Yanire is rattled awake by a banging on her door. At first she was disoriented and frightened until she recognised the voice on the other side as Miss Secoiya. She jumps from the bed and goes to open the door. The older woman rushes inside, closing and locking the door behind her.
"What's going on?"
"We're being attacked."
Yanire gulped nervously as she tried to figure out what to do in this sort of situation. Secoiya moves around her to the guest bed with Yanire watching curiously.
Miss Polson pushed the bed out of the way roughly, like it weighs nothing to her. Even more shocking, there is what appears to be a small door on the wall where the bed had been. Secoiya types a code into the keypad beside it and the door swings open.
"Hurry, get inside."
Yanire obeys, quickly shuffling. The passageway behind it is both cold and damp. Secoiya slips in behind her, shutting the compartment behind them and engulfing them in darkness. Just when Yanire starts to panic, she feels Secoiya link their arms together and start leading her through the tunnel.
The women move deeper and deeper, dipping a bit lower into the ground as they carry on. The cold gets fiercer the further they get until Yanire feels herself shivering against Miss Polson. The woman, from what she can tell, is completely unfazed. Eventually Yanire sees a light ahead of them and relief washes her body.
They make it into an open, and large circular room where Adriel is already standing. The room is lit by an old fluorescent light. When the man sees both of them, his face fills with relief and he ushers them through a different hallway, again with little to no light.
Finally, they make it to a strange opening with a technology that Yanire had never seen before. It appears to be an underwater shuttle. Adriel helps Secoiya to lower herself into the driver seat, then turns to Yanire. He looks at the nervousness of Yanire and he puts both of his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes calmly.
"It's just like a submarine, only faster. You'll be okay."
Yanire nods, sucking in a deep breath and allowing him to help her settle into one of the other seats. It is a four-seater shuttle and Yanire suddenly remembers Zayn.
"Where is Mr. MacKay?"
Secoiya's expression darkens and Adriel says nothing, crawling into the empty seat behind the driver. Yanire gets a bad feeling which she cannot explain, and opts not to ask any further questions. The shuttle shoots out of its position and they begin moving through the icy waters at incomprehensible speeds. Yanire feels herself getting sick but squeezes her eyes shut and focuses on taking deep breaths.
She cannot decipher how long they've been moving or how fast they are going. She knows it has been at least five minutes, but no more than thirty.
Her whole body feels pressure about it and for the briefest moment, Yanire fears she may die.
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Finally, the underwater device slows and Yanire feels comfortable enough to open her eyes. They begin to move up to the surface of some sort of island. They surface entirely and Adriel removes his seatbelts, pushing the top hatch of the shuttle open and helping hoist Secoiya out of it.
When the woman is atop the outside she reaches back down to help her companions out. Yanire stares at the island with a mild bewilderment. It's cold, but beautiful. The grass is brilliantly green, with black sand contrasting it and a rough looking terrain. The group of them get off the shuttle and swim the short distance the rest of the way to the shore.
When they get out of the water, Yanire is shivering cold and wet. The others seem immune to the weather, moving briskly up the rough terrain and to an unknown location. As they walk, Adriel explains they are on Iceland's mainland, headed for his family estate there. Yanire nods indifferently.
Fortunately, the estate is close enough to where they started and only a few strangers gawked at them as they passed through the streets. They slip through the gates of a large and gaudy estate. It is a brightly coloured manor with large and inviting windows all about it.
When they get through the doors, they are met with the warmth of an active fireplace. Adriel and Secoiya strip swiftly, with little thought to it. Yanire moves to the fire and tries to warm herself that way, uncomfortable with the prospect of exposing herself in such a casual fashion.
Secoiya pulls some winter clothes out of a hallway closet and approaches YAnire, while Adriel moves to some other room in the estate.
"Here, love. You'll get a cold if you keep those on."
Yanire nods gratefully, but squirms a little before she strips herself. Secoiya turns around politely, pulling her own winter clothes on and then turning to face the younger woman.
"Better?"
Yanire nods honestly. With the both of them dressed, Secoiya moves through the house to where Adriel is. He is wearing winter pants now but still shirtless as he stands before a table of more weapons than Yanire had ever seen in one place before.
She gawks at the variety of guns and daggers as Secoiya begins suiting herself up. Adriel is loading the cartridges with bullets before slipping them into the guns and being sure to sharpen all of the daggers. Yanire's head starts to spin as she tries to make sense of what is happening.
Finally, Adriel turns and starts to walk to another room in the home when the young woman snaps. She grabs his arm and pulls him to look at her.
"Adriel, what the hell is happening?"
He looks at her with a frightening calm in his eyes.
"Secoiy and I have been exposed, we're in danger now. It was always bound to happen, we really just hadn't expected it while father was alive. Go figure- he's actually the one that's trying to organise our deaths at the moment."
Yanire cringed at the thought of her own father organising her death. The man looked at her with a complete poker face, making no move to pull away from her hold on him.
"That being said, we're no longer in danger of you exposing us, so frankly, it'd be fine for you to finally get to London. Or I can send you somewhere else if you'd prefer. Your family still lives in the Philippines, right? I could get you a flight there tonight and send you some spending money to get yourself settled."
Yanire blinks at the man, surprised. She knew that he'd only kept her captive to keep himself safe but she never actually expected that he would let her go.
What was she going to do? Where would she go?
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Yanire thinks for a moment, staring at Adriel. She is hit with the crushing realisation that, in reality, she has nowhere to go. If she goes back to Emesta, Martien is bound to find her and her sister will be caught in the crossfire. Her mother is beneath the bastard's thumb now, and her son is dead.
Yanire Quema has absolutely nowhere left to go.
She thinks of her time on the island and how well she worked with Secoiya. The household had been kind to her and with time, she'd grown attached to them. Further, staring at the man she comes to accept, with a fair amount of reluctance, that she cares for him.
Adriel begins to shuffle in front of her, obviously needing to focus on the issue at hand. Yanire closes the distance between them and plants a very soft kiss against his lips. Adriel freezes in shock, furrowing his brows as he stares down at her. The pause in his movements is momentary, and he soon takes to kissing her back in a hungry sort of way.
Soon, too soon, he pulls away and cups her face between his calloused hands.
"We're definitely going to come back to what you just started."
Yanire blushes, remaining completely quiet.
"But first, I've got a father to murder."
He pulls away professionally, striding with great focus to some unknown location of the home. Yanire smiles at the obscene but casual nature with which Adriel had just made the declaration. Soon after she was hit with the horror that he was, in no way, joking.
Secoiya coughs a little and Yanire turns to her, blushing furiously at the idea that Miss Polson witnessed their entire interaction. A small smile plays on the older woman's lips.
"Yanire?"
The younger woman nods.
"I'll be glad to keep you around."
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THE END