responds angrily. He turns to me, “Stay.” Then to my father: “Let her stay.”
My mother takes my free hand. A fissure splits my heart—Aksel on one side of the crack, and my parents on the other.
“If we don’t leave now, Sophia won’t be safe,” my father says to Aksel. “It’s simple, how we operate, and one day you’ll understand.”
“Is that what you told my father?” Aksel asks.
My gaze snaps to my father in time to see a shadow pass over his face, a quick pocket of surprise. “I never knew your father, Aksel,” he says coolly.
“And yet you just happen to move here.”
“Precisely,” my father says.
“You’re lying,” Aksel sneers.
“And you’re about to get Sophia killed. Let her go. Or we are going to be forced into a fight we might not win.”
Aksel glares at my father. Untrusting. Undoubtedly assessing him the way he assesses everyone.
I sense his conclusion—my father is a threat, not to Aksel, but to me.
“I’m staying with you,” I say ardently to Aksel.
But suddenly Aksel’s grip around me releases, like he has unbuckled the harness that has prevented me from falling to earth. He takes my waist in both hands and turns me in front of him.
“What are you doing?” I cry.
Aksel tilts his head forward until our foreheads touch, holding the back of my head with his hands. His vibrant green eyes lock with mine, as if memorizing them.
“Promise me, Sophia,” Aksel says, his fervent voice piercing my skin, “no matter what happens, no matter what you hear—you’ll remember I meant everything I said. I have loved every minute I’ve spent with you, and I will see you again,” he says fiercely.
“Stop it.” I shake my head. “Don’t—don’t say that.” My words come out in choking gasps.
“Promise me!” he yells above the roar of the jet engine.
“I’m not leaving!” I whisper frantically. Pushing at his chest, I try to force him back. This is our chance. We have to go. We have to try.
But pushing against his chest is like pushing against a stone wall.
“You have to go, Sophia!” he says urgently.
Cradling my face in his hands, Aksel presses his lips hard against mine.
Then he pries my hands from his neck, unlocking my fingers.
I whip my head side to side. “I’m not—”
“Sophia, now!” my father roars.
“You’ll come back,” Aksel whispers in his deep, familiar voice. In a single motion, he thrusts me into my father’s arms.
“NO!” I reach for Aksel, but he is staggering backward, as if he can barely walk. Todd clamps his hand onto Aksel’s forearm like a handcuff. Aksel doesn’t resist.
The engines reach capacity, muffling my screams.
I try to break my father’s tight grasp, but he lifts me off the ground, throws me over his shoulder, and bounds up the stairway.
“I’m not going with you!” I pound both of my fists into my father’s back. I pull at his ear as if I can rip it off his head. “Put me down!”
But no matter how loudly I scream, no matter how furiously I hit him, no matter how badly I want him to stop—he keeps going.
My father hurls us through the doorway, the staircase rolls away, and the door closes on Waterford.
CHAPTER 41
For nine hours, I fight to quell the maelstrom brewing in my stomach. Now, I feel it in my throat. I suck in long breaths of stale air to force