Imperatrix

chapter 49

“You shot me!” he accused suddenly remembering all the times he’d been shot. “Twice!”

“It was a dart gun,” Jack said dismissively.

“It’s the same fucking thing!”

“Stay out of my way detective. It would do you no good to interfere. If you do, I’ll have no choice but to take you out.” Her voice didn’t shake, it was unwavering.

“Who are you?” he asked quietly. His heart was in pain.

She cocked her head and said, “Someone you don’t want to cross.” She moved from behind the island and approached the doorway, but he blocked it with his body.

“Stay back.”

“You are in my way.”

“I can’t let you leave.” She raised a brow as he took a deep breath and said, “You are under arrest, anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law.”

I can't do this.

Jack pursed her lips and tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans. “That was a mistake. I had hoped it wouldn’t get to this.”

Get to what, Harry wondered.

His question was answered when she launched herself at him and kicked the gun out of his hands. His eyes widened as the gun slipped across the room. If he thought before that there was a chance she was innocent, her actions proved him wrong now. And he didn’t even know she could fight. Everything was a lie!

“Stop Anna, I don’t want to hurt you,” he said while trying to block her attacks.

“Well you better hit me cause I won’t hesitate to hit you,” she said and threw a punch to his side, but he held her hand and pulled her against him. His arms pinned her hand to her sides and her back was against him.

“Stop Anna, please.”

She stopped struggling for a moment and he thought she had given up. But then she headbutted him and he quickly let her go as his nose stung from the pain. She turned around and flipped, wrapping her legs around his neck as she hit him continuously with her elbows.

Harry held both her hands, and without knowing where he was going, he walked forward till his body hit the island, and then he slammed her down on it. Jack groaned at the sharp pain that ran through her.

Her legs fell from his neck and she kicked him making him stumble back. She jumped off the island and swiped his feet from under him and he fell with a thud. She swiftly straddled him and pinned his arms to his side using her thighs. Then she wrapped one hand around his neck and raised a clenched fist ready to punch him if he moved.
They were both breathing hard. He could have easily bucked her off, but he didn’t.

“Stay down officer.”

She knew he wouldn’t, but she hoped that maybe he would. When she was sure he wouldn’t attack her, she unclenched her fist and unwrapped her fingers from his neck. He stared up at her, and all Jack could see was that he was hurting, badly. But she was hurting too. She wanted to comfort him and tell him she was sorry, but she couldn’t. She never thought it would end like that.

Instead she settled for placing both hands on his shoulders and leaning down. She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, letting her lips linger for a second.

“Please stay down,” she whispered then got off him. She looked down at him for a moment before slowly backing away.

When she turned her back to him, he spoke, “I guess we are enemies now.”

Jack paused as her heart clenched in pain and a tear slowly ran down her cheek. She swallowed thickly before replying, “Yeah, I guess we are.” She stood still for a moment then left his house.

Harry didn’t get up till he heard the door close and the roar of her bike faded. Then he locked all the doors and windows. Bloody hell, he was scared that she would come back.

As he lay in bed that night with his hands behind his head and his heart heavy, he remembered all the times they spent together. He would never look at her the same way again. She was a criminal and a fugitive of the law and it was his job to do everything he could to bring her in.

But could he?

He recalled all the times he had seen the signs that she was more than she’d let him believe. And right now, he had a hunch about who she was but didn’t want to believe it yet. He had surmised that she was Spanish, he had heard her speak he language on several occasions. Her family probably was too. And that tattoo, J and C entwined with little hearts and symbols, that didn’t just mean nothing.

And that message he had seen on her phone one time, the one that said done, boss. He sat up quickly and grabbed his laptop. There was a mystery about her, and he was going to solve it right there and then. No more wasting time. He was tired of being kept in the dark. He recalled her telling him she was adopted, she had a younger brother, that her father was dead, and that they lived in the city. She looked well to do, which meant it was a rich family that adopted her.

His fingers moved over the keyboard swiftly as he typed in some words and a list of the top richest families in the city appeared. What he was looking for was a Spanish family, with a deceased head. He narrowed it down to Cabrera and another. None mentioned any adopted child, and Dominic Cabrera had only one child, Lucas.

If she was adopted by either, shouldn’t it show? He remembered the day her phone had rang, it had been Lucas calling. His brain was thinking fast.

Unless she wasn’t adopted legally and there were no papers to show forth. But how did that explain why she didn’t have any database.

He opened articles about the death of Cabrera and saw that the man had died in a plane crash. His body was never found. Harry then opened photos of his funeral. It looked like the photographer main focus had been on Lucas, but there, just in the background, he saw her.

Anna.

The pictures weren’t clear, they were blurry. But he assumed it was her, even though she had blonde hair and a hat on. So if she was a girl, and her brothers name was Lucas, who then was Jack Cabrera in the family? A distant uncle? It clearly was a man’s name.

Unless... it wasn’t a man. That would explain why they never found anything. They never could find Jack because it wasn’t a man. They had been fooled by the name. No wonder they had been running around in circles looking for a man that didn’t exist. Harry leaned back exhausted by it all. What he had learned was overwhelming. He had to accept it.

It all finally added up. It couldn’t just be coincidence that the letters on her back matched with the initials of Jack Cabrera. He had come to the conclusion that Jack wasn’t a man, it was a woman!

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I have been waiting to publish this chapter since I started this book.

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