(Gypsy Brothers #7)St Germain Lili - One Love

Published by Lili Saint Germain This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance it bears to reality is entirely coincidental. Produced by Lili Saint Germain at Lili Saint Germain Publishing Formatting by Max Henry of Max Effect Copyright© 2014 by Lili Saint Germain All rights reserved.

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Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen A Note For My Readers Cartel About the Author

“I want my lawyer,” I repeat for the hundredth time. There are two CIA agents in front of me, and they’re playing a very bad rendition of good cop / bad cop. We’ve been at this for hours. Boss Bitch — Agent Dunn, as she’s since told me — on one side, and her completely dumb but cute male partner, Agent Brennan, on the other. In my head, to pass the hours, I’ve nicknamed them Agent Bitch and Agent Dumbass. I sit across from them, my hands in my lap,

heavy metal cuffs weighing them down. My throat is dry, my tongue parched. Agent Dumbass has a fresh can of Coke in front of him, and I can see the tiny beads of condensation running down the sides. I want it. I want to reach over and grab the can. I don’t even need to drink what’s inside. I’ll settle for the moisture making its lazy descent down the side of the bright red can and onto the dusty Formica table that separates me from them. “Let’s try this again,” the female cop says, tucking a loose blonde hair behind her ear. The rest is up in a severe bun that reminds me of a matronly grandmother, even though this woman only looks about thirty. She’s got a slight

southern inflection that reminds me of Elliot’s grandma. I don’t reply, waiting for whatever it is she plans on doing next. Her next big thought, her latest overdone gesture, to try and convince me that I should spill all of my dirty secrets onto this table between us. So far she’s used threats against Jase, a plea deal that would grant me immunity, and long stretches of silence. None of that will break me. I’ve been tortured by Dornan fucking Ross. This woman’s going to have to try a lot harder, or maybe get out some pliers and start yanking my teeth out of my mouth, before I’ll give her a single damned thing.

She snatches up a manila folder and opens it, handing a stack of photographs to Agent Brennan. “Stick these up,” she barks at him, and he moves slowly, ripping a section of sticky tack from a large ball of the stuff that must live permanently on the wall to my left. I watch, slightly interested at what he’s going to put up. He doesn’t disappoint. As I watch him pin several 5x7 photographs to the wall, I can’t help but feel some sense of satisfaction for the lives that ended at my hands. I have to remain impassive though, so I tamp down the gloating grin that wants to spread across my face and settle for resting bitch face instead. Dunn peeks at me from the corner of

her eye, and I return her gaze impassively. She might think she can get under my skin, but I grew up in the Gypsy Brothers MC, for shit’s sake. I know how to hold out in front of a cop. “Chad Ross,” Dunn says, smoothing her pants as she stands up and circles the table, coming to stand next to the photographs her partner is sticking up in a haphazard fashion. I wait for her to reach out and straighten them. Boom. Three seconds later, she does just that, making sure all of the photos line up. “Chad Ross was poisoned,” she continues, tapping one manicured fingernail against the photo of his bloated death face. “Looks nasty,” I reply.

“It’s a nasty way to die,” Dunn says, peering at me. “The killer added pure methamphetamine to an energy drink he later consumed. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.” He wasn’t. He suffered. Thankfully. “And you’re showing me this why?” I ask, studying my own nails, bitten down to the quick. I never was a girly girl. It’s not easy to keep your nails long when you’re constantly trying to claw your way back from death. Dunn looks at me pointedly before jabbing her fingernail towards the second photo. Ahhh, yes. Maxi in all his naked, bloody glory. His face is a mess from the coke I shoved underneath his nose, the coke laced with strychnine that

made blood gush from his nose like warm water from a faucet. I still remember the way his blood felt on my hands. How surreal everything was, bright and garish, as my skull burned with a small amount of the poisoned coke I’d snorted myself. How I’d nearly died in my quest to kill him. How it was so worth the risk to see the look on his smarmy fucking face, when I whispered in his ear who I really was and sat back on his lap to see the fury rise in his cheeks. As he realized a black widow was the one who’d just fed him his last meal of poison and cocaine. I glance at Agent Dunn, clearing my

throat and attempting to look bored. It’s not hard. I am bored. “Strychnine-laced cocaine,” she says. “In fact, the same thing you were admitted to hospital for that very night. Jason Ross brought you into emergency. They said you almost died.” “It was a hell of a night,” I reply curtly. “My nose still bleeds just thinking about that coke.” She raises her eyebrows in disbelief, and in that moment I have no doubt that she’s cataloguing me as a sociopath or similar. “Can I ask you a question?” I say. “Shoot,” Dunn responds. I reach my hand out slowly, methodically, and take hers, a bold

move. She could pepper spray me, shoot me. You’re not supposed to touch the interrogators. But she’s ballsy enough that she doesn’t want to take her hand away, even as I watch her flinch. “How do you keep your nails so pretty?” I ask sweetly, the saccharine in my voice not reaching the cold death stare I give her. I hold up my other hand. “Mine are hopeless. You spend much time in the field, Agent Dunn?” She takes her hand away, and I let my own cuffed hands fall back into my lap. I know her skin must be crawling from my touch. I hope the feeling stays there for a long time. She should not have fucked with me.

“I take good care of myself, Miss Portland,” she says briskly. “Which is more than I can say for you.” “My child died,” I say blankly. “Physical appearance isn’t on the top of my priority list right now.” She bristles momentarily. “I am sorry for your loss,” she says finally. I sit back, crossing my legs. “No, you’re not,” I reply. She points to the third photograph, which is … hell, I’ve got no idea what that is. I tilt my head, trying to figure out what that is. “It’s a leg,” Dunn supplies. “Ohhh,” I say, nodding. “Thanks.” It is indeed a leg, or at least part of one. Charred and black, with spots of

unmarred flesh and blood still peeking through in sections. Huh. I wonder who it belonged to. “Two Ross brothers were killed in an explosion. Somebody put homemade bombs in their fuel tanks, can you believe that?” I shrug. “Sounds like they must have had it coming.” Dunn points to the final photos, and a cloying heat bleeds up my chest and neck as I remember those three months of horror and torture I endured at Dornan’s hands before I was broken out. The way Dornan’s father Emilio flew backwards with a meaty thump as the top of his head was blown clean off, blood and brains flying everywhere. Mickey’s look of

horror that didn’t fade after the bullet entered his face; such a satisfying end for men whose only fault in death was that their ends were much too swift. I imagine how much more satisfying it would have been to hang them by their feet and burn their eyes out with cigarettes and blowtorches, or pull their teeth out with rusty pliers, one by one. That would have been much more fitting for the men who tried to destroy me, the same men who murdered my father. Still … they’re dead, and that’s better than them being alive. “That’s got to give you a headache,” I joke, referring to the last two pictures. The blood and gore have no effect on

me. My stomach is made of iron after the atrocities I’ve seen, after all that I’ve endured. If this bitch wants to rattle my cage, she’s going to have to try harder. “And then we have Jimmy,” she says, sticking one last photograph to the wall. Jimmy’s face, still frozen in shock, the trail of blood from his temple where Jase shot him barely noticeable in the extreme close-up. “He looks unwell,” I comment. “Thing is, I’m still not sure why you’re showing me all of this.” Dunn frowns so hard it looks like she’s about to burst a blood vessel. “Here’s the thing,” she says, throwing a stack of photographs in front of me. “We’ve got you. We have your DNA on

the first two victims, and motive. We’ve got probable cause to take you to trial.” I sift through them, suppressing a twisted smile as I see what happened to Jazz and Ant after they bit the big one when bombs in their motorcycle fuel tanks exploded, ripping them to pieces. It isn’t pretty, what became of them. But to me, it’s beautiful. I drop the photographs on the table and lean back in the hard metal chair I’ve been sitting on for the past five hours. “These people are — were — like family to me. Don’t you think it’s a little tacky showing me all of this? I’m still grieving for these boys. They were like brothers to me.”

Agent Dunn actually rolls her eyes at me. At least she’s got some spunk somewhere in there. “Give it a rest, Miss Portland,” she says impatiently. “You’ve got more motive than anyone else, and no alibi for any of these murders.” “Motive?” I ask sweetly. “And what might that be?” Agent Dunn hesitates. Go on, I think. Say it. They raped me until they thought I was dead. The murdered my father, and you want to arrest me? Say it. “I’m not authorized to talk with you about an active investigation,” Dunn says finally. “But I really think you should start talking, Miss Portland.” I roll my eyes. “Okay,” I say finally.

“I give up. You got me. I’ll tell you something. Let me write it down.” Dunn’s beady eyes practically wig out of her head. She studies me for a moment, probably to see if I’m telling the truth, and I stare right back at her. If she wanted a wallflower who’d stare at the floor, she arrested the wrong girl. After a beat, she stands up, turns and bustles out of the room. I divert my attention to Agent Dumbass, who looks like he’s about to fall asleep in his chair. “I’ll make a full confession,” I say, “if you give me that.” I point to the coke can and he eyes it dubiously. After a pause, he slides the can over to me with one finger. With a smile, I pick up the can between my cuffed hands and take a

long drink. The fizzy liquid burns on the way down my throat, but it’s delicious. I drink as much as I can before Agent Bitch returns, setting it back down on the table and smiling at Dumbass. I slide the can back towards him with a wink. Let him think we’re friends. Let him think I’m just a silly young girl who couldn’t possibly hurt anyone. He looks surprised, taking the can back as Agent Bitch walks back into the room. She looks between me, the can and the goofy look on Agent Dumbass’s face and shakes her head. Sliding into her seat, she drops a yellow legal pad on the table between us as she addresses Dumbass.

“She killed a man by poisoning his drink with pure meth,” she says to her partner. “You sure you want that back?” “Allegedly,” I add. The oaf stares at the can for a few seconds. Finally, he pushes it back in my direction with an embarrassed look. In the past five hours or so since I was unceremoniously dumped in this interrogation room, I’ve gone through the whole gamut of emotions. Fear. Shock. Despair. Now, I’m at anger. Anger that bubbles within me. Anger that is thinly disguised as apathy to these two morons. Dunn drops a blue Bic pen on the legal pad and pushes it over to me. I hold up my cuffed wrists helplessly. “I can’t write with these things on,” I

say. Dunn gives me the filthiest look before nodding at Dumbass. He stands and circles around to me, removing my cuffs before returning to his spot. I WANT A LAWYER. I write it as obnoxiously large as I can, underlining the word LAWYER three times. Agent Bitch’s smile disappears, replaced by a thin line of contempt at her mouth. I grin. Good luck getting those cuffs back on me, motherfucker. I sit back in my seat and snatch up the Coke, draining the rest of the can before they think to take it from me. “We can play this game for however long you want, Miss Portland,” she says curtly, fiddling with the stack of crime

scene photographs in front of her. I smile. “I’ve got all day,” I say sweetly, even though I really, really don’t. Dornan has Elliot’s daughter and ex-girlfriend, and possibly Elliot himself, and Jase and I have twenty-four hours to meet him and get the girls out of danger before he kills them. At least, that’s what I’m assuming he plans to do to them. I can’t even comprehend what else he might be planning to do to those poor girls to get back at us. Agent Dunn shakes her head one last time, gathering up the files and stalking towards the door. “I’ll give you some time to think about your position,” she says.

“Isn’t this illegal?” I call out to her. “I’m an American citizen. I have a right to a lawyer. Get me a goddamn lawyer.” Really, I just need a lawyer to post bail so I can get the hell out of here. Not that I’m sure I’d actually be bailed out, but I need something, and talking to these two is proving fruitless. A cold panic is building up inside my stomach, in the hollow space where my baby once lived and died. God, it’s still so raw, so vicious when the memory of our tiny little baby takes hold and squeezes me. Sometimes, selfishly, I wish I could forget about her, because losing her has cursed me with more pain than I could ever imagine. If I had any remnants of doubt about

killing Dornan before? They’re gone, bled from me in the moments after our daughter was born, still and dead, in the early hours of the morning when the world was still dark. He took her from me. From us. And I cannot rest until he’s dead and buried, a rotting corpse in the cold ground, a memory and nothing more. Dornan Ross needs to burn for the things he’s done. Agent Dumbass follows his partner out of the room and pulls the door shut. I immediately stand up and go to the door, testing the handle. Locked from the outside. Of course. I go back to my chair, collecting the pen someone so thoughtfully left for me and shoving it

into my pocket. You know, just in case I need to stab somebody sometime soon. Which, as it turns out, is sooner than I’d anticipated. About an hour later, Agent Bitch sticks her head back into the room. “Your lawyer’s on the way,” she says, closing the door behind her again. This could be anyone. A cop posing as a lawyer to get a confession on tape. A hit man, sent by the Gypsy Brothers or the Cartel. I’m like a sitting duck in here, and I don’t like it one tiny bit. But what greets me isn’t any of those things. It’s so much worse. I don’t move an inch as the door swings open and he walks into the room.

Dressed in a suit I’ve seen before, clutching a black leather briefcase by his side. He looks positively fucking amused. “Well,” I say bitterly, “they’ll let any motherfucker take the bar these days.” That makes Donny laugh.

Donovan “Donny” Ross laughs, but there is no trace of pleasure in the strangled noise that comes from his throat. It’s a painful laugh, weighed down by death and despair. My laugh probably doesn’t sound that different, come to think of it. “Well, stand up,” he says. “I’ve missed my little sis.” I glare at him, standing abruptly so that my metal chair falls behind me. “Relax,” he soothes, motioning for me to sit down. “I didn’t come here to

hurt you, Julie.” He throws the briefcase onto the table that separates us and shoves his hands in his pants pockets. Pants that look ridiculous on him. He might think he’s dressed for success, but from where I’m standing he looks like a gangster, the long suit sleeves and white collared shirt underneath concealing some of his tattoos, but not the ones on his neck and hands. He’s got matching tattoos on the fingers of both hands, VITA and MORS. Life and death. I remember them well. They were on his hands six years ago. I’m sure you didn’t come here to hurt me, I think, pissed that he’s used the element of surprise to get me while I’m trapped. Stuck in a goddamned

interrogation room inside a US air base with nowhere to go. “What are you doing here, Donny?” I ask, my heart thudding as I watch him pace casually. As if he doesn’t have a care in the world. As if he hasn’t just lost five brothers and a grandfather in the bloody battle that we’re still stuck in the middle of. “Just a little business trip,” he says flippantly, his smile never reaching his dead black eyes, eyes that match Dornan’s perfectly. He’s just a younger version of his father, really. “Oh,” I reply, “I thought you’d be at another funeral.” I throw him a fuck-you smile, full of sweetness and hate. He doesn’t reply.

“You’re dressed for it,” I continue, acutely aware of both the pen in my pocket and the empty Coke can near my left hand. “Your family plot must be overflowing,” I say. Press those goddamn buttons. Come on, asshole, if you’re here to dance, let’s fucking dance. “I hear cremation is much more efficient,” Donny says somberly, clicking the briefcase open and removing something. A box. A box full of ashes. My daughter. I can’t help it. I buckle at the sight of my daughter’s remains in his hands, my hand over my mouth to stifle the scream

that tries to escape me. I back up against the far wall as he places the box beside his briefcase and snaps it shut again. I can’t even rush over and try to grab it, because I can’t risk him spilling one precious bit of those ashes. Can’t fathom what he’s going to do to them. Please, please, don’t hurt them. That box and a set of footprints on paper are all I have left of the baby who held on through every horrid bit of torment Dornan inflicted upon my body during the months I was his captive. “I came for what you owe my father,” he murmurs. “And instead, I found this.” He runs one finger along the top of the box, and I can’t see or hear anything else except him, except this here and now.

Everything I’ve managed to suppress for the past couple of hours comes crashing back into me with an intensity that physically hurts me. It’s like I’m dying, one painful moment at a time. “You lost his baby?” he asks, patting the box. “Daddy will be so angry.” Kill him. I have got to kill him. He cannot live. “She was never his baby,” I seethe, composing myself somewhat as the sadness engulfing me is temporarily drowned by the rage that rattles inside my chest. The rage that I need to finish this. To finish him. “She?” Donny asks, tilting his head to the side. “Hmph. Dornan always wanted a daughter. I mean, he had you, but look

what you went and did.” Goddamnit! Why did I tell him that? “Not his daughter,” I argue, shaking with anger and terror. “I was already pregnant.” “Daughter, granddaughter,” he shrugs, waving his hand in a noncommittal gesture. “It’s all the same, really. She came from Dornan. She belonged to him. And you lost her, you pathetic, fucking junkie.” He lets his hand drop from the box, and it’s a visceral relief for his hand to be off that box that contains the burnt remains of all of my hopes and dreams. He doesn’t have the right to even touch her, to be anywhere near her. “I told him to be careful with you.

That you’d end up like your fucking mother,” he says, stalking around the table and towards me. Shit! He comes at me like a snake, so quick and without warning that I don’t have time to react. Not that it’d matter. I never was able to fight him off, not physically. Not six years ago, not now. I back away, but there’s nowhere to go. We’re in a square box with a table and a chair, and there’s nowhere left to go. I scream as a hand closes around my neck. He squeezes hard, cutting off my air supply, crowding me with his body so there is nothing else but him. How did he get in here? That bitch agent must really be in with the Cartel.

And I don’t believe for a moment what she said about the Cartel working for the CIA. Nope. I think she’s on his payroll. I claw at his death grip, feeling Donny’s warm blood underneath my fingernails as I gouge at his flesh, but he doesn’t even flinch. He laughs as he squeezes harder, and white dots start to float lazily in my vision. He’s going to kill me. I go limp for a moment, tired and just completely over this relentless war that has consumed my entire existence, until I think of Jase. He can’t have Jase. No. He can’t take Jase from me. I love him too much to let that happen to my precious boy. I kick and punch and gouge, but it’s

no use. It’s like trying to fight off a brick wall. Nothing happens when I hit him. I am going to die here, and I didn’t even fight back. I am pathetic, just like he said. My lungs burn with emptiness. I need air. But I am smothering within his grip. My eyelids are drooping when I hear the door burst open. The two agents hurry in, and Donny drops me like I’m made of fire. “What did I say!” Agent Dunn screams at him. I imagine his smirk, but I can’t see it, because I’m on the ground, and Agent Dumbass is shaking me awake. “You said don’t kill her,” Donny scoffs. “I was just playing.”

“Time for a recess,” Dunn says to him. He starts to protest but she isn’t having any of it. I see Agent Bitch escort Donny from the room, the door slamming in their wake. The male agent brushes hair from my face and pats me on the cheek. “Hey,” he says. “You okay?” I feel really, really bad for what I’m about to do. I mean, no doubt the guy is working for the Cartel, but he seems like a stupid oaf, harmless really. I remind myself that he’s the enemy as I whisper something unintelligible to him. “What?” he asks, coming closer and putting his ear near my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, as I bring up the pen and drive it into the meaty

hollow of his throat, cringing as I strike gold and hit his windpipe. He gasps — or, he tries to gasp, but nothing happens. Shit, I hope I haven’t killed him. Both of his hands come up to his throat and he attempts to pull the pen out. I use this opportunity to shove him to the side and reach over him, unclipping the holster at his hip and sliding the gun out. He takes one hand from his throat and swings his arm around, but the shock of being stabbed in the throat makes him clumsy and foolish. I parry his blow easily, bringing the gun up and aiming it at him as I rise to my feet. “Get up,” I hiss. He glances up at me with wet eyes, a sickening rasp coming from the pen in

his throat. He’s trying to pull it out. “Don’t pull it out,” I caution. “If you pull it out, you won’t be able to breathe. It’s keeping you from bleeding out.” He stops trying to pull at the pen and nods minutely, his movement hampered by the Bic ballpoint in his throat. Poor guy. That’s got to hurt like a bitch. I look at his wound, suddenly deflated. I was planning on taking him as a hostage, but the guy won’t be conscious much longer. “Are you afraid of blood?” I ask incredulously. He’s as white as a sheet and shaking. I mean, I did just stab him in his neck, but that’s no reason to pass out on me. If I’d done the same thing to Dornan,

he probably wouldn’t even flinch. “Hey!” I urge, snapping my fingers in front of his face. “Stay with me, dude. I’m not going to kill you. Christ.” He’s really struggling. But I don’t have time to think about him right now. Jase. I have got to get to Jase, and get out of here, and get to Elliot, and get Elliot’s ex-girlfriend and daughter back. And then kill Dornan. And then bury my daughter properly. And then go on a fucking vacation. My eyes fall on the briefcase Donny left on the table. My poor baby’s ashes are in there. I won’t let him take them back. “Give me your cell phone,” I hiss at the agent. In the end, I have to crouch

down again and dig around in his pockets, because the guy isn’t hearing a word I say. He’s deep in the throes of panic, breathing heavily — or at least, trying to breathe. Guilt stabs me again as I watch blood trickle down his neck and beneath his white shirt, soaking the material. I yank his cell phone out and flip it open. I almost dial Elliot’s cell number, until I remember that’s how Dornan called us just before we were arrested. Dornan has Elliot’s phone. But does Dornan have Elliot? Fuck. I stare at the phone for several seconds, my pulse crashing in my ears, and then I remember. Grandma. If anyone knows where

Elliot is, if anyone’s heard from him – it’s Grandma. He calls her every single day to check on her. I can only pray that she picks up. I know the number better than any other number I’ve had to remember in my entire life. When I worked at the diner, I’d call Elliot every afternoon at her house to come pick me up. I dial the number with shaking fingers,my breathing so quick I’m almost hyperventilating. Please be okay, El. You have to be okay. “Yes?” Elliot answers, before I’ve even heard the line ring. “Elliot?!” I cry. What’s he doing there?

“Julz!” he says urgently. “Where are you? Are you with them?” My heart sinks. “No,” I say quietly. “Jase and I are in some kind of air base. We were taken from the house. I don’t know where Luis is. And Elliot,” I glance down at the agent on the floor, “these people are CIA.” Elliot lets out a long breath. “He has my baby, Julz. My girls. He has my girls.” My eyes well up with tears, my gaze falling on the briefcase again. Dornan killed my baby. I won’t let him take Elliot’s too. I’d rather die than anything happen to her. Especially because, whatever happens to her would be a sick gesture

to send a message to me. “What happened?” I breathe. Elliot clears his throat; it sounds painful. “We were going to check on Grandma,” he says. “We forgot to grab her stuffed bear from Amy’s house. Kayla was crying in the backseat so I promised her I’d buy her a new one. I stopped at a gas station for a minute. The girls stayed in the car.” His voice wavers. “I saw them take my girls, Juliette. I watched through the window. Gypsy Brothers took them.” Oh my God. “Elliot, I’m sorry,” I choke. “I’m waiting for that fucker to call me,” he says, his voice sounding odd. “We’re supposed to do a trade.”

My blood runs cold. “A trade?” “A trade,” he repeats. “Dornan says he’ll let the girls go if I go with him.” I lean against the wall, suddenly terrified all over again. This new terror snakes around my heart and squeezes, until it feels like little bits of my soul start to break off and splinter. For the first time, I start to think that Dornan is going to win this war. And that thought, that notion, is unrecognizable. He can’t win, not after everything he’s done to all of us. Not after the sins he has committed. Not after the lives he has destroyed. “Don’t go,” I say softly. “It’s a trick. He won’t let them go. He’ll kill you, but he won’t let them go.”

“Juliette,” he grinds out, and his words are tinged with what sounds like grief and anger, “I don’t know what else to do. I’ve played all my cards. I’ve got nothing left to fight him with. Either way, I’m going to lose.” “No,” I protest. “I have to keep this line open,” he says, his voice abruptly changing to guarded, closed off. “We’re coming to you,” I say urgently, and I don’t know how, but somehow, I have to get there and help Elliot get his ex and daughter out of Dornan’s grip before he decides to use them to teach us all a lesson. “Juliette?” Elliot says. “No,” I whisper. “Don’t you dare say

goodbye. I am coming to help you. I am coming to kill him.” The line goes dead.

As I’m pocketing the cellphone I hear the door open and crouch behind Agent Dumbass, who is crawling around on the floor and still grasping at the pen in his throat. I press the tip of his gun into his back. “Stand up!” I order. He does, and I stand at the same time, always staying behind him, using the big oaf as a human shield. Agent Dunn looks momentarily shocked, but she recovers quickly, I’ll give her that. She draws her gun and takes aim. Or, tries to take aim. I make

her task impossible by hovering behind her partner, always in his shadow, no major part of me exposed and ready for her bullets. I respond by pressing Agent Dumbass’s gun to the back of his head and keeping my finger on the trigger. “Put your gun down,” I say. “Now. You try to raise any alarm, and I’ll shoot your partner faster than he can cry for his mommy.” I peek out from behind the cover that the large male agent affords me, even as he’s bent forward a little and gasping around the pen in his throat. I see the look of resignation on Agent Bitch’s face as she lowers her weapon to the table. “Step away from the table,” I say,

pressing Dumbass forward. As soon as Agent Dunn is out of reach, I shove Dumbass to the side and grab her gun, flicking the safety on and stuffing it into the back of my jeans. Dumbass doesn’t look so good. He’s gasping and crying like a little bitch. Which is silly, because he’s not even going to die. Men. They just can’t handle pain. Well, most men, anyway. “On your belly,” I order, tapping the barrel of Dumbass’s gun against the side of his head. He looks relieved, slumping down onto the floor. I wince as I see his face fall towards the hard concrete floor, hoping he turns his head to the side before the pen ends up wedged even

further into his neck. Thankfully, at the last minute, he does. “You’re surrounded by CIA agents and air force personnel,” she says, raising her palms as if to placate me. “You’re not walking out of here, Juliette.” I smirk. “That’s where you’re wrong,” I say, keeping the gun trained on her as I rip Dumbass’s cap from his head and stick it on mine. It’s too big, but my hair takes up some of the spare space. I lift the blue jacket with CIA written on it that’s draped over the seat Dumbass was sitting in, but it’s huge. “Give me your jacket,” I order Agent Dunn. She looks affronted, but slowly takes

her jacket off, giving it to me without a fight. I shrug it on one arm at a time, transferring the gun between hands as I do so to make sure she’s covered at all times, and zip up the jacket with a triumphant smile. It fits like a glove. I shove the gun into the large jacket pocket, keeping it aimed at her. With my free hand, I gesture to the briefcase and the white box beside it. “Open that,” I say. “Put that box in there.” She blanches, drawing back. “What is that?” That feeling again, the hot flush in my chest that creeps up my neck. “None of your fucking business,” I

say. “Do it.” With great reluctance, she snaps the briefcase open and places the white box of ashes inside before closing it again. “Bring it,” I say. “It’s not a bomb, is it?” she asks, eyeing the case with great trepidation. I roll my eyes. “It’s not a bomb.” She doesn’t seem convinced. “Now,” I say, a victorious grin speeding across my face as I grab the larger jacket that belongs to Dumbass, “Take me to him.” She looks confused. “Who … Donovan Ross?” “No,” I sigh. “Take me to Jason. And then get me the hell out of here before I start shooting people.”

She eyes me dubiously. “You won’t get away with this.” Never show fear. Never back down. Two things Dornan Ross, of all people, taught me when I was just a girl. I shrug. “I’m pretty sure I will. But if you try anything? You won’t live long enough to see if I do or not.” She swallows thickly, her brown eyes drowning in fear. “Where is Jason?” I ask pointedly. She gestures to the door. “This way,” she says. I glance back at Dumbass. “Don’t come out of here until I get back,” I say to him, but he’s already passed out, wheezing as his blood gurgles around the hole in his throat.

The cops didn’t give a fuck about the fact that there was no extradition treaty between the US and Colombia. They just barged in, grabbed us, and took us away in their stream of identical black SUVs. Split Jase and I up. I haven’t seen him since we were at the house, and we were on the road for hours after that. I have to believe that he’s here as well, and that Agent Dunn isn’t just leading me into a trap. And I assume Jase is close by. I mean, if they were interrogating me,

surely they were interrogating him, too? I walk beside Dunn, my gun pointed at her as I grip it in my jacket pocket. If she tries anything, I will shoot her, no hesitation. She’s working for the Cartel, so I have to assume that she isn’t going to do me any favors. For a moment, my casual determination to shoot her if needed frightens me. But only for a moment, and then it’s gone, buried underneath years of suffering and hurt. She works for Dornan. And I have no doubt that if the tables were turned, she’d do the same thing to me. The place we’re at looks temporary at best. It definitely doesn’t look official, and that makes me think we’re at some

private air base as opposed to a US station. Especially because, as we walk in unison down a long hallway, there’s not a single other soul to be seen. “Surrounded, huh?” I ask her, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Funny, it seems like we’re all alone in here, Agent.” She glares at me. I step in front of her path, forcing her to stop. With my free hand I snatch up her wrist and turn it over. “Cartel tattoo. This isn’t a CIA base. This is a fucking Cartel base.” This place, it’s got to be Cartel territory. It’s the only explanation I can come up with for the rotting facade, the stained cinder blocks, the smell of damp that invades my nostrils and holds on

tight. It’s humid as hell here, and coupled with the damp and the last six hours in captivity, I feel like I need to scream. “Nothing about this was official,” I realize aloud. All along, I knew the Cartel was involved, but I thought the CIA must have been working with them in some capacity. But why the questioning? Why the need to make this look above board, official? “What the hell was that in there?” I hiss, gesturing back to where we’ve come from. “What’s with the twenty questions, Agent? You get off on showing people pictures of dead motherfuckers?” She appears to compose herself,

leveling her gaze at me. “Mr Ross wanted answers about the deaths of his sons. I’m just doing my job.” “Your job,” I repeat. “Is that your job with the United Stated Government, or your job with the illegal drug Cartel you’re moonlighting for?” She just stares at me. I step to the side and start to pull her along impatiently. “You’re going to regret this,” Agent Dunn mutters as we walk down the hallway. I shoot my free hand out, stopping her in her tracks. “Hey,” I say sharply. “Shut up, and do as you’re told. Did you see those photos? Want to be my next science experiment?” Her face falls. “So it was you.”

I laugh. “Of course it was me. Who else would it be?” She shakes her head slowly. “You’re a monster. You’re crazy.” I tilt my head, raising my eyebrows at her. “I assure you, I’m not the monster in this fucked-up fairytale. But whatever helps you sleep at night.” I grab her elbow roughly, and this time, I’m not screwing around. “You’ve got one minute, Agent. Take me to Jason or I will end you.” She glares at me, horrified, before returning her gaze to the cracked linoleum beneath our feet. “This way,” she snaps. I follow her lead, never once moving my aim from her.

You can never be too careful. *** “Jesus,” I say a few moments later. “This place is a mess.” Dunn has stopped answering me now, her gaze to the floor. “Are we nearly there?” I ask, wiping sweat from my forehead. I’m still weak from all the blood I lost when I lost our baby only weeks ago, and I haven’t eaten all day. I’m usually used to these things, but I’m nowhere near as strong as normal. Losing my daughter has weakened me, punched a hole in the steely disposition I carried with me like body armor. I can only hope to end this before Dornan or his only remaining son find

the chink in my armor and worm their way inside to my weak spot. Speaking of weak spots. “He’s in there,” Dunn says quietly. She points towards a thick steel door recessed in the flaking wall, and I’m surprised to see her hand is violently shaking. “Not so brave when the shoe’s on the other foot, huh?” I ask her. “Open the door.” She fumbles with a set of keys, dropping them several times. In the end, I push her aside and locate the correct key myself, turning it in the lock with a heavy clunk. I step back. “You first,” I say. This could be a trap, after all. I could be

walking into gunfire, an ambush, or god knows what. Better if I send the agent in first. She leans against the door with her shoulder, holding it open for me. I catch it, pushing heavy steel as I enter the room behind her. “Shit,” I mutter. Jase is in the room, but he’s not alone. He’s facing off against Donny, and it looks like they’re evenly matched for the most part. One throws a punch, the other matches the blow, and they repeat. Even in the few seconds I’m observing, I can see it’s only a matter of time before one of them tires and the other gains the upper hand. Donny’s probably well rested, well fed, and

fucking angry. Jase, on the other hand, is probably just as starving and thirsty as me, though he seems to be cornering Donny. He’s the more skilled fighter. Donny is just throwing wild punches and hoping they connect with his younger brother. “Julie!” Donny grins. Jase twists to look at me, and Donny takes the chance to charge him. I don’t hesitate. I pull the gun from my pocket, aim, and let off two loud shots that send Donny to his knees. I smile as he screams in agony. “Donny!” I answer, walking up to him and placing my foot in the middle of his chest. The slightest pressure of my foot on his chest causes him to fall

backwards, his head smashing into the unforgiving floor as blood gushes from his left knee. “You shot me in the fucking kneecap!” he howls. I laugh, bearing down on him. “And isn’t it ironic that your daddy was the one who taught me to shoot a gun?” I feel a hand touch my shoulder, but I’m not startled. I’d know his touch anywhere. I melt into his touch, turning towards Jase as he reaches for me urgently. I bite back tears. “Are you okay?” I whisper. He nods. “You?” He sees the blood on my shirt and his eyes grow wider. I shake my head. “Not mine,” I

whisper. I pull him to me, my lips searching for his, and then they burn as we connect. It’s a desperate kiss, full of love and relief and all the things we’ll say to each other later, when we’re alone. I can barely hear Donny’s animalistic groans, don’t even care that Agent Dunn is hovering awkwardly in the background. I can’t bear to be away from this man, not even for the six hours we’ve been separated, let alone the six years we endured apart. He pulls away, but I can tell he doesn’t want to. Neither do I; I want to push him against the wall and kiss him frantically until I see stars behind my eyelids from the lack of oxygen. But we can’t.

Because Elliot. The thought of him, of the situation he’s in, of his poor girls, stabs at my gut like an icepick digging into my flesh. Jase must see the look on my face, because his smile vanishes, replaced by a deep frown. “We have to get out of here,” he says urgently. I nod. “How?” He looks to Agent Dunn, an asshole smile spreading across his face. “With our hostage here.” She looks horrified, backing towards the door. I cut her off, leveling the gun at her. “Should’ve got me that lawyer,” I say. “You’re going to regret that.” The look on her face says that she’s

already regretting a lot of things. “Get the fuck up,” Jase says to Donny, nudging him with his sneaker. Donny wails. “I said, get up!” Donny reels back, still clutching his ruined knee. “I can’t walk, man,” he pleads. “Look at what that bitch did to my leg.” Jase responds by smashing his fist into Donny’s knee. Donny screams like a little bitch, leaning over and vomiting beside himself from the pain. I make a face at the acrid smell of vomit in this enclosed space. “She’s not a bitch,” Jase says, offering his hand to his brother. “Now get up before she shoots you in the other knee.”

Donny awkwardly climbs to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. “I can’t walk anywhere, man,” he says. He’s so pathetic that I briefly contemplate shooting him in the face and leaving him here. But I need him for leverage against Dornan, a valuable pawn in this sick game of chess we’re playing, a life for a life, a chance to offer a trade on Elliot’s behalf so we can get his ex-girlfriend and their daughter back from Dornan’s clutches. God, I hope we can get there in time. “You,” I say, pointing at Agent Dunn. “Give me that.” I click my fingers, gesturing for the briefcase. She hands it to me slowly, and her eyes are glassy, almost as if she’s in shock.

“I have a daughter,” she says softly, her voice wavering. I have a daughter. I had a daughter. I snatch the briefcase from her. “Help him walk,” I command, tilting my head towards Donny. Her movements are robotic as she walks towards Donny. He’s shaking, his blood all over the floor, and he looks as white as the dry-erase board on the wall behind him. “Bandage him up,” I say. “I don’t want him dead. Yet.” Donny and the agent both snap their gazes to me when I say yet, and I smirk at them, the power high I’m on right now so satisfying it’s almost scary.

“What, you think you’re getting out of this alive, Donny boy?” Jase asks. I glance at him, something squeezing inside my chest. My dear boy. My Jase. We might just make it out of this yet. “Fuck you,” Donny grunts, sweat dripping from his forehead. His suit doesn’t look so crash hot now, drenched in blood. “I don’t have any bandages,” Agent Dunn says. “Use his shirt,” I respond. “And hurry.” While she’s helping Donny out of his suit jacket and shirt, I take the phone from my pocket, handing the briefcase and gun to Jase. “Don’t lose that,” I say. He gives me a quizzical look, but I don’t

elaborate. I don’t want to mention what’s in the briefcase right now. Our baby’s ashes. Because if I did, if I told Jase the way Donny had touched the box that housed all of our hope and sorrow, he would surely kick his brother to death here and now, in this tiny room of horrors. “You know your dad’s phone number?” I ask Jase. He shakes his head, and we both look to Donny. “Donny!” I say loudly. “What’s your dad’s number?” He spits on the floor beside him, watching in horror as Agent Dunn kneels before him, trying to stem the flow of blood from his mangled knee. “Fuck you, bitch.”

Jase steps forward, grabbing his brother’s face in one hand and squeezing so his mouth opens awkwardly. Donny’s too far gone to put up much of a fight, especially when Jase shoves the barrel of the gun into his mouth as far as he can. “The number,” Jase says, his eyes wild. “Come on, bro. You were always good with numbers.” Donny’s shaking, trying to pull his head back, but there’s nowhere to go past the wall behind him. He starts choking, more sweat pouring down his face. He’s pointing to his pocket and garbling something around the gun that I can’t understand. Ohh. He’s got his own phone in his pocket. I leap forward, digging my hand

into the pocket and withdrawing a small silver flip phone that looks about ten years old. “Jesus, Donny,” I say, opening the phone and scrolling to Dornan’s number. “You really need to step into the smart age. This phone is almost obsolete.” I step back, hitting dial and waiting for the line to connect. After a few beeps — an international connection, I assume — the line starts ringing and my heart starts beating wildly. “Donny,” Dornan barks down the line. I clear my throat. “Donny’s a little busy right now,” I murmur, in the bitchiest voice I can summon. “But I can talk.”

The line goes quiet for several seconds. I’ve actually rendered Dornan Ross speechless, if only for a moment. “My favorite cunt,” he sneers down the line. “I’m standing with your sons, Dornan,” I reply. “Your two remaining sons. I gotta tell you, it’s pretty exciting.” “Listen—” Dornan begins. “No, you listen,” I cut him off abruptly. “Here’s the deal, Daddy-O. I bring Donny back to you, unharmed,”

Donny takes the opportunity to emit a death wail of agony that makes me recoil, “okay, mostly unharmed, and you give me those girls in return.” Dornan laughs. “Two for one? That’s hardly fair.” Bastard. “You don’t exactly have a choice, do you?” I ask. “You’ve got two sons left, Dornan. One of them hates you, the other one … well, he’s too stupid to understand why he should.” “No deal,” Dornan breathes down the line. “One for one. Two for two. You better up your end of the deal, sweetheart, or this fine piece of flesh gets really acquainted with the pointy end of my knife.” I hear a scream in the background.

“That’s Amy. You know Amy, right?” Fuck. “You’re bluffing,” I reply desperately. “Oh, baby girl,” Dornan says with a chuckle. “You know me so much better than that. You know I do not bluff.” Jase is giving me a strange look. “What do you want?” I ask through gritted teeth. I hear him sigh on the other end, and I have no doubt that he’s taking great pleasure in this. “What do I want,” he repeats, and I imagine him pacing, knife in hand, as he contemplates my question. “What do I want …” “Hurry up,” I snap, “before your son bleeds to death.”

“If he dies,” Dornan says, deathly calm, “I will kill this woman. I will fuck her to death with this knife, I will tear her apart, and I will make her child watch, do you understand? Elliot’s child will have to watch her mother die at my hand. Then I’ll sell his daughter on the black market for her FUCKING ORGANS!” I have to pull the phone away from my ear when he yells that last part. An icy pit of dread begins to spread in my stomach. The thing about bargaining with a madman is that you never know just how far he’ll go. I’m responsible for the deaths of five of his sons and his morally corrupt father, Emilio. I doubt he’s

bluffing about anything at this point. “What do you want?” I repeat. “I want you,” he growls. “You bring yourself here, you and Donny, and I will let these girls live. I will let your Elliot live. I will let Jason live. I will let your mother live.” Sadness wraps around my neck and squeezes, harsh and tight. “And then what?” I whisper. Jase is shrugging at me, as if to say, what’s going on, so I raise my palm towards him, mouthing hang on. “Oh, Juliette,” Dornan says, in a voice that almost seeps out of the receiver and climbs down my own throat, choking me. “You’re not really that naive, are you? You know what

comes next.” Of course I do. There’s only one way things will end if I surrender to Dornan Ross. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up, especially when I’m breathing in the acrid stench of Donny’s vomit in this tiny room. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” I ask him, feeling so lightheaded I could float away. I am going to die. I.Am.Going.To.Die. “Baby girl,” Dornan replies, “have I ever lied to you?” I can’t answer; if I try to talk, I’ll cry. “When you were a little girl, we had secrets, Juliette. You remember?” “Yes,” I breathe, trying not to pass out. Jase is staring pointedly at me.

“This can be our secret,” he whispers. “Our last fucking secret. I won’t tell if you don’t. And Julie? No fucking cops. I get one sniff of them and I chop this kid up. You’ll be finding pieces of her for years.” And with that, the line goes dead. “Fuck!” I yell. I resist the urge to throw the phone at the wall. “What did he say?” Jase asks, looking at the phone suspiciously. I shake my head, holding a hand to my stomach. “He wants to make the trade,” I reply. “And the rest?” Jase prods. I have no intention of keeping this from him, no matter how tempted I am to shield him from the painful truth. I will

tell him. But I’ll be damned if I voice Dornan’s demands in front of Donny and Agent Dunn. They don’t get to know. “Just being his usual asshole self,” I say. Jase knows there’s more. Later, I mouth to him, tilting my head towards our untrustworthy hostages. He seems to accept that for the moment. “Right,” he says, pulling the agent up by her arm. “That’s good enough. Help him walk. We’re getting out of here.” “Where are we going?” the agent asks. “I’m supposed to pick my daughter up at five.” Jase raises his eyebrows. “I guess you’re gonna be a little late,” he replies,

opening the door and gesturing for them to get out. Outside, it’s hot as hell. Humid and overcast. Even the sky is pissed off at the latest turn of events. It’ll be our last fucking secret. Dornan’s words are on constant loop in my head. I hate him. IhatehimIhatehimIhatehim. I glance around the yard, taking in my surroundings. I barely had a chance to see anything on my way in. We’re in a large dirt parking lot surrounded by barbed-wire fences, an old air strip to one side, overgrown with weeds. Yeah, pretty sure this “air base” isn’t on the US government’s map. I look at Jase. “What now?” He looks around, before his gaze

comes to rest on one of the cars that brought us here. There’s not a soul to be seen, which is bizarre, because when we were arrested there were at least twenty CIA agents, if not more. “We take that car,” he says, pointing. “And go where?” I ask, squinting in the glare. He shrugs. “Anywhere that isn’t here?” I nod. “Sounds like a plan.” *** Luis calls Agent Brennan’s cell while we’re driving. Jase is behind the wheel, and I’ve got the gun trained on Dunn and Donny in the backseat. Not that Donny needs too much guarding. He’s as white as a sheet, his eyes rolling around in his

head. Sucks to be you right now, I think to myself. Agent Dunn is extra quiet, occasionally taking in a shaky breath but otherwise looking resigned to whatever fate we choose for her. “Hello?” I say, answering the phone on the first ring. “Bebé,” a thick accent sounds down the line. “Luis?” “Where you at, girl?” I glance around. We’re on a desolate stretch of road, speeding away from the decrepit airbase as fast as this SUV will let us. “I have no idea,” I reply. “No matter,” he replies. “I got you on GPS. You need me to save you again, Giulietta?”

Again. Christ. “How’d you get this number, anyway?” Suspicion burns inside me momentarily. “Your pal Elliot called me, said you might need a lift out of my fair country,” he responds, and I exhale a sigh of relief. “All right,” I say, “so where do we go? Because we’re just driving, and we’ve got two hostages in the back seat.” Luis chuckles. “Good work, eh? Two hostages. You got those agents that took you?” I smile. “One agent. One Ross brother.” “The fuck?” I stare at Donny. “Donny decided to

pay me a visit. I decided to blow his kneecap off.” Donny shifts in his seat, grunting in pain as his dark eyes glance at me. “Fuck you, bitch,” he sneers, clutching his knee. I roll my eyes at him as Luis whistles down the line. “I’m impressed,” he says. “So, you gonna use him as a trade?” “Yeah,” I reply. “Something like that. We just need a way out of here.” There’s a crackling over the line for a few seconds before Luis responds. “Give me ten minutes,” he says, and the line goes dead. Jase looks at me pointedly. I shrug. “He says ten minutes,” I respond. We keep driving.

Ten minutes later, Luis calls back. And what he has for us — well, I think I’m going to owe him a LOT of money once this is all done. If I’m alive, that is.

Luis directs us to a spot not too far from where we’re driving aimlessly. It’s a stark feeling of relief that washes over me as he relays the directions — I hate being at a loose end. It doesn’t take long to get to the place he’s sent us to, which is good, because my wrist is getting sore from aiming at these assholes in the back seat. I open the window to try and get some wind on my face to keep me alert, but the moist, muggy air only makes me sleepier. In the end I crank the aircon until the inside of the car is like a

refrigerator. I’ve seen Pulp Fiction. I don’t want to micro nap and accidentally blow one of their heads off, Travolta-style. No. I need these two alive to use as bargaining chips. Soon, we pull down a concealed dirt road, flanked by dense jungle on both sides. About ten minutes in, when the road is more like an obstacle course, it leads to a clearing. A field. With a helicopter parked in the middle. A fucking helicopter. I feel my mouth fall open as I look at Jase, then at the helicopter in front of us, then back to Jase. Jase looks just as shocked as I feel.

“Home boy did good,” he grins. I call Luis again. “Is this for us?” I ask, peering out at the helicopter. “That depends,” he answers. “Is it a chopper?” “It’s a chopper,” I reply incredulously. “You got us a chopper in ten minutes? Who does that?” He laughs. “I do. I got connections, bebé. Now get your fine ass on that helicopter, and try not to shoot anyone on there. I don’t need you crashing.” “Thank you,” I say softly. “I’ll add it to your bill,” he snickers. That’s got to be one long goddamn bill by now. “Where are we going, anyway?” I

ask. “The chopper will take you to a safe house,” he answers. “We rest for a few hours, then we get to your man Elliot.” Relief floods through me. “Thank you,” I repeat quietly. And then, “Why are you helping us?” He doesn’t answer for a moment. “Luis?” “My mama would have wanted it this way,” he finally replies. “Oh,” I say, and then he’s gone. *** Donny starts wailing again and calling me a whore when Jase and Agent Dunn transfer him into the chopper. I have a brief fantasy of pushing him into the rotor blades and watching him

explode into a gory mess, but reality is much less exciting. I need him. He’s my bargaining chip. It’ll be our last secret. I’m angry when I think about Dornan’s words. So fucking angry. I can’t wait to watch him burn along with Donny. Agent Dunn is pale and quiet again as Jase and I don ear muffs. He’s sitting next to his brother in the back seat, far away from the controls. It was really a no-brainer putting him in back. He would totally cause a crash and sacrifice himself just to spite us. I’m up front with Agent Dunn, who I know won’t dare to touch anything. I don’t offer ear protection to Donny or the agent. I want

them as disoriented as possible by the time we get where we’re going. The pilot looks like a shady dude, judging by the gang tattoos on his arms. Anxiety spikes in my chest as I have to wonder who we’re selling our souls to in order to get ourselves out of this sticky mess. I don’t really want to know, but I do know that I’m going to owe somebody everything if we make it out of this alive. And that’s a mighty big IF. The chopper ride is brief and uneventful. I’ve never been in a helicopter before, but I’m not exactly paying attention to the scenery. No, I’ve got a white-knuckled grip on Agent Dunn’s gun, making sure I don’t look

away from her. In the back, Jase is doing the same with Donny, with Agent Dumbass’s gun trained on his older brother. I wonder if someone has helped the poor guy by now. It’s going to be a bitch for him to swallow anything for the near future. Oops.

We’re in the air for maybe thirty minutes when the helicopter starts descending sharply. I peer out of the window, taking in our surroundings. We’re about to land on the rooftop of a large building. Looking closer, I see a skull painted on the concrete helipad, surrounded by a ring of bright red paint, in place of the standard H. It’s not a regular skull, though. It’s a skull with the letter Z crossed through the middle, a spray of blood-spattered roses woven around the

skull. My stomach drops. Luis has brought us to a fucking Skullz compound. I almost take my own head off spinning around to look at Jase. “Are you seeing this?” I ask him. He looks pale. Donny peers out of the window, and when he sees the Skullz insignia, he starts to giggle maniacally. “Oh, you assholes are screwed,” he laughs. Jase responds my grabbing his brother’s neck and squeezing as hard as he can without busting Donny’s windpipe. Donny’s eyes bulge out of his head as he scrabbles to get Jase’s grip off his neck, but pretty soon his eyes flutter shut and he slumps to the side, completely knocked out.

I lock eyes with Jase and raise my eyebrows. “What do you think?” I ask quietly. He shrugs, his dark eyes clouded with something — concern, anger? The way his fists are tightly coiled suggests he’s stressing the fuck out, but of course he’d never come out and say that. “I think we need to watch our backs,” he finally replies. “Do you trust Luis?” I murmur, as quietly as I can. Jase appears to snap back to the moment, whatever troubled thoughts he had pushed down for the sake of being alert. “Do I trust Luis?” he repeats. “I did trust Luis.” The nervous pit in my stomach starts

to churn anew. Agent Dunn watches on as Donny remains slumped in the back corner of our five-seater chopper, her face a mixture of fear and apprehension. I turn back to her and smile sweetly. “You got anything to say?” I ask her. She shakes her head quickly, dipping her eyes to her lap. I jump in my seat as a dude clad in black fatigues and holding an AK approaches my door. I’m pulling out the pistol I swiped from Agent Dunn when his face comes into focus and I see that it’s Luis. I relax slightly, but I don’t take my hand off the gun. He slings the AK over his back by the strap and opens my door, letting in the deafening noise of the

chopper blades’ rhythmic wop-wop and the overwhelming humidity that exists beyond the cabin’s air-conditioning. The damp heat hits me in the face like a slap, and warm, suffocating air fills my lungs. Luis smiles and offers a hand up for Agent Dunn to get out. When she doesn’t move, I give her a gentle shove towards the open door and she half steps, half falls into Luis’s open arms, all awkward with her cuffed hands. I cannot imagine her being out in the field very much. I glance at Jase once again before taking Luis’s hand and jumping down onto the hot concrete roof beside him, the briefcase firmly clutched in my hand. I’m so amped up I almost walk the

wrong way, into the tail rotor. So much for chopping Donny into bloody pieces. I almost do that to myself before Luis shoots out a hand and steadies me. The chopper is powering down, but the noise it puts out is still deafening. “You brought us to a fucking Skullz compound?” I scream at him, above the noise. He shrugs. “You got a better idea?” he yells. I look around me, nervous as hell. The Skullz Cartel is bad news, always has been. Bitterly detested by the Gypsy Brothers, they’re a Colombian Cartel at odds with Emilio’s Il Sangue business interests. Unlike Il Sangue, the Skullz haven’t branched into bikers yet. Gypsy

Brothers members and Skullz Cartel members have been picking each other off for decades. I sure as shit don’t want to be in the crossfire if they decide to go to war again. Luis directs us to the front of the helicopter. I take Agent Dunn’s elbow and steer her away from the chopper. “Sometimes, it’s better the devil you know,” I snap loudly, never taking my death-grip from her elbow or my eyes from Jase. She actually holds my gaze this time, instead of looking back to the ground. “Is that why you’re sleeping with Dornan Ross?” she asks. “Better the devil you know?”

I raise my eyebrows at her; the bitterness in her voice is resolute. “What?” I ask, dumbfounded. “You heard me,” she shouts above the noise. I shake my head incredulously. “I’m going to kill him,” I yell in her face. “And if you keep using that tone with me, I’ll kill you too, blondie.” My veins feel like they’re sizzling again, that rage inside me a beast that cannot be long contained. “You fucking work for the man!” I add. “And you’re giving me a hard time?” She just stares at me. I decide I’m not getting an answer from her and turn back to the chopper in time to see Jase kick Donny’s unconscious form

unceremoniously to the ground before disembarking from the aircraft himself. Luis and Jase exchange terse words that I can’t make out, before they each grab an arm and start to drag Donny’s sorry ass towards us. Once we’re clear, the chopper takes off sharply, blowing dust and hot air in its wake. I watch it fade into a tiny spot in the cloud-streaked blue sky, and then it’s gone. “What the hell are we doing here?” I ask Luis, my ears ringing. “Hiding. Finding sanctuary,” he answers back, swinging the AK around into his grip again and holding it down the length of his torso with his free hand.

It doesn’t look easy, balancing Donny and a machine gun, but he manages. His finger hovers over the trigger. Ready to fire. Great. “This way,” he says, heading for a set of stairs at the far edge of the roof. I look at Jase one more time. “What the hell?” I hiss as he carries Donny past me. He shakes his head tersely. “Just don’t speak once we get in there, all right?” I roll my eyes at him. As if I’d ever be able to keep my big mouth shut.

We walk into a room, and what a greeting the Skullz Cartel members give us. We’re on a large, stuffy patio dotted with wicker pool furniture that looks like it’s seen better days. To our left, a large rectangular pool shimmers in the bright light, a refreshing oasis that I’d give my left arm to be able to jump into right now. Except, you know, the guys with the guns. I see at least twenty sub-machine guns

aimed at us before I decide to stop counting. Fuck. Behind the sea of gun power are members of the Skullz. Some are young and muscled, some are old and chubby, and all of them are heavily tattooed. Some are dressed in jeans and shirts, others in their bathing suits, drops of water still clinging to their skin. Apparently, we’re interrupting their afternoon swim. I pull Agent Dunn towards me, using her as a human shield of sorts. I don’t particularly want anyone to shoot her, but I want them to shoot me even less. Luis and Jase let go of Donny at the same time, and he crashes to the floor in an undignified heap. Luis puts his palms up in a show of surrender, and a gang

member steps forward to relieve him of the gun strapped over his back. Once he’s rid of the gun, he points slowly towards his back. He’s wearing a slimline black backpack I didn’t notice earlier. The same guy who took his gun also removes his backpack and tosses it towards the center of the crowd of Skullz members. One guy lowers his gun and steps closer to us, his swagger and composure suggesting he’s the boss. You can always spot the boss in a crowd like this. He’s usually the one who looks the smartest. The stupid ones always get themselves killed before too long. He holsters his gun — an impressivelooking gold-plated revolver — before

picking up the backpack and walking right up to me, his gold-brown eyes burning into me as he approaches. He comes so close I can smell the tobacco on his breath. He looks to be Colombian, around forty, his face relatively unmarred. A couple light scars across his forehead, but nothing to suggest he’s a serious fighter. Hell, I’ve probably got more battle scars than him. He’s sporting a neatly trimmed beard that looks like it gets a thousand brush strokes every morning and night. Seriously, this guy’s facial hair looks like it’s spun out of fucking black diamonds or something. And above that, his skin! It’s caramel colored, and the softest skin I’ve ever seen on a man.

I bet people give him shit for being so pretty. I bet he shoots them when they do. As he studies my face, I see another guy take Jase’s pistol and pat him down. I let go of Agent Dunn and raise my hands as he hands off the backpack to another dude and cracks his knuckles loudly. “Pepito,” Luis says, addressing the guy who looks like he’s about to either molest me or knock me out. “Friend, we’re not looking for trouble. We just need a place to hide out for a few hours until our ride gets here.” Pepito largely ignores Luis, focusing on me. Of course. “You got a weapon, girl?” he asks,

his English clear despite his thick accent. “Sure,” I reply. He smiles slyly. “You sure don’t look like a CIA agent,” he says, skimming his fingers over my shoulders and down my sides. At the rate he’s going, this is going to be the most drawn-out pat-down search in history. I glance over at Jase, who looks like he’s about to kill every man in the room with the psychic force of his indignation and rage. “I’m not,” I reply. “I just liked her jacket.” I glance at Agent Dunn, who cowers at my words. He sniggers, continuing to run his hands all over me. I resist the urge to tell him where my gun is. Better for him to

think I’m not affronted by his roving hands. Which are not that bad, tell the truth. At least he’s being gentle while he feels me up. “It’s in her pocket,” Jase says caustically, “so you can get your fucking hands off her ass.” Shit, Jase! Not cool. Not cool. I glance down at Pepito. He seems amused by Jase’s outburst. “I’m looking for a wire,” he replies cheerily, removing his hands. “You must understand, landing on our roof in the middle of our afternoon swim is highly uncouth, si?” But at the same time, he reaches a hand into each jacket pocket, locating the gun and removing it from my person.

Jase doesn’t answer him. “Si,” I interject hurriedly. It was highly fucking reckless and dangerous, to be fair. If someone landed a chopper on my roof, I’d probably shoot first and ask questions later. So, in a way, these guys are doing us a massive favor by not killing us on sight. “But, you’re right. I shouldn’t touch your little girlfriend here.” Jase relaxes a fraction. Pepito steps back, a twisted grin on his face that tells me he’s got something worse in store. “You don’t want me to touch her, fine.” He looks at me. “Strip.” My arms are so tired from being held up in the air, and now he wants me to

strip? In front of all these dudes? For fuck’s sake. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I need to mainline some coffee to keep me going. There are at least twenty dudes crammed under this pavilion, and now Pepito wants me to strip. I think the universe delights in tormenting me. “Is that entirely necessary?” I ask tiredly. “I mean, I was fine for you to keep fondling me.” “Strip,” he repeats, and this time, the grin is gone. Vanished. Oh. He’s one of those types. A Jekyll and Hyde. A Dornan. Happy and amused one minute, baying for your blood the next. Delightful. “All of you, fucking strip,” he

demands, waving my gun at the lineup of us. I roll my eyes and start shrugging out of the CIA jacket I swiped from Agent Dunn. I look to her to see she’s in shock, her mouth hanging half open, her entire body unmoving except for the little sips of air she’s taking in. She’d better not pass out. I wouldn’t want to be an unconscious, pretty female in a roomful of Skullz. “You want me to shoot your pretty little hostage?” Pepito says, gesturing at Dunn. I glance down at her wrists and my stomach drops. Oh, holy fucking fuck. She’s got a Cartel tattoo on her wrist, for shit’s sake. Il Sangue. Emilio’s Cartel. The rival Cartel.

If these guys see her tattoo, they’ll shoot her without a second thought. Or worse. They’ll probably rip her skin off and sew it into their clothes. Gross. “Get her fucking clothes off, now!” Pepito yells. “She’s probably got a fucking wire under all that.” I abandon my own undressing and step over to Dunn. She’s shaking like a leaf. I step right in front of her and start to unbutton her shirt. “Keep them together,” I hiss, looking down at her wrists. She nods, almost imperceptibly, bowing her head forward as I pull her shirt apart to expose her bra and midriff. “No wire,” I say, stepping to the side so he can see her.

I glance across to Luis and Jase, and an overwhelming apprehension squeezes at my throat as I watch them slowly take off their t-shirts and reveal their enormous back tattoos. GYPSY BROTHERS. We’re screwed. We are so screwed. Oh, hell. If they don’t shoot them right now, it’s a fucking Christmas miracle. One of the guys behind Jase starts pointing excitedly at his back and neck. “Pepito!” I remember the Ross family crest on Jase’s neck and cringe inwardly. Pepito forgets me for the moment, so I stop unbuttoning my dress. It’s half open, and you can see the scalloped edges of my black lace bra, but hopefully not

much else. Pepito focuses his attention on Jase and Luis, and my hand aches without a gun in it to provide some kind of defense. “You two, turn around,” he says. I see Jase’s face fall with defeat as he turns around slowly, the tattoo on his back a blinking fucking beacon of doom. A sick feeling twists in my gut as I remember the day his brothers held him down and forced him to receive the large tattoo. Even when you’re willing, ink that big and cumbersome is brutal. When you’re fighting to get loose the entire time, your body ends up going into a kind of shock that’s similar to the after-effects of being tortured for a prolonged period of time.

I know, because it was the same night I met him, covered in his dead mother’s blood and fighting Dornan every step of the way as he dragged his newfound son into the clubhouse. I still remember wiping the blood from his skin once they were finally finished with branding him as a Gypsy Brother seven years ago. That was the night I decided I wanted him to be mine. “It’s not what you think, amigo,” Luis says desperately. “Check the backpack. There’s cash, plenty of cash. We just need cover for a few hours, then we’ll be out of your hair.” “I’m not your amigo,” Pepito says darkly. “And I don’t need fucking Gypsies coming into my house uninvited

and shooting their mouths at me!” Just when I think they’ve forgotten about it, Pepito plucks the briefcase up from its spot on the floor between myself and Agent Dunn. “What’s in the briefcase?” he asks, fixing me with a steely stare. “Nothing for you,” I answer. He appears to think that over for a moment before jabbing me in the ribs with my own gun. Well, with Agent Dunn’s gun, if we’re being specific. “Did I say you could stop? Get that fucking dress off, bitch.” Reluctantly, I start undoing the rest of my buttons as Pepito watches me. “What about you?” he says. “You got a Gypsy tramp stamp like your boys

here?” I shrug out of my dress and toss it to him, reduced to a bra and panties as I spread my palms in a concerted shrug. “Used to,” I say, watching his eyes with a morbid satisfaction as they take in the horrid scarring along the side of my torso. He’s shocked, and that somehow gives me the validation I need. “Dornan Ross cut it off before he killed my daughter. After he killed my father. He’s taken almost everyone I’ve ever loved.” Pepito backs up a step, still holding tightly to my dress in one hand, Agent Dunn’s gun in the other. “That hijo de puta killed your kid? He did this to you?” Sorrow rips through me like wildfire,

but I keep my face poker straight. “Yes. And worse.” “We’re not with the Gypsies,” Luis says. “Pepito, I told you, we’re against the Gypsies!” “Shut up,” he says, returning his attention to me. He steps closer again, the briefcase still in hand. “You don’t cry when you talk about it, so why should I believe you? Mothers should cry. You’re not a mother.” His words are brutal, but he can’t stop looking down at the scarring that adorns my hip and waist, the eternal reminder of Dornan Ross’s power over me and my existence. Marred flesh that should be rounded and full, stretched with a growing baby.

Flesh that sits flat, no life within, nothing inside except a memory of what used to be. “I don’t know you,” I reply quietly. “I only give my tears to people I trust.” “What’s in the briefcase?” he repeats. “I’m on my way to kill Dornan,” I say resolutely. “What’s in the briefcase?” he asks a third time. “My daughter,” I reply finally, wishing that I didn’t have to share this. Share her. “Or, what’s left of her.” Pepito drops the briefcase on the floor like it’s made of fire, where it bursts open, a small white box bouncing onto the tiles unharmed. I don’t care that twenty guns are trained on me, or that

I’m almost naked. I don’t care about anything other than that box. I dive for it, scooping it up and clutching it to my chest, and not one person tries to stop me.

Pepito, as it turns out, is an amiable kind of guy once he gets to know you. Once he figures out you aren’t dropping by to kill him. Yeah, turns out he’s actually a decent motherfucker. He gives me my dress back and clicks his fingers, gesturing to the rest of the group to lower their weapons. “These people are our allies!” he declares. “We will give them sanctuary for the night. Everyone¸ leave us. I must talk to these young ones and discover the rest of their story. Any enemy of Dornan

Ross is a friend of mine.” The relief on my face must be palpable; Pepito laughs and slaps me on the back. “Come!” he says loudly, talking to all of us. “Into the air conditioning.” “What should we do with him?” Luis asks Jase, who shrugs. Pepito glances down at Donny, forgotten until now. “He one of yours?” he asks Jase, looking from Donny’s family crest to Jase’s and back again. Jase shakes his head emphatically. “He’s one of Dornan’s. He’s our hostage.” “As is she,” I chime in, jabbing a thumb in Agent Dunn’s direction. “Well, she was kind of obvious,”

Pepito says, his eyes roving over Agent Dunn. “You need us to secure them for the night for you?” “No, thank you.” I shake my head emphatically. I mightn’t like Agent Dunn, but I don’t want to throw her to the wolves. She’s been well behaved, and I don’t intend on letting her out of my sight in this compound of angry, gun-slinging men. And I’d love them to take Donny for a couple of hours, but they’ll probably kill him, and we need him alive. Pepito shrugs and walks through the parted throng of Cartel members to a set of arched double doors that leads into his impressive fortress. I gather up the briefcase and slip the little white box

inside, clicking it shut as I follow along wearing nothing but my Victoria’s Secret underwear, my dress bunched up under my arm. They’ve all seen everything already. I’m much more concerned with protecting the briefcase and its contents than recovering my modesty. We file into the house behind Pepito and around a sharp turn that leads us to a large, cavernous space fitted with crystal chandeliers and leopard skin rugs, filled with sleek, lowline leather sofas and a curved coffee table made entirely of clear glass. “Please, sit,” Pepito says, gesturing to the couches. I wait for Jase to sit and choose a spot beside him, tugging Dunn down on my other side. Luis dumps

Donny on the floor before sitting on the coffee table in front of him. Pepito calls something unintelligible out the door before coming to sit to my left, our crazy cacophony of characters gathered before him. I shrug back into my dress and start buttoning up as a maid bustles into the room, carrying a tray of ice-filled glasses and a bottle of tequila. She sets the tray in the middle of the glass coffee table and leaves. Pepito pours himself a tequila on the rocks before gesturing for us to do the same. None of us move. “Now,” Pepito says, nursing his tequila. “I would like to hear more of these injustices you speak of. Please, tell me what the Gypsy Brothers have done

to each of you.” He points at Luis. “You start.” “Dornan Ross took our parents from us, all of us,” he says darkly. “My mother, his mother,” he points to Jase, “her father,” he points at me. “Their bebé,” he adds, looking at Jase and I with a pained expression. Pepito takes that in, swirling the clear fluid in his glass as he ponders our losses. I stare at my hands and will them not to shake while I think of the phantom movements low in my belly that still hit me randomly, the moments when I forget that I am empty and not carrying a child anymore. “A little bird tells me you were the one to kill Emilio Ross,” Pepito says to

Luis, any trace of casual gone from his expression. “Is this true?” Luis nods. “Yes.” “But not his crazy cholo son, no?” Luis shakes his head. “No. Not yet.” Pepito sits back, resting his glass on the arm of his seat. “You realize, having Dornan in charge of Il Sangue has fucked things up for me. Emilio was a ruthless motherfucker, but we had an agreement of sorts. A truce. Dornan comes in and starts killing off my men before his father’s body is even cold. This has caused me much trouble.” “He won’t be a problem anymore,” I interrupt. “We’re on our way to kill him.” Donny chooses that exact moment to

open his eyes and sit up. He spits a mouthful of blood out on the tiles before fixing me with a crazed grin. “You’re not gonna kill him,” he sneers, shaking his head. “He’s gonna kill you, you little cunt.” “Is that the only swear word you guys know?” I respond stiffly. “Because really, there are so many more things you could call me.” “Cunt’s the first word that comes to mind,” Donny huffs, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Especially since I’ll never forget breaking your sweet virgin cunt while you screamed underneath me.” He spits more blood from his mouth, and some dribbles down onto his white dress shirt,

now stained and disheveled, while inside my chest, I hurt. I ache. I thought their words couldn’t hurt me anymore, but today, for some reason, his snide remark has burrowed through my armor and stabbed itself straight into my heart. The part of me that’s still that fifteenyear-old girl screams inside as he makes jokes about the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced, the night when seven men I called family almost killed me with their hate and their rage. I remain still, watching on in detachment as Jase stands up and flies at Donny, kicking him hard enough in the ribs to make him sprawl out on his back. He begins to cough as Jase steps next to him and places a black boot over his

older brother’s throat, pressing down enough to make Donny squirm. “Don’t talk,” Jase says, “Don’t say one more fucking word. I will end you, do you understand?” Donny chuckles and chokes at the same time. “She took me to her junior prom,” he wheezes. “Remember that, Julie? You were so ready for me. And then this fucker came along and stole you.” I raise my eyebrows; that’s not the way it happened. Donny and Chad were posted on the door of the hall by my father to make sure nothing untoward happened at the dance. They were there to spy on me, not fucking date me. “That’s not the way I remember it,” I

respond dully. “Oh, come on, Julie!” he protests. “Don’t pretend you didn’t like it when it was my turn to fuck you! I know you wanted me.” Jase presses his boot down further and Donny starts struggling wildly, no longer able to breathe. My cheeks burn as I remember how much I categorically did not want the scars they gave me that day. Pepito looks at me pointedly. “This man raped you?” I nod. “And others?” I nod again. “When was this?” I take in a shaky breath. Stay calm,

stay composed, do not let them see your weakness. I steel myself and meet Pepito’s inquisitive stare. “I was fifteen,” I respond, my voice only wavering a little. “There were seven of them. Dornan Ross and his sons. It was payback for my father falling in love with the wrong woman.” Pepito’s jaw clenches; he looks like he’s about to break his own jaw with the force of his bite-down. I don’t look away; I hold his gaze, because I will not show weakness. “My mama was raped,” Pepito says. “She had me nine months later. She could have cast me into the street but she kept me. Loved me. I found my father when I was eighteen and slit his throat

while he slept.” I don’t trust Pepito, but I like him even more now. “So tell me,” Pepito says. “What do you think is a fitting punishment for a dirty fucker who rapes kids?” I can’t help it; I smile. “I can think of a few things.”

In the end, I don’t need to think about anything. Pepito shows us to two adjoined guest rooms deeper inside the mansion and has a maid fetch us water and clean clothes. I know he’s looking forward to the other half of the money Luis promised him, but I have a feeling him helping us has more to it than just financial gain. I can tell just by the way he speaks that he detests the Ross family. They’re at the helm of a rival cartel, after all, and no doubt he can see how aligning with us might help his own cause.

Jase and I are shown a room and left to ourselves. I’m exhausted. The first thing I do is place the briefcase on the four-poster bed and collapse face first beside it, not caring that I’m probably getting the ivory-colored duvet all dirty. Jase places a hand on the small of my back, his touch gentle but firm. “You okay?” he murmurs, leaning down so his lips are at my ear. I turn my head to the side so I can see his face, smiling tiredly as I run a hand through his dark hair. He normally keeps it cut quite short, but it’s started to grow out during the time we’ve been holed up in Colombia. “Yeah,” I whisper, reaching for his lips and tracing them lightly with my

finger. “You think Luis will be all right with Donny and Agent Dunn?” Jase shrugs. “He’ll be fine.” I feel my smile fade. “I wonder what Elliot’s doing right now,” I say, grief squeezing at my throat. “We’ll be there soon,” Jase replies, taking my hand and pressing his lips to the inside of my wrist. “I’m scared,” I whisper, looking into Jase’s dark eyes. He brushes loose hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear, running his fingers along my jaw. “You gonna tell me what he said on the phone?” I’d almost forgotten that Jase didn’t hear that portion of the warped

conversation I shared with Dornan. “He said one for two wasn’t a fair trade,” I tell Jase. “He says if we want him to let go of Amy and Kayla, he wants Donny and me in return. He said it would be our last secret.” Jase looks deeply troubled by this. He pulls my head down slightly and kisses me on the forehead, but I can tell his thoughts are elsewhere. “I don’t want to die,” I say softly. “I wanted to die for so long, but I don’t want to die anymore. I don’t want to go back to him.” Jase’s jaw clenches. “You’re not going to die, you hear me? I couldn’t save you six years ago, but I’m not letting anything happen to you. Not now,

not ever. You hear me?” I lick my chapped lips and roll onto my back, pulling Jase’s hand as I stretch out on one side of the bed. He scoots closer, also on his back, so we’re both staring up at the ceiling. Someone put those glow-in-the-dark stars up on the ceiling a long time ago. It’s late afternoon, but in this windowless room, the stars shine weakly in the dim light. It’s such an innocent thing amongst the brutality of our everyday existence, that it stirs something inside me, and I begin to cry. I don’t sob. I weep, tears spilling from my eyes and tracking down my temples before being absorbed into my hair. Some cling to my neck and earlobes, and

others pool in the inside corners of my eyes until I blink them away. “I don’t want to die,” I say quietly. “But if it’s me or those girls, I’ll die without another thought. Elliot’s already given up everything for me. Everything. His whole life, Jase. I can’t let a little girl and her mother die because I lived.” “You’re not going to die,” Jase says resolutely, squeezing my hand almost painfully. “I refuse to believe that you could just die after you’ve already cheated death once. More than once.” I don’t say anything, just swallow back more tears and stare at the crudely stickered ceiling. Jase lets go of my hand and rolls onto his stomach, his side now touching mine.

He scoops a hand behind my head and pulls my face up to meet his, and I see the terror and sadness in my soul mirrored in his own dark eyes. “Can you forgive me?” I blurt out. He closes his eyes, resting his forehead on mine for a moment. “For what?” he breathes. “For everything. For keeping things from you. For not coming back for you all those years ago.” I think of our baby in his hands, how she was much too small. How she fit into one of his palms. How it isn’t fair. How, had I played things differently, we might still have her here with us, waiting to be born, healthy and alive. But instead, she’s gone, the only thing

left a box of ashes in a briefcase at the foot of the bed. “For losing our baby.” A strangled sound comes from Jase’s throat, and he lifts his head, pressing his lips against my eyelids. “You can’t torture yourself with these fairytales of how things might have been, baby. If you hadn’t gone back to him?” He swallows thickly. “If you’d realized you were pregnant, if we’d just gone away … we’d be hiding. We’d be waiting, every minute, for him to knock on our door and take her away from us. It would be living a lifetime of days hiding in the dark, waiting until he came and killed us.” I take in a ragged breath. “We might

die anyway.” He nods; the resignation on his face is oddly comforting. He knows that death might be a possibility. I can’t do what I need to do if Jase is trying to stop me. I can’t save those girls if I’m being held back by the man who loves me. “We might.” “I refuse to die without taking him down with me,” I say, wiping my tearstreaked face and sniffing loudly. “We’re in this together,” Jase says urgently, pressing his hands to my cheeks so I can’t look anywhere but at him. Not that I’d want to. I could look into those eyes for a lifetime, however long or short that lifetime might be. I nod my head, more tears falling. I love him. I

love him so goddamn much, it feels like I’m being crushed in a fucking vice. “Tell me,” he says softly, stroking my hair. “Tell me what’s going on in this head of yours. Stop trying to carry everything by yourself, baby.” I’m so overcome by emotion that I almost choke. Love and pain and longing all smashed together in a violent poison that courses through me. “Tell me what you feel,” Jase whispers urgently. A sob hitches in my throat. How do I feel? “I feel … empty.” I screw my face up, letting one hand trail down and press into the hollow between my hips where hope and new life used to live.

“I didn’t want her at first,” I confess, no longer able to see through the tears. “I didn’t want her, not in that place, not in that existence. I thought she was Dornan’s, and I just wanted her to go away.” This truth has existed in me, but it’s been buried beneath more urgent, more obvious things, until now. I’m almost shocked by my own admission as I cover my mouth with my other hand. “I didn’t mean it, though,” I whimper, taking the hand from my mouth and pressing it to Jase’s chest as he watches me, his expression pained. “I wanted her. I wanted her so much, Jase, and now she’s just gone.” Now she’s just ash. “Baby,” Jase whispers, his own eyes

full of tears, “she didn’t die because you didn’t want her.” I wipe my cheek on my shoulder. “Everybody dies because of me,” I cry. “People suffer when I’m in their life. I’m like this poison. And I’ve infected every single person I’ve touched.” “Shut up,” Jase says urgently. “He did this to you. You were a kid, and he did this to you. You didn’t do anything wrong.” “I shouldn’t have gotten into that car,” I sob brokenly, remembering the afternoon Dornan knocked on our front door and stole me away to my death. “I should’ve tried harder. He told me to hurry along. I knew something was wrong. And I just walked away with

them.” “You were a victim, baby.” I shake my head. My body’s trembling, every nerve vibrating with fear and grief. And try as I might, I don’t know how to stop it. “What do you need?” Jase whispers, pressing his lips to my throat. I close my eyes. What do I need? “I just need to feel something,” I finally whisper. “Something else. Just for a moment.” I feel Jase’s lips leave my neck, and then they’re on my mouth. I wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer, kissing him like it might be the last time we touch each other. Because it might very well be.

He kisses me with a reckless urgency that makes my heart beat wildly, like he’s going to devour me, like we’re going to become one. His hands are everywhere, firm and insistent as I melt into him. I reach my hand out and find his, linking my fingers with his and squeezing tight. I’m suddenly a girl again, walking along the pier with the first boy I ever loved, our hands melded together as our eyes spoke a secret language that nobody else understood. I don’t deserve him, but he’s here, and he loves me, and he’s mine. I reach my other hand between us and start tugging at his belt buckle, needing him, needing more, but he pulls away, shaking his

head. “Wait,” he says. He sits up so he’s got a knee on either side of my body, reaching down and undoing my dress buttons one by one until it falls away to my sides, exposing my scarred torso framed by black lace bra and panties. I try to pull the dress back over my side to cover the horror of what Dornan did to me, but Jase stops me, taking my hand firmly and placing it back at my side. He holds my gaze, and in it I see my salvation. The one person in the world who understands me. Who gets me. “You are beautiful,” he says, running his fingers down my marred flesh. “All of you.” I bite back tears as he lowers his

mouth to my stomach and starts kissing me. He should hate me, he should find me the ugliest thing in the world, but he doesn’t. “What do you feel?” he asks me again between kisses. I’m crying again. “I feel empty,” I sob. “I feel like I don’t deserve you.” He trails his kisses down lower, to my hip, to my thigh. I gasp when he places his mouth on my panties, over the most sensitive part of me and sucks gently. It’s been weeks upon weeks and we haven’t so much as touched. It’s been too raw, too horrid in the aftermath of losing a child to even think about going there.

But I need him, and I need this, and he knows it. I pull in a strangled breath as Jase moves my panties to the side and places his mouth directly on my sensitive nub. It’s so fucking good, I feel like I could come with just a few more seconds of his tongue. I grip my hands in his hair, pulling gently as he continues to work his tongue over me. “Jesus,” I whisper, my hips moving involuntarily as my entire body starts to feel hot and restless. Jase takes his mouth away long enough to rid me of my panties, sliding them down my legs and throwing them on the ground as he resumes his worship of my body. Now there’s no material hindering his access,

he uses both hands to push my thighs as wide as they’ll go, burying his head between them once more. I’m panting now, so fucking close to the edge I can hardly bear his tongue on my clit. It feels so good it hurts. And, I realize, I’m still crying. Weeping, so overwhelmed with everything that’s happening inside me. The grief and the fear and the pleasure, all wound tight together waiting to crest off that cliff and shatter below until they’re indecipherable from each other. Yes. Maybe he senses I’m close, because he moves his tongue faster, a hand on each of my ass cheeks squeezing hard, pleasantly painful.

Yes. It all crashes into me at once, every beautiful thing unleashed in a torrent of endorphins, a wave that slams into me so hard I lose my breath as I see white and stars. I squeeze my eyes shut, my body shaking, my breathing ragged but the feeling in my chest most welcome. It feels like lightness. Like pure, stark, unadulterated relief. It’ll probably only last a moment before everything else weighs me back down, but it’s exactly what I needed. I open my wet eyes and he’s there, waiting, watching me. I smile through my tears, pulling Jase down so his body covers mine, kissing him and tasting myself.

“What do you want now?” he asks between feverish kisses. I feel the unmistakable hardness of him pressed into my stomach, ready for me if I want it. And I want it. “I want you,” I murmur, reaching my hands down to unbutton his pants again. This time, he doesn’t stop me, holding himself above me as I unzip his jeans and push them down with my hands and heels, taking his silk boxers along with them. I take his hard length in my hand and pull him down between my thighs, to my wet heat. He hovers at my entrance, one hand at the base of my throat. “I love you,” he whispers, pushing into me, filling me so

it almost hurts. I cry out against his mouth as we kiss again, a fiery exchange between two lovers who might be joined together for the last time. I don’t want to die. Fresh tears prick at my eyes as I think of what we’ve lost. As I birthed our baby too soon, as she came into the world dead before she’d taken her first breath. Grief tears at me as I remember how she was the last thing inside of me, and how much it still aches that she’s gone. I’m sobbing. Jase stops, wipes tears from my cheek. “You want me to stop?” he murmurs. I shake my head emphatically. “Please, don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

His eyes are heavy, a mixture of lust and concern within them. “Tell me,” he says, resuming slow strokes, the action of our skin on skin almost making me come again. “I wanted to be that person for you,” I whisper, as he presses his forehead to mine. “The wife. The mother of your kids. Not … this.” “Julz,” he murmurs against my skin, still moving in slow strokes. “When this is over, I’m going to marry you. We’re going to have lots of babies, and I’m buying you a fucking minivan. Okay?” I laugh, even though I’m crying. “Okay?” Jase repeats. “Okay,” I reply, pulling him deeper, pulling him down to meet my mouth

again.

In the late afternoon that remains after we’ve exhausted ourselves, I shower briefly, dressing in the clean clothes Pepito organized for us. I’ve got a dark purple shift dress that zips up at the back, no sleeves, and Jase was generously gifted with a pair of stonewash jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He opts to keep his old clothes on; my dress is so dirty, I need to accept my new fate as a fashion-challenged cubicle dweller. “You should wear the shirt,” I say sarcastically, standing on tiptoes to kiss his forehead as I press the shirt to

his chest. “We’d be like Pumpkin and Honeybunny.” Jase makes a face, pushing the shirt away. “You’ve watched that movie way too many times,” he says. I toss the shirt on the bed. “I’m going to check in with Luis,” I say, heading for the door in bare feet. Jase practically bowls me over in his haste to follow me. “I’ll join you.” I unlock the door and tiptoe out into the hallway. Everything is quiet … a little too quiet. I look into the bedroom next to ours, the door ajar, to find a maid placing fresh towels at the foot of the bed. “Excuse me,” I say. She seems startled. “Do you know where everyone

is?” She points down the hallway, speaking rapid Spanish. “Thank you,” I say, backing out into the hallway again. Jase raises an eyebrow in question and I shrug. “This way, somewhere,” I say, pointing down the hallway. We walk through the house, passing the kitchen and the living area where we first spoke with Pepito. I’m growing steadily more anxious, worrying about the fate of both our hostages and our friend, when I turn a corner and see Luis standing with Agent Dunn in front of a closed door. Beyond, I can hear muted screams filtering underneath the door, where they reach my ears and fill my stomach with dread.

“Where’s Donny?!” I demand, rushing towards the door and Luis on bare feet. My heart in my throat, suddenly I’m hyper-aware of everything. How cold the floor feels against the soles of my feet. The humid air that clings to my skin, a constant reminder of where we are that the air-conditioning can’t ever completely erase. Luis steps in front of me, closing off my access to the door. “Where is he?” I repeat, ready to rip him in half to get past him. I mean, not that I could. But I’d try. “Giulietta,” Luis says, his blue eyes flashing with something — amusement? Yeah, he’s amused, the side of his mouth

twitching up into a lopsided grin. “He’s fine. He’s … well, take a look for yourself.” He steps aside, motioning to the door handle. I look back at Jase, who appears concerned, his jaw bunched up and his fists ready to smash the first person who upsets him. Jase shoulders his way in front of me, and I don’t try to stop him. He wants to go first? He can go first. From the wails coming under the door, I’m pretty sure we’re both about to be eye-raped by some sick shit anyway. Jase takes my hand, opening the door and stopping short for a moment before he tugs me into the room behind him. And what a sight we’re greeted with.

“Oh, Donny,” I breathe, shaking my head. “You poor, pathetic fuck.” I look at Jase. He takes his hand from mine and covers his mouth to stop the laughter from erupting. I don’t care about minding my manners. I open my mouth and giggle like a fucking schoolgirl at what’s in front of me. Donny’s eyes are practically bulging out of his ugly head, a bright orange ball gag in his mouth masking most of his screams. He’s bent forward over a long wooden table, and he’s being fucked. In the ass. By a big Colombian dude with a massive dick. Pepito is in the corner, one foot against the wall, studying his phone

screen. He notices us and puts it away, sauntering over like it’s just another day in the office for him. “You like?” he asks, gesturing to the ass-raping taking place in front of us. Jase composes himself long enough to wipe tears from his eyes. “We like,” I reply, unable to form any more words to adequately describe the satisfaction I’m feeling right now. At the edge of my consciousness this little thing called a conscience is screaming at me to see some sense, but all I’m seeing is a thin trickle of blood running from Donny’s asshole down his bare leg and into a small puddle on the floor at his foot. Pepito’s phone rings and he wanders

off to answer it, leaving Jase and I openmouthed and staring in delighted horror at the scene of Donny’s ass rape. “Wait,” Jase says to me. “So, if we’re Pumpkin and Honeybunny, that makes him the Gimp, right?” I look up at Jase, something heavy moving off my chest. Revenge. I haven’t felt it in a long while, and it feels so goddamn good. “That’s why I love you,” I say, squeezing his hand as Donny tries to kill us both with the power of his eyes alone. “Because I know you’ve watched that movie as many times as me.” He laughs. I laugh. Behind the ball-gag, Donny screams.

And it’s fucking beautiful. “We should leave them to it,” I say, tugging at Jase’s hand. Donny shakes his head, screaming louder as the dude reaming his ass picks up his pace, slamming into him fast and hard. I raise my eyebrows at Donny. “You think that’s bad?” I ask him. “Try being passed around seven guys until you’ve been fucked almost to death. Then scream, you little bitch.” He lunges forward like he wants to kill me, but it’s useless. All he does is give his rapist more traction to pull him back, impaling him. Jase laughs again as we leave the room, stepping into the refuge of the hallway where Luis and a dejected-

looking Agent Dunn wait. As Jase closes the door behind us, Agent Dunn narrows her eyes at me. “You two are fucking crazy,” she says, shifting her gaze to Jase. “Fucking crazy.” “Oh, lady,” I reply, “you have no idea.” Shortly after, Luis gets a call. We’ve got a plane waiting, at an airstrip ten minutes’ drive away. It’s time to roll. It’s time to get Elliot’s girls back. Even if it kills me.

Luis injects something into Donny’s ass cheek before we leave, and waits until he’s slumped unconscious over the table in the rape dungeon before redressing him and hauling him outside between himself and Jase. It’s night, something that startles me since I didn’t even notice the change. The temperature has dropped significantly, and I feel goose bumps spring up on my arms as I walk behind Agent Dunn, ready to pounce on her if she tries anything. She’s been cooperative … a little too

cooperative, if anything. She’s been turning paler and paler during this entire ordeal, and I feel like soon she’s going to be solid white. I think of Elliot as Pepito personally drives us to the air strip. Seems he and Luis have history, which is possibly why the guy has been so accommodating. I’m still suspicious, but surely if he were going to try something on us, he’d have tried by now? Whatever his true motive is, I don’t let him out of my sight. We’ve been told we can have our weapons back when we get to the plane, and I’m really hoping he’s not lying to us. Elliot. I wonder what he’s doing. He must be going mad, pacing the house. Maybe Grandma is trying to placate him

in her gentle way. Or maybe she’s cleared out. Maybe he’s sent her somewhere safer. We’ll see soon enough. True to his word, Pepito tosses our guns and clips in the grass as he screeches off, leaving us in the dark. Jase and I both scramble for our guns, weapons that don’t even belong to us but to two CIA agents who made a grave mistake thinking they could contain us. The flight in the small, plush private jet is maybe six hours. Jase and I take turns to doze, sitting next to each other in the back of the plane. Donny’s out for the count and heavily restrained in his own seat. Luis is up front with Agent Dunn, and of course there’s some dude flying

the plane in the cockpit. The entire journey, I keep wondering how many hours I have left on this earth. It makes me sad to think there might not be too many.

The sun is rising as we land, and unbearably bright by the time we make the short car trip from the small airport to Elliot’s grandmother’s house. My stomach lurches as I remember traveling this same road six years ago, a passenger who should never have left her hospital bed alive. And now I’m here, again, and Dornan Ross is still controlling us all like goddamn marionettes. When I finally walk into Grandma’s house, it’s to the sight of a broken man.

“Elliot,” I say, rushing towards him. I drop my CIA-issue jacket on the floor, stumbling past furniture to get to him. His expression is wild. He obviously hasn’t slept in days, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. I wrap my arms around him, but for the first time, he doesn’t reciprocate. No. He stiffens. He pushes me away. My heart breaks. I take a step back. Of course he’s going to hate me. I’m the source of his eternal despair. I don’t like that I’m that person. I scan the empty kitchen. “Where’s Grandma?” I ask, dread and suspicion rising inside my chest like a sharp, painful bubble.

He just stares at me, his jaw clenched. “Elliot,” I implore him, hearing my voice wavering. No, no, NO. He shakes his head minutely. “Don’t.” I look down and see the blood on his hands. It looks like he’s tried washing it off. It looks fresh. Fuck. “What happened?” I whisper. This can’t be happening. “You’re a smart girl,” he says coldly. “What do you think happened to her?” “No,” I moan, and it’s the low groan of a distraught animal faced with the death of her family member. Something inexplicable breaks inside my chest — I

feel myself crumbling in the wake of this latest blow. My father. Mariana. My daughter. Grandma. He has taken almost everyone, and I know he plans to finish the rest of us off. I just know it. “Just tell me,” I beg, my hands wringing together, my face slicked wet with my tears. So many tears. He launches at me with a rage I’ve never seen before. “Don’t you fucking cry!” he screams, grabbing me by the shoulders. For a moment I’m taken off guard, hands up to push him back. But I go limp when I see the devastation on his face. He’s lost everything because of me. And I hate myself for it.

I can’t help it, I’m bawling. “I’m sorry,” I sob, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” “Shut up!” he roars. “You’re sorry? I’ll show you sorry.” He takes my hand roughly, tugging me towards the back door. I know what he’s going to show me. “No,” I protest. I can’t, not now. I can’t see what he did to her. Elliot lets go of me, but he’s not done with me yet. He charges me, picking me up in a stronghold so my arms are trapped within his bear grip. “Let me show you the price of vengeance,” he grinds out, dragging me out through the back door and down the stairs to the backyard.

I blink in the harsh sunlight, at first not sure what I’m looking at. Oh, yes. A pile of fresh dirt. Three identical holes dug into the unwieldy Nebraskan dirt, edges rough but defined, and they’re deep. It would have taken hours to dig them. “Go!” Elliot yells, dropping me suddenly. I land on the ground, my ears buzzing, a hot, dizzy feeling creeping up the back of my neck. “Hey!” Jase yells from the porch. “What the fuck?” Elliot pushes me again, closer to the edge of one of the three holes in the ground. I’m crawling on my hands and knees now, my palms burning against the hot sand beneath them. “Look!” he

demands, and I do look. The winds are fierce today, and they have taken the stench of death away. But when Elliot shoves my face down into the makeshift grave, I gag on the smell of rotting flesh. Oh, God. The smell invades my nostrils, putrid and sweet. I can taste the decay on my tongue. And the sight isn’t much better than the smell — flies, so many flies, crawling upon what remains of the poor woman who took me in all those years ago. The woman who held me when I cried, the woman who let me mope around and feel sorry for myself for years upon years. The woman who hid me away from the world even after her

grandson gave up on me and left. I’m going to be sick. I retch violently, and Elliot lets go of me. I crawl back just in time to be sick next to the hole where Dornan has dumped Grandma’s body. I retch and retch until I’m throwing up clear bile, liquid that burns my throat. It’s almost a welcome relief, though. I would rather taste the acid from my stomach than the smell of a decomposing corpse on my tongue. Jase is suddenly next to me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he yells at Elliot. Elliot laughs, an empty sound so terribly devoid of anything that it makes me shiver. “Me?” he yells. “What’s wrong with

me? What’s wrong with you? After everything she’s done, you’re still defending her?” I tilt my watery gaze up at Jase. He looks torn. I can tell part of him wants to comfort me, and the other part wants to smash Elliot into the dirt. Which isn’t fair. Everything Elliot is saying is right. This is my fault. Everything is my fault. Jase straightens beside me, his fists squeezed tight at his sides. I grab hold of one arm and pull myself up, tugging on him insistently. “Don’t,” I whimper. “Don’t do it. Don’t touch him.” He gives me an incredulous look and

wrenches his arm out of my grip, charging towards Elliot. They’re going to kill each other. A gunshot rings out into the clear morning, all of us turning simultaneously to see where it came from. Luis, the fucking gunslinger extraordinaire, is standing on the porch, an unconscious Donny at his feet, still hog-tied from the plane ride. Agent Dunn sits at his feet, mute as always. “You trying to attract attention?” Jase yells, forgetting Elliot and charging up to the porch. “Enough,” Luis barks. “We need to leave. Now.” Elliot ignores him, turning back to me with a face full of hatred.

“I signed her death warrant the minute I brought you here. It was always just a matter of time, right Julz?” I can’t breathe. I can’t talk. And that smell … I’m never going to be able to stop breathing it in. Luis clambers down the stairs, rushing over to the edge of the hole in the ground where flies buzz over Grandma. “We need to go,” Luis urges again. “Go where?!” Elliot yells. “I’ve been waiting here for two days for Dornan to fucking call me and tell me where my girls are!” He kicks at the dirt, and I can’t help but notice his Converse sneakers spattered with blood. “With my dead fucking grandmother!” he howls.

He turns back to the hastily dug grave, sinking to his knees in front of it. “Why didn’t you cover her up?” I ask. He tears his eyes away from the ground to meet mine. “And miss the phone call?” he asks. The phone chirps loudly inside. “Fuck,” he says, scrambling to his feet and running inside, as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone run. He disappears inside and the phone stops chirping. Jesus, I hope he didn’t miss that goddamn call. I follow him inside, rushing past Jase and Luis. Agent Dunn is sitting on the stairs, looking dejected. Donny is unconscious. And then there’s Elliot.

He’s on the phone at the kitchen counter. It’s one of the old-school phones that’s mounted to the wall. From where he’s standing, over the sink, he can see the three holes Dornan has dug to taunt him. I move closer to him, stepping loudly enough to let him know I’m here, but not so loud that the person on the other end of the line might hear me. I stop at the far end of the bench, staring painfully at the space beside the kitchen table where Elliot and I shared our first kiss all those years ago. If things seemed bad then … holy mother of god, they’re so, so much worse now. Elliot turns and clicks his fingers. “Pen,” he hisses. I scan the room, my

eyes settling on the battered notebook and pen that Grandma always kept on the refrigerator when I lived here. Nothing’s changed. Except that, you know, she’s dead. Murdered. Laying in a hole in the ground outside. I rush to the pen and notepad, ripping them from their magnetic holder on the front of the refrigerator and practically throwing them at Elliot. He scribbles something down, staring at me vacantly after he’s finished. I peek at the piece of paper he’s written on, at first not recognizing the pattern behind the string of letters and numbers. And then I see. They’re GPS coordinates.

“How do I know they’re still alive?” he says suddenly. My skin bristles uncomfortably at the anguish behind his words. I edge closer, so I’m standing beside him, our eyes locked as the unmistakable sound of a child’s voice filters down the line. “Daa-ddy,” she says, her little voice painfully sweet. “Daddy, where are you?” Then, static. “Kayla?” he says urgently into the receiver. “Kayla!” But she’s gone. He turns to face the sink again, smashing the receiver back into its hook. An incredible, searing pain begins in my chest and spreads outwards as I place a

tentative hand on Elliot’s arm. He looks down at my hand and I wonder if he’s going to push me away. “We’re getting them back,” I say quietly. He looks at my hand on his arm for one beat, two, and then he sinks to his knees beside me, wrapping his arms around me tightly. Shocked by his sudden change in attitude towards me, I hesitate slightly, unsure of what to do. Love him, a voice inside my head urges. Be there for him like he was there for you all these years. His face pressed into my stomach, I wrap my arms around the man who saved my life and pull him closer to me, welcoming the pain of his fingers clinging to me, pressing into my flesh. I

stroke my hands through his hair, some small attempt at comforting him as I feel his tears bleed through the thin material of my dress and into my skin.

Jase and Luis cover Grandma’s body up with blankets before piling dirt over her. I’m on the porch, sheltered from the hot sun, a gun in one hand in case Donny or Agent Dunn decide to move and my other arm curled around Elliot’s waist. He won’t speak. He just stares off into space, his eyes red, his stance rigid, his expression dream-like. He looks a little mad. At this stage, I think we all do. Once she’s buried, there’s nothing

else to do but leave. I still can’t reconcile the fact that the faceless body in the dirt is Grandma, but it is. Dornan killed her. And then he dug three graves. The message is pretty fucking clear. Behave or the other two graves will be filled with the bodies of Elliot’s daughter and her mother. When I think about it like that, I want to be sick all over again. Before they started hefting dirt over Grandma’s still corpse, Luis plugged the string of GPS coordinates into his phone and came up with a hit. Dornan’s directed Elliot, and us by default, into a section of Death Valley called Furnace Creek. Death Valley. Because that’s not

foreboding or anything. Fuck. We reconvene in the living room briefly. Gather ourselves, get our bearings — oh, yeah, and grab plenty of weapons. Elliot’s got a small artillery in the garage, and we’re each bestowed with a loaded pistol and plenty of ammo. I’ve managed to score a more appropriate outfit from one of my storage boxes in the garage – a white tee and jeans with black boots. I’ve kept the CIA jacket as part of my outfit. I don’t know why, but for some reason, it makes me feel like a badass to wear it. The purple dress I throw in Elliot’s rag box. If we make it out of this alive, he can polish his fucking mustang with it.

It’s while we’re checking our clips and dispersing extra ammo into our pockets that I hear the cars. They’re driving fast. And, before I can even finish turning towards the large bay window that overlooks the front yard, there are three unmarked police cruisers on the front lawn. “We got company!” Jase yells, pulling Agent Dunn down to the ground beside him. I hit the deck as well, looking up to see Elliot and Luis have done the same. Donny is still largely unconscious, making a few grunted noises now and then, but nothing I care to waste effort on trying to decipher. “We have to get out of here,” Elliot says, his eyes ablaze. We’re all lying on

our stomachs on the floor, heads up just enough to see each other, when there’s a knock on the door. “Police, open up!” a low voice booms. CIA? I mouth. Jase shrugs, but Elliot shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “Whoever it is, I can’t let them hold me up. I have to get to the girls.” “Go out the back way,” Jase urges Elliot. He glances at me. “You too, Julz. We’ll hold them off as long as we can. You gotta get to the airstrip. We’ll meet you there.” I can tell it kills him to say it, but he’s being smart. If we all get held up by the heat at the door, we’re screwed and

Elliot’s girls are as good as dead. “Go,” I say to Elliot, who nods and starts army-crawling through the living room to the kitchen. I follow him on my hands and knees, ducking low in case the cops out front decide to start peppering the house with bullets. We both reach the back door, and Elliot leans against it briefly. “If there’s someone out there,” he says quietly, “you fucking shoot them. Do not shoot me. You understand?” I want to tell him this isn’t my first rodeo, but I bite my tongue. In the end, I just nod. He glances around one last time before reaching up and yanking the door open. There’s nobody there, and we both

crawl onto the deck out back, guns ready. Things are moving so fast, I don’t even have time to acknowledge how terrified I am. There’s a good chance these people want us dead. And then, we’re made. Three cops sprint around the side of the house, guns pointed at us. We’re not just outnumbered, we’re also at a distinct disadvantage, having no cover, unlike the cops who are sheltering behind the base of the deck, their guns pointed up at us. Two of them are dressed in dark blue fatigues and carrying heavy artillery. The third, however, is dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, a plain black

baseball cap on his head, a standard police issue revolver in his grip. I recognize this guy. I fucking know him. “Drop your guns,” he says. “Both of you.” My face falls as I lower my gun. Beside me, I see Elliot battle with himself before lowering his gun to his side. “Drop them and kick them over to me,” the guy says. “Tommy?” I ask incredulously. “What the hell are you doing here?” Tommy, son of one of the most notorious Gypsy Brothers in the history of the club, lowers his gun slightly. “It’s not what you think,” he says.

“You’re here for Donny,” I say, my heart sinking. I refuse to let go of my gun. I glance over to Elliot to see he’s doing the same, gripping his pistol tightly at his side as I see him mentally calculate how many rounds he can get off before he’s shot dead. Tommy, son of Viper, was Donny’s best friend growing up. He shakes his head emphatically. “I’m not here for Donny,” he says. “I’m here for you.” Jase appears on the deck, hands on his head. He’s being pushed from behind by an agent wearing a clearly marked DEA jacket. “I didn’t know you were with the CIA,” Tommy says to me. I roll my eyes. “I didn’t know you

were with the DEA.” Tommy, five-eleven and wiry, smiles tightly at me, his boyish dimples still there despite the fact that he’s almost thirty years old. “You’re not supposed to,” he responds. His brown eyes appear troubled, especially when they look to Jase. “Tommy?” Jase exclaims, taking his hands off his head and going to rush down the stairs. The unmistakable sound of guns being leveled at him makes him stop mid-stride, and he slowly puts his hands back on his head. “Tommy, what the hell’s going on, man?” “I thought you got busted for attempted murder,” I say, confused.

He tilts his head. “And I thought you were dead, Julie. Looks like neither of those things are true.” Elliot clears his throat. “What the fuck’s going on right now?” “Relax, Officer McRae,” Tommy says, a glint of something in his eye. Familiarity? Jase and I look from Tommy to Elliot. “Wait …” I say slowly. “Do you two know each other?” “No!” Elliot retorts. “I’ve never seen this punk in my life.” Tommy grins, holstering his gun and motioning for the two cops beside him to lower theirs. “Oh, but I know you. Who do you think called the cops to go get your ass out of that hospital six years

ago?” He looks pointedly at Elliot, who seems to be battling within himself to keep things straight. “Wait you’re the inside source who called my Captain?” Elliot asks. Something breaks loose inside of me, a small memory, six years dormant, of worried brown eyes that watched as I was wheeled past Gypsy Brothers and into emergency. Worried eyes that peered through a window as I was shocked back to life, paddles sending electricity into my body that made me think I was on fire. “Wasn’t right, what they did to you,” Tommy says to me, the smile gone now. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try and do something. So yeah, I called it

in. Stayed at the hospital until this guys showed up.” He glances at Elliot. Tommy. After Elliot had taken me away to Nebraska, I’d never given him a second thought. He was — is — Viper’s son. Viper was Dornan’s right-hand man, especially when he and my father stopped seeing eye to eye. And Viper’s a bad man. But, it seems his son must be made from something different. “That was you?” Elliot asks. “You’re DEA?” Tommy shrugs. “Wasn’t back then. Things change.” “You’re the rat,” Elliot surmises. Tommy raises his eyebrows, amused. “I prefer undercover agent. But sure.

Whatever takes your fancy.” “Jesus Christ,” I whisper. “You can pick up your jaw now,” Tommy says to me. “Oh, well, now that everyone’s best fucking friends,” I manage to say, feeling slightly annoyed that I’m the odd one out, yet relieved at the same time. Then I remember Luis. “So, how does Luis fit?” I ask. “You all been friends with him your whole lives, too?” Luis looks amused. Jase raises his eyebrows. “Luis is a fucking wildcard,” he replies. “If we make it out of this I’ll tell you all about motherfucking Luis.” Elliot shifts impatiently from foot to

foot. “On that note,” he says. “It’s really fucking great that you’re all having a reunion and everything, but we gotta go.” Tommy smiles. “Why do you think we’re here?” Elliot eyes him warily. “Why are you here?” Tommy shrugs his shoulders. “We’re here for the same reason you are. To take down Dornan Ross.” Well. I frown. “And by take down, you mean …” “I mean, put him in prison for the rest of his life,” Tommy says. Elliot goes all angry dude again. “That fucker’s got my kid!” he yells, storming Tommy.

“Hey!” I yell, getting in front of Elliot and pushing my palms against his chest. “Don’t do it, El,” I implore him. “Calm down.” “He’ll never see the inside of a jail cell,” Elliot fumes, “because I’m going in there, and I’m fucking EXECUTING him!” I turn, putting Elliot behind me as I address Tommy. “First thing,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, “is how do we know we can trust you?” Tommy grins, looking at the ground as he licks his lips. “Well, you can trust me because you’d be dead if it weren’t for me.” “Hmph,” I reply. “And why do we need you to help us, again?”

Tommy nods, taking a deep breath. “How many of you are there? Four? I mean, she’s the hostage, right?” I look over at Dunn, silent as always. “Maybe,” I concede. He chuckles. “Sugar, you got any idea how many people are in that bunker? Because I do.” I look at Elliot and Jase, puzzled. “Wait, it’s a bunker?” “You know the floorplan of this bunker? Because I do.” “You could be bluffing,” I say. “You could be trapping us. You’re Viper’s son, Tommy. What kind of man goes against his own father?” Tommy tilts his head, his smile vanishing slightly. “I don’t know,” he

says. “What kind of man goes against his own father?” And looks at Jase pointedly. “Are you kidding me?” I respond. “Dornan murdered his mother. Kept him in a fucking dungeon for three years.” I don’t even want to mention what he did to me. I’m tired of talking about it. I just want him to be dead. I just want this to be over. I just want some fucking sleep. Tommy doesn’t answer. I remember his dad beating him up from time to time, but as far as I know his mom’s still alive, and he hasn’t done any dungeon time. “What kind of man goes against his own father?” Tommy repeats woodenly.

“Well, the type of man who sees his father try and kill a teenage girl in her hospital bed, that’s who. Loyalty only takes you so far.” “Oh,” I reply. Tommy raises his eyebrows at me. “Yeah.” Donny stirs as Jase and Luis are hauling his ass to Elliot’s Mustang to drive back to the airstrip. He starts muttering something unintelligible as he’s being dragged by his arms, but he doesn’t get very far. Luis hefts him onto the ground beside the car and takes a large syringe out of his pocket, ripping the lid off with his teeth and planting that bad boy into Donny’s neck faster than he

can draw breath. Almost immediately, he stops struggling again, going limp in the dirt. “What’d you give him?” I ask. “Something that’ll knock him out for a long while,” Luis replies. I frown. “Not too long, I hope,” I reply. “What’s the flight time out to Furnace Creek? Two, three hours?” Luis caps the syringe and grips it between his teeth, fishing a second impressive-looking needle from his pocket. Unlike the first one, which has a red cap, this one has a green cap. “Red for stop, green for go,” he says, smiling wide around the capped syringe between his teeth. “Is that like —” I’m thinking of the

crap Dornan injected into me when I was his prisoner, the cold and heat, the uppers and downers that he injected into my body again and again, until I didn’t know if I was asleep or awake. Luis nods, still grinning, and I can’t help but shake my head in amusement.

The flight takes us two hours and thirty-seven minutes. I know, because I can’t stop looking at Agent Dunn’s phone the entire time. Counting down every minute, every second, until we’re there and I’ve got those girls in my grasp and I can stop wondering whether this is going to work or not. Two hours and thirty-seven minutes, and they might be some of the last minutes I’ll spend on this earth. I should be telling Jase how much I love him, or

something, but I can’t form words. I just sit, gun in my lap, staring at the phone. “You don’t have to give yourself up to him,” a voice pipes up from next to me. Agent Dunn. Great. Six pairs of eyes, including mine, turn to the source of the noise. Six. Yeah, Tommy and one of his DEA dudes hitched a ride with us. I’m still not sure how I feel about that, but they didn’t exactly give us a choice. And, true to their word, they’ve been showing us detailed floorplans of this place. It’s huge. “Oh,” Jase says to Agent Dunn in disgust, “I guess you’re awake, huh?” Agent Dunn — looking worse for

wear, her hair all mussed up and her mascara clumping — coughs into her hand, her cuffs clinking as she does so. “What a surprise,” I say slowly. “You’ve got a resistance to sleeping pills. Find it hard to sleep at night, Agent?” We dosed her with some sleeping pills before we boarded the flight in case she tried anything. Figured it would make her more compliant once we got to Furnace Creek, but now I’m starting to wonder. She looks pretty awake. She gives me a petulant stare. “I’m just trying to help you,” she mutters. I snort. “Oh, really? And why would you help me?” “Because you said you’re going to

kill him. And now the DEA are telling you that you can’t kill him.” She glares at Tommy. “And I really need you to kill him.” I glance back at Jase and Elliot, who are looking just as alarmed as me at her sudden change of tone. “My badge,” she says. “It’s inside my jacket.” Instinctively, I reach into her jacket — I’m still wearing it — and fish out a leather wallet from the left pocket. I open it, finding nothing other than a badge and her identification. Jase, Elliot and Luis get out of their seats across the plane and gather around us. “Behind the ID,” Agent Dunn says. I lift up the plastic sleeve that

protects her ID card. There’s a folded piece of card behind it, pressed flat against the back of her ID. You’d never find it unless you were looking. I slide two fingers into the wallet and pinch the piece of card, prising it out of the tight space. It’s folded. I open it, realizing as I do that it’s not a piece of card but a photograph. Before I can tear my eyes away, they’re taking in details. A young girl, maybe five, sitting on her mother’s lap. I know it’s her mother because they both have the same, identical smile. Their lips are the same, the way their cheeks crease up in the same spots. Even their teeth look the same. I toss the photo on the table that folds

down in the space that separates Jase and I from Elliot and Luis. “This is your kid, huh?” Jase asks, studying the photo. “Yeah,” she says. “And?” I ask. There’s always an and with things like this. “And, I don’t get her back until you’re secured. I thought I was walking out today to pick her up when I found my colleague drowning in his own blood.” She looks pointedly at me. “And you waited this long to tell us?” I ask. “Sounds like you’ve been using the time since then to think of a good sob story, lady.” Her face crumples. “Please,” she whispers, holding her palms together in a begging gesture. “He was always

listening.” She glances worriedly at Donny, who’s lucky to still be breathing with the amount of dope currently in his system. He’s not hearing anything right now except maybe the sound of his own heart beating slower and slower. “So you got a kid,” Luis says with a shrug. “Big deal.” “They’re going to kill her if I don’t do what they say!” she cries, lunging forward until the chain looped around her cuffs tightens and pulls her back violently. I raise my eyebrows at her sudden outburst. “So, what do you propose we do?” I ask out of interest. She licks her lips; they look like dry sandpaper, and I remember we haven’t

given her any water today. Oh well. “You don’t need to give yourself up to him,” she says. “You just need to make it seem like you are. Make him think he’s won. Make him think you’re weak. Then fucking execute him!” It’s the first time I’ve heard the agent swear. She’s impressive. Still, I don’t like being told what to do. “What if it’s a trap?” I ask. She shrugs. “You want Amy and Kayla back, don’t you? Isn’t it worth the risk?” I turn back to Elliot, whose face is making that weird expression again. He looks like he’s about to trip out and strangle a bitch.

“How the fuck does she know their names?” he mutters, bewildered. I put a hand up to him as if to say, calm down. “She has a point,” I say, running my hands through my loose hair and scratching at my scalp. I’m so tired, it’s going to take digging my fingernails into my own flesh to keep me awake until we find some coffee. Or cocaine. I’d almost take either at this point. “You’re not going in there,” Jase says pointedly, pinning me with his stare. “It’s not up for discussion.” Elliot leaps to his feet. “Elliot,” I say quietly, as I jump up out of my seat and follow him. He shakes his head, charging to the back end of the plane. I follow a few steps behind, coming to an

abrupt stop when he does at the small kitchen that’s tucked behind the bathroom stall in the back. He turns, leaning against the counter as we study each other. “I haven’t even asked you if you’re okay,” he says, rubbing his hand back and forth across his stubbled jaw anxiously. His eyes drop to my stomach, and I know he’s thinking about the baby. I shake my head. “Don’t worry about me, Elliot. Don’t even think about me. Think about the girls. If we make it out of this mess? You can ask me if I’m okay.” I don’t add, if he makes it out, I’ll probably be dead, because he’s got enough to worry about right now.

He nods, giving my arm a squeeze. “Elliot,” I say, stopping him. I just want him to know — to know that I get it, that I understand. “I know I don’t have a child like you do,” I say hesitantly. “But I was somebody’s mother, just for a moment.” My throat starts to close up painfully. “All I’m trying to say is, I know what it feels like. To want to protect your child more than anything. From anything. Everything else is nothing when it comes to your daughter.” His eyes widen, and he brings one fist up, pressing it against his lips. We don’t say anything else. He just looks at me, and I know it’s taking every ounce of strength he possesses not to break

down and cry for his girls. Before we land, Tommy and his DEA partner spread a large set of floorplans on the back wall of the plane, each holding a side to stop it from rolling back up at the edges. Luis, Elliot, Jase and I stand before them, as they explain the different entry points. “This place used to be a bunker and artillery store during the war,” Tommy says. “Some of it’s been mined, as well. Emilio’s Cartel’s been using it since the eighties to coordinate drug drops and store heavy arms.” I nod, something troubling me. “This place is huge,” I say. “How the hell are we supposed to find the girls in all that?”

“We go in teams of two,” Tommy replies. “There is one main entry point, and that’s where Juliette, Elliot and Donny will enter. We’ll take the south fire escape,” he says, referring to himself and his partner. “Luis, Jase, you can take north or east.” Jase shakes his head tightly. “I’m going with her,” he says, pointing at me. Tommy shrugs. “Fine. Luis, you happy to go in solo?” Luis nods. “Sure thing.” “What about me?” Agent Dunn pipes up. “Who do I go with?” Everyone turns and looks at Agent Dunn, still cuffed and in her seat. “You come with me,” Luis says. “Well, that’s settled. And let’s make

one thing clear, people. You do not shoot Dornan Ross. We need him alive, or we’re all screwed.” “You mean, you’ll be screwed,” Elliot says pointedly. “I think the rest of us’ll be just fine.” Tommy drops his grip on the floorplan, and it springs back to the other agent in a neat roll. “Everything has a price, Mr. McRae,” Tommy says. “This doesn’t end when you get your girls back. There’ll be a court case. You’ll all have to testify. Protective custody. This is only the beginning. You really think we’re going to be able to dismantle the largest drug cartel in Central America in one afternoon?”

Elliot snorts. “You think I give a fuck about dismantling a drug cartel?” Tommy steps closer, shorter than Elliot but just as imposing. “You really think you’re going to be able to stay one step ahead of hundreds of Dornan’s associates, the rest of the Gypsy Brothers, and Emilio’s entire extended family?” Elliot doesn’t respond. Inside my stomach, panic is building, and it doesn’t feel good. Shit. What were we thinking? That once we finished Donny and Dornan, that things would be done? That we’d be able to set up house and spend the money Dornan is still looking for, to this very day? We’re going to be hiding for a very

long time, and that makes me sadder than I could’ve imagined. “Be smart,” Tommy finishes, looking at all of us. “Six years ago, I got in with the DEA and betrayed every person in my family and my club. It was always going to come down to this eventually. Juliette’s managed to speed things up considerably,” he gives me an amused glance, which I return with a wry smile, “but essentially, we are looking at years and years of trying to smash this syndicate. It’s international. It’s powerful. And trust me when I say — you want somebody like the DEA on your side after today, when you need new identities and somewhere safe to run to.”

Nobody responds. “Okay?” Tommy urges. A collection of grunts and yeses are muttered as the pilot starts speaking over the intercom, telling us we’re about to start descending and that we should take our seats and buckle up. I can’t stop thinking about Tommy’s words as we’re descending. You want somebody like the DEA on your side. I wish I didn’t need anyone on my side, but deep down, sickening as it is, I know he’s probably right.

Lucky Dornan picked a place with an airstrip. Our landing is bumpy, and it’s a miracle the pilot doesn’t overshoot the runway and send us into the desert sand beyond. An omen of what’s in store for us, perhaps? I don’t want to think about it. Outside, it’s hot as hell. Literally. The sun is beating down on us, and I’m so relieved I decided to change into jeans and a t-shirt. In that purple dress I would’ve been burned to a crisp in ten minutes. At least in my white tee and

jeans I’ve got a little protection from the sun. And somewhere to shove my gun. We assemble on the ground beside the plane, each holding a water bottle. Elliot dumps Donny in the sand and pours a bottle of water over his head, but the fucker doesn’t even stir. “That way,” Luis says, but Tommy shakes his head. “This is where we split up, kids. We’ve got each other’s cell numbers, if they work at all. Keep the sound off and check your messages.” “And then what?” I ask dumbly. “You can’t tell me the DEA has sent exactly two agents to take Dornan down.” Tommy flashes a smile. “Our people are all over this place,” he says. “Hell,

half of the team’s probably already down in the bunker, waiting for my okay.” “Oh,” I reply. “Right.” I sound like a fucking moron. “We’ll get those girls out, man,” Tommy says to Elliot. “It’s the top priority. The team knows, and they’ll extract them if they reach them before you do.” Elliot nods. “Thanks, man.” “Don’t thank me yet,” Tommy says. “Thank me when everyone makes it out of this alive.” He gives me a pointed look. Maybe he can tell I’ve got death on speed dial, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s deeply unsettling.

Dornan is here. I’m going to see Dornan Ross. And one of us is going to die. I want to throw up. “Wait,” Luis says, taking the greentopped syringe from his pocket and uncapping it. He stabs it right into Donny’s forearm, and the effect is almost instantaneous. Donny roars to life, kicking and punching at the air as he gasps for air. “How’s your ass, bro?” Jase asks, his gun aimed at Donny. Donny growls at him as he makes his way to his feet, apparently unable to speak with real words. “Watch him,” Luis murmurs to me, tossing the syringe on the ground. “If he

gets too much, give him some more of this stuff.” He hands me another, much smaller red-capped syringe. Red means stop. I smile tightly, pocketing the meds. We all do a final check before we split up. Luis and Agent Dunn head off in one direction, Tommy and his partner in the other. Which leaves Jase, Elliot and I to lead crazy, amped-up Donny to the original GPS coordinates, straight through the middle of the valley. We walk for maybe an hour, the midday sun pounding mercilessly as we trek across hot sand and hard clay. A few times, Donny starts running flat out, the drugs in his system no doubt making him feel like he’s having a heart attack and needs to burn off some of the

anxious energy. Both times, Elliot and Jase drag him down and knock him around a bit until he settles. Homeboy Donny is like a wild fucking bull. I think getting nailed in the ass has reduced him to some kind of animal state, because he’s looking seriously like a rabid dog you’d shoot to stop it from attacking you. He looks … terrifying. Eventually, just when I think I’m going to drown in my own sweat, we halt, Jase’s cell (well, Agent Dunn’s cell) telling us we’re at the spot Dornan fed to Elliot over the phone earlier. “What the fuck is this?” Elliot says, scanning the empty, flat sand that surrounds us. “There’s nothing here.”

Then the ground begins to vibrate beneath us. I jump as the ground below us starts to open up. We all back up until we’re on unmoving soil, watching as a ramp appears that leads underground. It eventually stops, leaving a space big enough for a large SUV to fit through. I can’t see anything downstairs, and I look around nervously, brushing my palms on my jeans as I suddenly feel very claustrophobic. This is the moment. This is it. Five down. Well, six, if you count Emilio. Two.To.Go. Elliot leads the way, Donny behind him. His hands are tied behind him

again, since he carried on so many times during the walk from the airstrip. I mean, the guy’s missing most of one kneecap — he should NOT be able to run. Which makes me wonder what the hell is in the drug Luis pumped him with. I take the small red-capped needle from my pocket and grip it in my fingers, ready to deliver it if Donny starts getting out of hand and needs to be sedated again. In my other hand my gun is clenched tightly as I follow Elliot, Donny and Jase down into the seeming nothingness. At that moment, as we’re descending into pitch blackness, the ramp starts to oscillate upwards again. Shit! We’ve got to get in there before it closes, and we’re still only halfway down this ramp.

Jase kicks Donny forcefully, so he falls to his knees and then onto his stomach, rolling with force into the blackness. The three of us follow him as he tumbles, running down the ramp and scooting through before the gap closes and it becomes level with the earth again. I land awkwardly, taking my finger off the trigger of my gun so I don’t accidentally shoot myself or one of the guys in the dark. I land hard, on my knees, and it hurts like a bastard. There’s a large screeching sound as the ramp folds back completely, leaving us trapped down here until we find another way out. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I

can make out some shapes. There are several cars parked down here, in what looks like a large, circular space with a dirt floor and no windows. The scant light comes from a couple of weak LED lamps that flank the doorway to several passages. Great. How the hell are we going to figure out which one to take? Just then, Elliot’s cell phone vibrates. It’s so quiet in here, I jump at the sudden noise. Elliot gives me a look before reading the message that lights up his screen. North passage, Amy and Kayla spotted from aircon vent. No Dornan. “We should go together,” Jase says. Elliot looks at both of us like we’re

mad. “You guys need to stay here, cover me. I’m gonna need help getting them up to the surface.” Jase looks reluctant to let him go off by himself. “You call us if anything happens,” he says, pointing at Elliot with urgency. “Yeah, man,” he says, “same with you.” He looks at me. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says to me finally. I just nod, so scared I can’t speak. I can’t help but think that this could be goodbye. And I don’t want it to be — but what the hell am I supposed to say right now? I open my mouth, and Elliot just shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says. “I know you, sweetheart, and I know what

you’re about to say. I will be back.” He turns and takes three steps before stopping. I glance at Jase, who shrugs, taking a step back and motioning to Donny with his gun. “Wait,” I whisper, following Elliot. He turns as I’m upon him, wrapping his arms around me so tight I can’t breathe. I don’t care. I’m crying, and he’s squeezing me, and I don’t want him to go. He pulls away, cupping my face in his hands. “You be safe, okay?” he says, his voice wavering. “You let him protect you. You let him take a bullet for you. He can handle it.” I smile sadly underneath my tears, my fingers grasped tightly around Elliot’s

wrists. “Julz,” he says. “Yeah?” “My arms.” “Oh,” I say, releasing my grip. I step back. “You be safe,” I whisper. “Don’t you take a bullet for anyone, you hear me?” He nods reluctantly, then turns and jogs down the middle passageway, fading into a blur and then disappearing altogether. And then there were three. I turn back to Jase, still reeling from the exchange from Elliot. Donny suddenly dives between us, scrambling towards the mine shaft that goes to the right of the passage Elliot just took. “Hey!” Jase

yells, firing at his moving form. He doesn’t seem to hit anything, though, and before I can even raise my gun level and aim, Donny’s gone. “Fuck!” Jase yells, running after him. I follow, or at least I start to follow. Something hot smacks at my neck, something angry that makes a snapping, buzzing sound. A Taser. I’m thrown forwards, onto my hands and knees, my gun bouncing from my paralyzed grip and skidding away. As I fall, the Taser loses contact with my skin, a small mercy among a clusterfuck of events. How did this happen? How stupid are we? In less than five minutes we’ve split up and are now divided. After a few agonizing seconds where

I can’t move, my jello-limbs start to come back to life. My entire body buzzing, I manage to push myself from my hands and knees back to my feet, trembling as I turn to face my attacker. I’m expecting Dornan, but there’s no Dornan. It’s ... a woman? About my height, maybe a bit shorter. Pretty face, wild blonde curls, crazy eyes. Ohhhhh. Yes. Of course. It’s Chad’s wife. I never did catch her name. She smiles at me. “Hello, cunt,” she says, lunging for me. I roll my eyes, putting my palms up and bracing for her attack. She’s strong for her size, but she packs all her energy into charging me,

and all I have to do is sidestep her and she goes flying. I turn with her, letting her go before her momentum can carry me with her. I smirk as I watch her smash down into a pile of empty pallets on her hands and knees. “You people really don’t have any other words, do you?” I tease her, emboldened by the fact that I’m not being pummeled to death by Dornan himself. I resume my defensive stance as she charges me again. This time, she’s holding a broken piece of the wood up like a stake. “You’re the cunt who killed my husband,” she spits, stabbing the jagged piece of wood at me. I back up, barely deflecting her erratic slashes and jabs.

There’s something to say about fighting crazy people, and this bitch might just be crazier than me. She continues to strike blindly, and finally I decide I need to stop her before she actually injures me. “Use your words, blondie,” I say, smashing the heel of my palm into her nose. Blood explodes from her face as she staggers backwards, and I’m impressed that she manages to keep her balance. Still, she’s the one backing away from me now. I don’t let her get too far, matching her step for step as I back her into a corner. “Bitch,” I say, throwing a left hook that connects with her cheek, sending her reeling to the side. “Slut,” I grab a fistful of her ridiculously beautiful curls and

pull, lifting my knee up and guiding her face into it with a loud crack. That’ll be sore tomorrow, assuming I’m not laid out cold on a morgue gurney tomorrow. “See? All words you can use to describe me. Get creative!” I lash out with my foot, my boot connecting with her shin, sending her to her knees again. “Oh, come on,” I pant, “we haven’t even made it to the good words yet!” She’s doubled over, clutching her stomach and wheezing. She tilts her head up, staring at me through all the blood on her pretty face. “I loved him,” she sobs. “He was a good man!” I’m baffled. She thinks Chad was a good man? Jesus, she’s got more issues than just a lack of brainpower. She’s

insane. I decide to go on the offensive while she’s down, lunging for her and getting her in a headlock with my right arm. “Your husband was a no-good fucking rapist,” I grind out, my lips brushing against her ear as I tighten my lock around her neck. “Your children are better off with him dead.” “Fuck you!” she screams against my arm. “Where’s Dornan?” I demand, throttling her a little. “He’s gonna kill you, you murdering bitch!” “Well, all right then,” I mutter, rolling my eyes. I squeeze as hard as I can without crushing her windpipe, counting

in my head. She stops struggling at ten, and by fifteen she’s slumped forward in my arms. I’m about to let her go when something punches dully into the side of me, knocking the wind out of me. I fall forward, suddenly unable to react, crashing into blondie as her face hits the floor with a sharp thwack. I roll off her and onto my back, gasping as my hands reach for the source of the pain that’s radiating from my side. My hands come away wet. Fuck. I know what that means. I raise one palm to the light. It’s red. But that’s not the worst thing. No, the worst thing is Donny, standing over me with a large butcher’s knife in his hand.

He’s sporting a maniacal grin, his eyes gleaming as the uppers no doubt supercharge his system. “You missed a few words,” he says, cackling. Oh God. If Donny’s back here, where’s Jase? “Do enlighten me,” I croak, clutching my side as I attempt to roll onto my side and up. I fail miserably in my attempt, the movement just making the red-hot poker in my side even more intense. I gasp for air as I hold myself, making a pathetic attempt to drag myself away from him. It’s too hard, and finally I just lay back down. I don’t want Donny to stab me to death while I’m trying to get to my feet.

Still holding the knife, he starts undoing his pants. “Whore,” he says, tilting his head to the side as he sizes me up greedily. He pulls his zip down, exposing his bush and the top of his dick. Guess Luis forgot to give him his briefs back after he got fucked. Go on, I think, lay on me. Try and fuck me, you useless piece of shit. I’ll take that knife and jam it so far into your neck — I’m still mentally planning my next defense against Donny when suddenly, Donny’s not there. He’s been crashtackled to the ground, somebody straddling his chest. Jase. My relief is almost palpable,

it’s so sudden and so expansive. “Put it down, little bro,” Donny laughs. “You don’t have the balls to plant that knife in me.” “You know all those times you told me I wasn’t your real brother?” Jase asks, knife poised in the air. I watch on in fascination as Donny laughs. “Sure.” Jase smiles triumphantly. “I never thanked you for that,” he says, bringing down the blade into Donny’s shoulder. Donny screams. Jase yanks the knife out with a meaty slurp, before plunging it into his other shoulder. I can’t watch, but I can’t look away. Again, the knife is wrenched from Donny’s body with a sickening noise. This time, though, Jase lowers the knife

agonizingly close to Donny’s eye. Donny’s entire body is shaking, and I smile as I realize he can’t move his arms. Whatever Jase did to his shoulders must have severed the tendons that made his arms work. Sucked in, asshole. At first, I don’t think he’s going to do it. Jase hovers the knife right above Donny’s pupil, breathing heavily. “Please, don’t,” Donny pleads. Jase laughs bitterly. “Remember when she begged?” he spits. “Did you stop?” He presses the tip of the blade into Donny’s eye. Donny screams. Still clutching my stab wound, I

manage to haul myself up to a half-sitting position, my knees drawn up in front of me and my back up against the wall. My hands are covered in my own blood, and I’m staring down at it in wonder when something wet hits my cheek. Alarmed, I snap my gaze back to what’s unfolding in front of me. Jase is raining down on Donny, one stab after another. Most of the stabs are concentrated on Donny’s chest and neck, and at least one must have hit an artery, because Donny’s a gusher. Blood sprays in a rough circular pattern around Donny and Jase, coating me in a fine sheen of red mist. I’m transfixed, unmoving, as I watch the knife in Jase’s hand rise and fall, rise and fall, a frenzy of well-aimed

downward strikes into his brother’s ruined flesh. “Jase,” I choke. He doesn’t hear me. He’s stabbing so fast I can’t even see the action clearly anymore — hatred and suffering channeled into retribution at the end of a sharp blade. “Jason,” I say, louder this time. He seems to hear me this time, stopping mid-stab. Donny’s a mess. Jase has done an impressive hack-job on him, so that he’s unrecognizable. Jase’s eyes meet with mine before he drops them to where I’m holding my side. “Julz,” he breathes, dropping the knife with a clattering sound and crawling over his brother’s mutilated

body to me. He studies my face for a moment before placing a hand ever so gently on mine. “I need to look,” he murmurs. Reluctantly, I pull my hand from my stomach, where it’s stuck to my skin with drying blood. He peers down at my wound. “We’ll find you a doctor as soon as we’re out of here,” he says gently. “I’m fine,” I protest. “It hurts, but it’s not going to kill me. Here, help me up.” He doesn’t help me up. He leans in and presses his mouth to mine, a feverish action that I can’t help but return. He kisses me, even though we’re both covered in Donny’s blood, and I kiss him back. It’s not pretty, and it’s not

nice, but that’s okay. Because, in our world, it takes the taste of death in your mouth, bloody and warm, to truly understand what it means to be alive.

We creep along the hallway Elliot took, heading further into the rabbit warren. I’ve completely lost track of time or how we got into this passage, and if I do survive the night, I’ll probably be living the rest of my life wandering these halls, trying to find an escape vent to the surface. For now, I’m just focused on the task at hand, the one that I know isn’t over. Elliot. Kayla. Amy. I’m not leaving this place until all three of them are safe. After the attack by crazy bitch and Donny, Jase and I are

extra keen to regroup with Elliot. Strength in numbers, and all that. I really hope Dornan doesn’t ask to see Donny. Stupid, dead Donny, hacked and slashed, the only thing he’d be useful for at this point perhaps being wrapped into dog food packaging. On the bright side, I found my gun. I’m slowing Jase down considerably, not least because I refuse to let him carry me. It’s not a pride thing. It’s because he’s already tried to pick me up a few times, and no matter which way we try it, the pressure on my stab wound is almost unbearable. I’d much rather stumble along beside him, using the wall as a support on my other side. There’s a popping noise up ahead,

and Jase grabs my arm, stopping me in my tracks. “Stay here,” he hisses, holding his gun out in front of him. I raise my own gun, nodding as he advances down the hallway and around a corner. I’ll stay here. He’s not very far away, maybe a few steps, and I can still make out his shadow as he positions himself around the corner, probably to get a better view. But then I hear it. I hear crying. A little girl is crying. “Jase!” I whisper. I have to find her, before Dornan hurts her. Maybe he already has. “Jase!” I repeat urgently. I can’t make out his shadow anymore, and my heart

leaps into my throat. What do I do? Stay here, listen to the increasingly loud wailing of a child who needs to be saved? Or go, towards her voice, with my gun and my bullets and hope to hell I can get her out of here? God, I really wish Jase was here. Still clinging to the sound of the little girl’s crying, I creep up the hall in the direction Jase went. I round the corner. He’s not there. Fuck! I make a split-second decision. Jase has disappeared. I can hear the little girl’s crying get more panicked. I choose the intersecting hallway, the one we haven’t ventured down yet. I hope like hell I’m not making the

wrong decision, but Jase is gone, and what other choice do I have? I use the wall for support, clinging to it with one hand; my other hand is holding my gun, my wrist pressed tight to my bleeding stab wound. Fucking Donny. I’m glad he’s dead, and I’m even happier that Jase killed him. It was about his turn for some bloody retribution. The girl’s voice gets clearer. She’s not just crying. She’s saying something. She’s saying, “Daddy.” Oh my God. Elliot. I walk faster, limping along the wall. Several times I have to stop and wipe my blood from my hand and the gun, it gets so slippery in my grasp. I really wish I had five minutes to bandage

myself up right now, but that’s a luxury for afterwards. For now, I’ll just hope that I don’t pass out before I have a chance to finish this. Donny’s dead, Blondie’s out for the count, and if I can just get to Dornan, I’ll have my chance at taking him out. I can’t say I’m not terrified. But I’ve been waiting for my chance at destroying him for over six years, and that moment just arrived with a bang. I clutch my stab wound as I make my way down the hall, stopping several times when the pain threatens to turn the lights out on me and send me into unconsciousness. I cling to the damp wall with torn fingernails, trying desperately to stem the steady flow of

blood with my other hand. A sob dies in my throat when I glimpse her through an open door. Elliot’s little girl. She’s only three, and she’s covered in blood as she stands in the middle of an empty room, sobbing. I inch cautiously into the room; the first thing greeting me as I step inside is Elliot’s unconscious form, slumped on the ground. Shit! And beside him, Kayla’s sobbing her little heart out. She’s such a beautiful child; her dark blonde ringlets are more knotted than the last time I saw her, and her pink capped-sleeve dress is spattered with what I assume is her daddy’s blood. I’m reaching for her

when suddenly, I’m stopped cold by the click of a gun’s hammer being cocked. I raise my eyes slowly, unwilling to back away from Elliot and his daughter, but also powerless to go any closer without scoping out the threat. And threat he is, standing at the far end of the room, his white shirt torn in places and untucked over black pants. He’s wearing a suit and tie to his death. Or to mine. “I knew you’d come,” Dornan taunts, a little behind Kayla and to the right, his gun firmly pressed to Amy’s head. No wonder I didn’t hear Amy’s cries — she’s gagged with enough duct tape to wrap about fifty Christmas presents. Her hands are taped behind her, and she’s

freaking out, her eyes bulging with the exertion of hyperventilating through her blood-caked nose. She’s breathing rapidly, shallow little pants, her sleeveless top damp in a V at the middle with her own nervous sweat, her denim skirt covered in dirt and blood. And Elliot. Jesus fucking Christ. We got so close, and now he’s on the floor in front of me, unmoving, a puddle of his blood slowly moving across the concrete floor. No. He can’t be dead. If he’s dead, I’m going to shoot myself after I’m done with Dornan. “You didn’t give me much choice,” I say finally, shifting my attention from Elliot.

“My daddy won’t wake up,” Kayla sobs, looking up at me. My heart breaks into a million fucking pieces as I swallow a scream rising in my own throat. I can’t lose it, not now. I need to get these girls out of here. “Gun,” Dornan says. “Drop it, and I’ll let these girls go.” I clench my jaw, tasting blood in my mouth. “I don’t believe you.” He shakes Amy forcefully. “Gun. Now. Or I blow her fuckin’ brains out.” With great reluctance, I toss my gun. It lands at Dornan’s feet with a loud clatter. Jase, where are you, where the fuck are you? Much to my disbelief, Dornan pulls a

switchblade from his jeans with his free hand and cuts through Amy’s wrist tape. She pulls the rest of the tape from her wrists and then her mouth, rushing down to Kayla and scooping her up. She stands, looking to Dornan for further instruction. I get that. I wouldn’t be able to turn my back and run from a man like Dornan if he had a gun in his hand. Especially if I was carrying my child in my arms. “Take her,” Dornan says, stepping over Elliot and pressing his gun to my head. I sway on my feet a little, but Dornan wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me into him so my face is pressed into his shoulder, holding me strong. A wave of revulsion passes over

me at his possessive embrace, especially when he grins down at me. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he murmurs, his voice rough and ominous, and in his eyes I see my own death. I crane my head to the side, not daring to struggle until these girls are far away from this room, and see Amy looking down at Elliot on the ground. “Not him,” Dornan snaps, motioning her out. “Go now, before I change my mind.” She grips Kayla tighter and runs. I hear her footsteps pounding the concrete floor as she runs away to safety. I breathe a sigh of relief for her as I look down at Elliot. “Let him go,” I say, even though he’s

out of it and couldn’t leave the room himself. “He’s not part of this.” “He helped you kill my sons,” Dornan grinds out, digging his gun into my throat. “He stays.” “You said you’d let him go!” I cry. “You lied!” He looks furious. “I didn’t fuckin’ lie. I said two for two. Where the fuck is Donny?” He throws me and I fall to my knees, the concrete hard and unforgiving under my broken body. I yelp as I roll onto my side, my knife wound smacking against the floor. Pain ricochets through my body and I swear I can feel the blood pumping faster from my stomach at the sudden exertion.

“Don’t fucking touch her, old man,” Jase says as he enters the room, brandishing the knife he used to kill Donny, his face covered in his dead brother’s blood. Dornan’s eyes go wide for a moment as he takes in his son. He looks from me to Jase, his mouth twisted into a frown. “You got a gun, son?” he taunts, his voice smoke and gravel. “Cause I do, and it’s full of fucking bullets. You think you can cut me with that knife quicker than I can fill this bitch full of lead?” Jase takes another step towards us. “Let her go, Dornan. You don’t want to hurt her.” Dornan chuckles. “Oh, I want to hurt her. I wanna hear her scream as I’m

fucking killing her, piece by piece.” Lovely. “Dad,” Jase says, and the word sounds so unnatural coming from him. Dornan takes the gun from my throat and aims it at Jase. “Don’t you ever fucking call me that. You don’t get to call me that.” Jase drops the knife to his side. “All these years you tried to get me to be your son, and now you don’t want me to call you dad? Seems pretty ironic, don’t you think?” Dornan grimaces. “Where’s your brother?” he says. And in his eyes, he already knows. Jase smiles darkly, pulling something from his pocket, the knife still loose at

his other side. He tosses something small at Dornan’s feet, where it rolls before coming to a stop next to Dornan’s shiny black shoe. It’s Donny’s eye. His bloody fucking eyeball. Dornan baulks, making a choking sound as he looks from the eyeball at his feet back to Jase. “Didn’t you hear him screaming, dad?” Jase riles him. “Didn’t you hear him beg?” “You motherfucker,” Dornan spits, shaking the gun at him. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, you little bastard.” Oh God, Oh God. He can’t shoot Jase. He won’t shoot Jase, will he? “I’m your only living son,” Jase says, his

words mirroring my panicked thoughts. “You won’t shoot me, will you Pop?” He steps closer again, his grip tightening around the knife. Dornan shoots him. I scream at the same time Jase’s chest explodes in a burst of red. Jase flies backwards, crashing to the ground. He isn’t moving. His eyes are closed. There’s so much blood. I drop to my knees, instinctively crawling towards him. “No,” I whimper, “no no no!” A hand fists in my hair and yanks me backwards, making me scream again. “Get up,” Dornan grates, his voice low and barely controlled. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

Jase. Elliot. They’re both on the ground, neither of them are moving, and this is the worst possible way this could have gone down. They’re going to die. I’m going to die. It’s all been for nothing. I stagger to my feet, my side hurting so, so badly. Without thinking, I put my hand over my stab wound, trying to stem the flow of bleeding Big mistake. Dornan’s dark eyes light up as he takes hold of my wrists and slams me against the wall. I see stars as the back of my head cracks against hard concrete, pinned as I continue to bleed. “What’s this, then?” he asks, his

voice almost gentle as he takes both wrists in one hand and uses the other to lift the hem of my t-shirt, exposing the inch-long wound in my side. Another scar to add to the collection. He caresses the spot where my blood is still steadily leaking out, and then he takes two fingers and pushes them inside the hole the knife left behind. I scream, sagging to the side as I retch violently. He lets go of me and I slide down the wall, meeting the ground with a thud. I’m getting back to a sitting position when he stands above me, one foot on either side of me. Beyond, I can see Elliot, who hasn’t moved a muscle. He’s out for the count. He’s bleeding.

He’s dying. Jase, too, a few feet to Elliot’s left. I have to do something, or both of them are going to die. We are all going to die. And if we all die and Dornan lives, everyone else we love is going to suffer. I spot my gun a few feet away and look back to Dornan. He smiles at me, baring his teeth like he’s going to rip into me with them, tear my flesh from my bones and devour me alive. He holds my gaze as he takes the blood-soaked fingers he just had inside my stab wound and puts them in his mouth, sucking them slowly. “Your blood’s even better than your fuckin’ tears, baby girl,” he grins,

watching me with interest as I back away on my hands and heels. It hurts so much I want to scream, but I force myself back, my hand itching it’s so close to the gun I earlier tossed at Dornan’s feet. “You want a taste,” he says, getting down on his knees so he’s straddling my hips. He takes his licked-clean fingers and pushes them back into my wound a second time. I groan loudly, every nerve in my body screaming at the sudden invasion. He digs around more this time, getting his fingers as deep as he can before withdrawing them. He reaches up to my face with his clean hand, squeezing my jaw hard so I open my mouth. He slides his fingers,

soaked with my blood, into my mouth as far as they’ll go. I choke as my own blood drips down the back of my throat, and that makes him laugh. “What do you think?” he asks. “Should we taste his blood next?” He’s talking about Elliot. “You can get on your knees and lick it up off the fuckin’ floor.” He’s distracted by the thought of me lapping Elliot’s blood up off the dirty floor? Whatever. He’s distracted , and that makes him loosen his grip that’s forcing my jaw open. I bite down on his fingers as hard as I possibly can, my stomach lurching as blood gushes down my throat and I feel hard bone between my teeth.

Dornan roars, pulling his fingers from my mouth as he uses his other hand to smack me a backhander that almost knocks me out. I fly to the side, landing heavily. Thank you. He dives for me, grabbing hold of my ankle as I close my fingers around my gun and spin to face him. He crash-tackles me at the same time that I blindly pull the trigger, aware only that the gun is pointed in his general direction but nothing more. The gun kicks back in my hands, Dornan jerks back slightly, but gravity ensures that his tackle is completed. His full weight smashes into me, knocking the gun from my hands and me flat on my back, with his weight suffocating me.

He groans. “You shot me. You fuckin’ shot me, you stupid bitch.” He’s bleeding. I try to shove him off me, but he head-butts me, driving his forehead into my mouth. I see stars, my jaw aching and my teeth loose as Dornan rolls to the side, black-red blood blossoming from a hole in his shirt just below his ribs. It’s like a target. I ball my hand up into a fist and smash it into where I’ve shot him, as hard as I possibly can. He lets out a guttural howl, snaking his fingers into my hair and yanking my head up before slamming it back down into the ground. “You.Fucking.Cunt.,” he growls, slamming my head into the ground with

each word. If he keeps smashing my head into the ground I’m going to pass out, and if I pass out, I’m going to die. And I refuse to die. I reach for Dornan’s bullet wound and punch my fist into it again. He howls, rolling away, and I take that split second to roll the opposite way, getting to my knees and crawling away towards Elliot. The room spins around me as I reach up to the back of my head and find fresh blood seeping from my scalp. As I’m reaching Elliot I hear the slow click of a gun being cocked and I turn my attention back to Dornan. He’s in terrible shape. His face is pale and he, too, looks like he’s had the life sucked

out of him. He looks as bad as I feel: bleeding, broken, ready to pass out. It’s only now that I realize he’s limping, dragging his left leg. I look closer, seeing the wet patch above his knee, almost impossible to see on the black fabric of his pants. I smile. “He shot you, didn’t he?” I say. Dornan grimaces, turning his head to the side as he aims at me. “Don’t move, bitch,” he says. I force myself to breathe, tiny, shallow breaths, as I drag myself closer to Elliot. With one hand over my stomach I manage to get to a kneeling position next to him. “You won’t shoot me,” I say, rolling

Elliot over with great difficulty. Oh, Jesus. He’s been shot in the chest. It looks bad. Really bad. His blood is everywhere, making my knees slip as I try to wriggle closer. “Yes, I fucking will,” he says, shaking the gun. “You won’t,” I say, looking down at Elliot’s pale face. “You’re not finished with me yet, are you, Dornan? You’re not going to shoot me.” He makes a choking noise, blood appearing at his lip. I look at him, fascinated. The bullet I fired must have hit his lung if he’s coughing up blood right now. “Are you sorry?” I ask suddenly. I’m so close to passing out. So close. The

room spins for a second. I don’t have long. Jase and Elliot have even less time, if they’re even still alive. They have to be alive. “Sorry for what?” Dornan asks, coughing as he spits more blood on the floor beside him. His shirt is a mess. He’s bleeding, and he’s bleeding good. I level my eyes at him and really look at him. Just me and him. Juliette Portland and Dornan Ross, in one spectacular face-off. Only one of us is going to leave this room alive, I know this now, and I hope to fuck that it’s going to be me that leaves without the aid of a body bag. “Are you sorry for killing my father?” I ask him. I want to know. I need to know.

He sneers. “You think you can trust the man you grew up with. The man who you would bet everything on. Your best friend in the goddamn world. And then he goes and fucks you over. Steals your woman. Steals your money. Steals your son.” His hand shakes as he holds his chest, and he makes a choking noise deep in his throat as he glances at Jase. Blood. Dornan’s drowning slowly in his own blood, judging by the way he’s coughing it up and the neat bullet hole in his shirt that’s now soaking red. I might not even have to kill him. He might just lie down and die. But I know Dornan Ross. He is not a man who would ever just lie down and die.

A sob rises in my throat, and I feel tears in my eyes. I have to know. If he regrets it. “How many hours do you think it took?” I ask, tears blurring my vision until I blink them away. “Five? Eight? How many hours did you make them rape me, over and over and over?” “The tape cuts off at three hours,” he rasps. “How do you know?” I whisper. “Been watching it lately?” He flinches. “Maybe.” “You killed your own grandchild, Dornan,” I say sadly. “Are you sorry for that?” He doesn’t answer, his nostrils flaring as he breathes heavily.

“Are you sorry,” I whisper, “for what you did to me?” They say a man is never more honest than in his hour of death, and now I see that this is true. Dornan’s eyes are red and glassy, and suddenly, he doesn’t look like the evil psychopath who killed my father and destroyed my life. The monster who inexplicably caused me to lose my daughter before she’d even taken her first breath. No, for a split second in time, this creature in front of me is a broken man, a dying man, a man who is burdened down with the weight of his own terrible existence. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I am.” That acknowledgement, that regret, is something I thought I would never hear. I

thought hearing it would make me feel like a weight was lifted from my shoulder somehow. Like a vindication. You were innocent, and I was wrong. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. It just makes me feel so fucking sad that any of this ever happened. “Then why?” I whisper. “Why did you do that?” He’s struggling now. I can almost see the life leaving him, the way his skin has turned the color of ash, gray and sickly. He coughs again, more blood spat on the floor beside him. I watch him in horror as I realize that this might be it. We could both die here, on the dirty ground, and it will all have been for nothing. What is the use in him dying if I

don’t get to live to see a life without the ever-present reality of Dornan Ross forever lurking in the shadows? “Dornan,” I say, and he looks at me. Really looks at me. “You were his entire universe,” Dornan says, his words rattling in my chest. “You were everything to him. And Mariana, she was everything to me. She was the one thing in this world that I knew I could count on, and it was all a lie.” He laughs bitterly, maybe at the irony, shaking his head. “He took the one single thing in this world that I cared about, and he destroyed it.” “And so you destroyed me,” I murmur. He coughs forcefully, a gurgling

sound in his chest. As he leans over to spit up fresh blood, I make my move, sliding my hand in front of where Elliot’s face lies, wrapping my hand around the butt of his gun. Jesus, I hope you still have bullets in this, I think to myself. “How does it feel to die?” I ask him. I want to know that he suffers. I want to know that he is afraid of death. “To know that nobody will mourn you. Nobody will miss you. There will only be relief when you are gone.” He chuckles, the act sending him into a coughing fit that sprays more blood from his mouth and onto his already blood-soaked shirt. “This?” he says. “This isn’t death. This is a paper cut,

baby girl.” But his words are hollow, and I can tell he doesn’t mean them. False bravado. I think he knows he’s going to die. We look at each other for a very long time, my hands clasped around the butt of Elliot’s gun. Finally. I pull it out without breaking our stare-off, aiming it at Dornan’s face with one hand while I desperately try to stem the flow of blood from my stomach with the other. “I loved you once,” I say softly. “You were like a father to me. I would have done anything for you.” He coughs again. “Ditto, baby girl.” I’m crying. Why am I crying? Why do I care? “You killed my daughter,” I say, my

voice wavering. He gnashes his teeth, his dark eyes blazing. “You.Killed.My.Sons.,” he grinds out. “They deserved it,” I whisper. “How does it feel, knowing they died because of something you made them do to me?” He doesn’t respond. Perhaps he’s never thought of it like that before. Either way, it’s time. “You’re going to die now, Dornan.” I’m stalling. Why am I stalling? The feeling of Elliot’s blood on my fingers, thick and syrupy, jolts me back to the present. “We all die,” Dornan says, speaking with difficulty. I see movement in the corner of my

eye and follow it. My heart sinks as I see Tommy standing in the doorway, his gun drawn, wearing a DEA bulletproof vest. He looks at the gun in my hand, and follows its aim to Dornan, who can barely hold his gun, he’s so completely fucked. Dornan smirks, coughing. “Well, look what the fuckin’ cat dragged in. My rat.” Tommy looks from Dornan to me. He’s going to jail for the rest of his life, I hear in my head, and I beg Tommy silently. Just go, just go. He stares at me for a long moment, something passing between us. “You got about fifteen seconds. Make it count,” he hisses under his breath. “Clear!” he yells, closing the door

and leaving us to finish what we started. Thank Christ for small favors. He’ll probably lose his job for that stunt, but I can’t worry about that now. I’ve got a mission to complete. I know I’m almost out of time at this point, that Tommy or other agents could reappear at any time and save Dornan’s sorry ass, but I can’t shoot him yet. I’m not finished. I lower the gun momentarily. “You killed Dad because Mariana fell in love with him. Weren’t you the one who told me when I was a little girl, if you love something, set it free? You didn’t have to do that to me. You didn’t have to kill them. You could’ve been a good man, Dornan, if you’d just let them leave.”

Something flashes in his eyes, and he leans forward, opening his mouth as if he’s about to say something. I don’t give him the chance. I pull the trigger, the gun blast deafening, the kick reverberating painfully up my arm. I might be bleeding and on the verge of passing out, but my aim is true — right between the eyes. Dornan slumps back against the wall, blood streaming from his forehead just above his nose. He slowly sags to the side, until he’s lying on the floor, his dark brown eyes still frozen open. I can’t move for a second, still looking at his eyes. I wish he’d closed them. I wonder if he’s still dying in there, if he can still see me for a few

seconds as his heart and brain fade away to nothing. I don’t want to take any chances. I aim again, at his chest this time, and fire off four more rounds, pulling the trigger until I’ve emptied the clip into him. Six and a half years after he betrayed me so viciously, we’ve come full circle. Dornan Ross is dead. But I don’t feel relieved, or happy. I feel … nothing.

“Elliot,” I whisper. He’s cold to the touch, and so pale he looks like a translucent version of himself, superimposed over a background of bright red blood and a dead man who caused us all of this in the first place. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose Elliot, not after we’ve finally destroyed Dornan and the last of his deadly legacy. “Elliot,” I say softly, tears pricking at my eyes. One hand on my stab wound, I use the other to shake him. He won’t respond. I crawl over to Jase, horrified

when I see the way he’s bleeding from his chest. I need to stop the bleeding. I take my CIA jacket off, wincing at the shooting pain in my side that results from my movement, and press it to Jase’s chest, both hands weighing down on the place where Dornan’s bullet ripped into him. He’s so pale, and I don’t think he’s breathing. “Jase!” I scream. The door bursts open, DEA agents and a pair of paramedics with a stretcher streaming in. Tommy’s looking sheepish as some guy in a suit, I presume his boss, glares at him. “I thought you said this room was clear?” The paramedics move at lightning speed, transferring Elliot onto the

stretcher and wheeling him away. I need to go with him. But I need to stay with Jase. I’m so fucking torn right now, I don’t know what I’m doing. And Dornan, fucking Dornan, the source of all this misery, is mocking me from his spot on the ground. He’s dead, but I don’t feel any better off. I just feel cold, and dizzy, and like I need to cry. “He shot him,” I say to Tommy, who bends down beside me. “Shit,” he says when he sees the blood on Jase. “We need another paramedic in here!” he calls out the door. “We have to save him,” I say. “We have to fucking do something!” Tommy’s face falls, and that makes me really fucking angry.

“Tommy!” I yell. “Help me!” “This is bad,” Tommy says, horrified as he presses his fingers against Jase’s throat, searching for a pulse. Another male paramedic enters the room with a stretcher and Tommy motions him over. They snap into action, hauling Jase onto the narrow stretcher. Another agent helps the paramedic as they wheel him away. Too fast. “I have to go with him!” I protest, trying to stand. The paramedic pushing Jase away glances down at my shirt. “We need another stretcher in here,” he says into the small radio attached to his shoulder. “Priority.” “I can walk,” I protest, taking one step before my knees buckle. Tommy

catches my arm, steadying me. “Let them help you,” he says. “I’ll make sure you ride with Jase, okay?” “Thanks,” I mutter. As the third stretcher is brought in for me, I take one last look at Dornan, just to make sure. Yep. Dead. A small ache of relief throbs inside my chest. Outside, it’s unbearable. I’d almost convinced myself it was night in the dark confines of the underground tunnels, so being stretchered back out into daylight sucks. I sit up as soon as we’re above surface, much to the annoyance of the paramedic. Sure enough, I get to ride with Jase. For a moment, I feel conflicted, my heart

demanding that Elliot not be alone, either. But then I see Amy and Kayla in his ambulance as the doors are shut, and I feel stark relief. He’s got his girls. He’s not alone. I insist on sitting up in the ambulance while the paramedics treat Jase. Luis sits beside me, holding my hand the entire time. We don’t talk. There’s nothing left to say, after he tells me Agent Dunn is alive and her daughter is safe. What else could he say that would make me feel better? I’m watching the man I love die before my eyes. The paramedics want me to lie down so they can treat me, but I push them away. His heart stops beating twice on the way there. I watch on in shock, not willing to

entertain the possibility that I might lose the man I love, the man I’ve only just managed to find my way back to after all these years apart. He can’t die. I won’t survive without him.

Elliot opens his eyes and groans. “Don’t try to move,” I say, placing a hand on his chest. “You were shot.” He winces. “Am I dead? Is this heaven?” I laugh, despite the seriousness of the situation. I’m running on no sleep and I’m starting to go slightly mad, I think. “If you were dead, and I was here, you’d call that hell,” I reply. He jolts suddenly. “Kayla!” he says, trying to sit up. Which is really stupid when you’ve got a big ol’ bullet hole in the middle of your stomach.

“They’re fine, Kayla and Amy are both perfectly fine,” I reply, pressing him back down. He reluctantly drops his head back into his pillow. “Where are they?” he asks. “Kayla fell asleep on Amy’s lap, so she decided to try and get some sleep as well. The nurses let them take one of the beds in the staff lounge. They’re fine, El. Kayla’s upset about her daddy being sick, but she’s fine. Amy’s a little beaten up, a couple bruises, but she’s okay.” The relief on Elliot’s face makes me relieved. He’s awake. He’s alive. One up, one to go. Now I just need Jase to get through the surgery and wake up and never, ever leave my sight again. “Jase?”

He must see my face fall. “Julz,” he says, reaching a hand out. “He’s in surgery,” I say thickly. “He got shot. Bullet nicked his heart.” “Fuck,” Elliot says. “Dornan shot him, too?” I nod. And then, much to my horror, I burst into tears. “Oh, Julz,” Elliot says, pulling my face under his chin and stroking my hair. “He’s gonna make it. He is. And you’re finally going to have your life together.” His remark stabs deep; we’re finally going to have our life together. “El—” I say. “I love you, Julz,” Elliot says, and I have to wonder if it’s him talking or the morphine they’re pumping into him for

the pain. “I always have. But you two belong together. All those years, I hated him, but he’s the best thing for you. He just looks at you like you’re the most precious thing in the entire world, and you deserve that.” I smile through my tears. “Thanks, El,” I say. His smile fades. “And Dornan?” he asks somberly. I nod. “Dead.” “Like dead dead?” “Like, extremely fucking dead, bullet in the head and the rest of the clip in his chest, dead,” I reply. He smiles dreamily. “Thank you.” “How’d you know it was me?” I ask. Elliot raises his eyebrows. “Oh,

come on,” he says. “You gotta have some serious hate for someone to shoot a whole clip into them.” I smile sadly, turning when I hear my name. It’s Luis. “He’s in recovery,” Luis says, his expression unreadable. I rush to Jase, running through a maze of hallways. My side hurts, but I don’t care. I have to see him. He’s been taken to a different floor to Elliot, in the ICU. When I reach him, I gasp. He’s unrecognizable, tubes and wires all over his bare chest. They’re at complete odds with the tattoos adorning his skin. I reach out a hand tentatively, resting it on his arm. His chest is covered in bandages

that are already turning red, his blood seeping up from his skin and soaking the gauze. I sit in the chair beside him, leaning over the bed and resting my head on his shoulder. The only noise in here is the steady hiss of the machine breathing for him, and the constant, slow beep of his heart on the monitor. His skin is cold, and I wish I could cover him with a blanket and wrap my arms around him. I cling to him, crying into his shoulder, one thought going over and over in my mind. Wake up. Wake up. Please, wake up. It takes two days, but eventually, Jase hears my prayers. He wakes up.

He lives. And finally, I start to feel something again. ONE MONTH LATER “You gonna watch it?” Tommy asks. I shake my head. “Nope.” I take the tape Tommy found in Dornan’s safe and drop it on top of his grave, crushing it beneath my boot. It cracks in several places, exposing the fragile ribbon of black tape that is imprinted with things so horrific, I cannot bear to look in case I see a captured fragment of that afternoon. The afternoon that Dornan Ross and his sons thought they destroyed me. But they didn’t destroy me. I’m here, standing on top of the place where

Dornan is buried, and they’re all dead, and I can finally get on with my life. I crouch down and wriggle my finger into the cracked casing, getting a hold on the ribbon of tape inside and pulling. Reams fall out in haphazard loops, and my stomach lurches nervously. This is it. My final moment, my act of retribution coming to an end. And I’m so, so ready. I reach my hand out as Jase hands me a box of matches. I watch, transfixed, as he douses his father’s grave in petrol before tossing the jerry can beside it. I strike a match; it glows bright in the darkness of night, a tiny flame that I toss onto the petrol-soaked tape. It catches instantly, roaring to life as the flames

devour everything beneath it. SIX MONTHS LATER I brush the snow from my daughter’s gravestone, marveling at the weather as I thread a fresh bunch of flowers into the vase attached to her headstone. It’s been weeks of sub-freezing temperatures, and my body isn’t used to the bitter Colorado cold. I can feel eyes watching me. They’ve been here for a while, observing me, but I’m not alarmed. I carry a gun with me wherever I go. If anyone were to try something, I’m fully prepared to do what I have to. Beside our daughter’s grave, Jase’s mother’s grave needs new flowers as well. I take the old ones out, replacing

them with fresh-cut flowers from the market. This week I’ve gone with yellow tulips. They were expensive, but I don’t care. I turn and see my secret admirer duck behind a tree. Emboldened, I stand, making my way right over to the person who thinks I’m too ignorant to notice they’ve been following me all morning. I round the corner, shocking my follower. “Agent Dunn,” I say, smiling warmly. “How are you?” She looks around. “I — uh …” “You’ve been following me all morning,” I say. “Was there something you were looking for? If you’re here to kill me, you should probably be more

discreet about being here in the first place.” “I’m not here to kill you,” she replies, shocked. “Good,” I say. “That must mean you’re here for answers. Answers, I can give you.” At home — our home, the place Jase’s mother raised him — I make a pot of tea for Agent Dunn, leaving her to add her sugar and milk as I excuse myself for a moment. I go to the bedroom and open the safe, pulling from it a box of horrors so tragic, I can hardly bear to keep them instead of burn them. But I was waiting for this exact moment with her, and so I have held onto them, stark remnants of my past.

I take my box of horrors to the kitchen and place it down between us, noticing she hasn’t touched her tea. I take the tea from her and sip it myself. “It’s not poisoned,” I say to her. “Happy?” She nods dubiously. “I’m not really thirsty.” I take each photograph out gently and place it in front of her. One, two, three. A fifteen-year-old girl with a face so swollen, she’s unrecognizable. Her blood loss so severe, her skin is practically translucent. The whites of her eyes solid red, her arm dislocated and hanging from its socket. Fresh bruises swelling and bursting in a sick oil painting of horror and death. One eye swollen shut. And when I get further

down the pile, to the close-up photos they took for the rape kit, I watch as Agent Dunn’s hands begin to shake. “Seven men,” I say softly, arranging the photos neatly, just as she would. Just as she did. “Seven men against one little girl. Seven grown men who nearly killed that girl as payback because her father loved the wrong woman. Because he wanted a better life for his daughter. Seven men who took turns holding her down until she was pretty much dead.” She coughs awkwardly, pushing the photos away and holding a hand to her mouth. “Now, do you understand?” I ask her quietly, calmly. She nods, her eyes glossy and wet.

“I don’t need your tears,” I say blankly, “or your pity.” She nods. “What do you need?” she asks, her voice trembling. I smile sadly. “I need you to get in your car, drive away, and forget any of this ever happened.” Agent Dunn doesn’t answer, but her eyes are filled with tears. “The Cartel are after you,” she says softly. “I don’t know if Tommy already told you, but they’re closing in, Juliette. Killing the Gypsy Brothers started something. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them off the scent.” “You’re working with Tommy?” I ask. “A double agent? No, wait, you’re

with the Cartel as well. A triple agent.” I raise my eyebrows. “You’re a busy lady.” She nods. “I took a deal with the DEA after what went down in Furnace Creek. I had to send my daughter away in case the Cartel finds out I’m doublecrossing them.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” I reply. She shakes her head. “I don’t need your pity, either.” I look at her for a long moment. Her eyes are tired, her hair lank. She looks awful. The lies of her existence must be weighing heavily on her. “You took a risk coming here to let me know,” I say finally. “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it,” she replies. “Just

watch your back. They’re going to find you sooner, not later.” Afterwards, she gets into her car, and she drives away. I watch from the large bay window in the living room to make sure she actually goes. I watch the car fade into the road beyond, until it’s like watching a matchbox car being pushed around on rough carpet, and then she’s gone. I imagine her driving faster than the limit, gripped by a horror that I have only just begun to shed since Dornan died. I imagine her going back to her life, back to her job. I know the photographs I just showed her will haunt her for the rest of her life. More importantly: I know I will never see her again.

After I am sure she’s gone, I take the pile of photographs outside, stopping in the garage for lighter fluid. I find an old, empty paint tin and shove the photos in, making sure they’re far down enough to be sheltered from the freezing wind that’s sweeping across Colorado. I place the tin on the portable barbecue on the deck, fishing a box of matches out of my pocket. I squirt the lighter fluid on the photos, making sure they’re coated, and then I strike a match. I watch silently as the lit match drops into the tin, immediately catching fire. It doesn’t take long before the photographs are completely consumed by fire. Once the photographs are reduced to ash, I find Jase outside, on the lake. At

this time of year, it’s frozen solid, but that doesn’t stop Jase from sitting out on the small wooden pier and watching the water not move. I know he used to spend a lot of time out here with his mom, and being here brings him great peace and comfort. It’s stunning, this place. It feels ... like a home. It’s so cold here, especially at this time of year. Colorado is like a bitch with bipolar, throwing out random days of snow, punctured with days on either side of sunshine and flip-flop weather. “Elliot called,” he says, looking adorable in his button-down coat and knitted hat as he opens his arms. He suits the winter. He definitely doesn’t look like a biker anymore. His tattoos are the

only things that would hint at the life he’s come from, and luckily, here, he can cover up the worst ones. “What’d he say?” Jase shrugs. “Asked me if I’d help him fix his piece of shit car.” “It’s not a piece of shit,” I protest. “It’s an American classic.” He looks at me, amused. “It doesn’t have seatbelts, babe. He has a kid. How’s he supposed to drive her to school?” I shrug. “I guess Amy’s got a regular car.” He snorts. “How did Agent Dunn go?” he asks. “She says the Cartel’s looking for us. That they’re going to find us,” I say

calmly, looking out across the frozen water. I’m not afraid. After what we’ve been through, we can face anything. I know this now. Jase nods. “We knew that would happen eventually. What else did she do?” “She got what she needed, and she went,” I say, shrugging as I step into his embrace, pressing the side of my face to his chest in search of more warmth. My cheeks are so cold I can barely feel them. “I’m surprised you didn’t shoot her on sight,” Jase says, smiling when he sees me pulling a face. “I am not that bad,” I protest, pulling back to give him a stern look. “Besides,

I’ve been expecting her to turn up here since we arrived.” “You still sleep with a gun under your pillow,” Jase teases, his arms wrapped around me. “You are that bad.” I smile, melting back into his chest. I love this man. I love him more than anything else in the entire universe. “Yeah,” I answer. “But these days I keep the safety on.” I feel him laugh softly into my neck. It feels positively sublime. While he’s pressing his lips to my neck, I wonder what’s going to happen to us next. We’ll probably have to leave. Get new names. Shift our funds. It’s funny, I thought this fight was over when I killed Dornan Ross.

But I was wrong. This fight? It’s only just begun. But right now, I don’t care. Everything I have done, every life I have taken, every drop of blood I have spilled. It was all for this moment right here. We are broken, the two of us. He builds me back up, piece by piece. I will never be whole again. But I am okay. I am happy. I am loved.

she destroyed herself. too many little thoughts. she fell apart. too many little pieces. she wrote herself. too many little words. she lost herself. too many little places. she fell in love. too many little feelings. she discovered herself. she believed. too many little moments.

and in the end, she was home. - RM Drake, Beautiful Chaos

Firstly, a note about One Love and the way I left Jase and Julz. One year. 230,000 words, and Juliette’s story – and her quest for vengeance against Dornan Ross and his sons – is complete. When I was writing the ending, some of my beta readers were upset with the brief scene Jase and Julz share at the end. They wanted more. They wanted to

see the new life Jason and Juliette have now that Dornan is gone. And here’s the thing. This story wasn’t a love story. This was a story about love, yes, but it wasn’t a love story. It was a story about vengeance, about redemption, about retribution. That story was the battle between Juliette and Dornan. Their story is done. Jase and Julz? Their story is not done. In fact, it’s only just beginning. I know, some of you wanted this to end differently. For Juliette and Jase to get married, to have a baby, to live happily ever after. But in their world there is no real fairytale ending. They’re cut off one of Medusa’s heads by killing Dornan and his sons, but the threat of the rest of

the Gypsy Brothers, and the Cartel, is still very real. This wasn’t a story that could be wrapped up neatly with a pretty bow. This story is ugly, and violent, and dark. But from that comes the good news. Juliette and Jase are getting their own book. Yes, as I struggled and cried writing the ending scenes, I fought a battle within myself. To end them here? Impossible. To double the length of One Love and show you what happens next? That felt like a cop-out, because the natural conclusion for this series is and always has been Dornan’s death. Juliette has done what she set out to do. She’s killed the men who wronged her so brutally six years ago.

Here’s why I didn’t just give Juliete and Jase a happy ever after: Because they’re not ready for that. They love each other, but they don’t know each other. They’re lovers and strangers, separated by Dornan’s devastating act, brought back together by Juliette’s thirst for vengeance, and now they need time to get to know each other again. To just exist together in a world that isn’t constantly overshadowed by Dornan’s presence. I am so excited to be able to share the rest of their story with you in 2015, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Secondly, a note of thanks to YOU. I want to thank each and every one of

you who picked up Seven Sons and gave an unknown author a chance. You are the reason I write this. You have made my dreams come true. When I started writing Seven Sons, I could never have seen what would happen. You all embraced Juliette, Jase, Elliot and even Dornan, read their stories and demanded more, and I can only hope that I have given you a satisfactory ending. It’s not a cliffhanger, and that scares the crap out of me. Cliffhangers mean there’s more to come. In this case, I can tell you you’ll definitely see these characters again, but Juliette’s quest is complete. Her revenge has been realized, and she is finally, in her own inexplicable way, at peace. For a character who has suffered so much, I

couldn’t be happier that she finally gets to be with the man she loves. And, though I doubt I will ever get over the death of the greatest anti-hero I have ever had to pleasure of putting onto paper, I am happy (yet devastated) with the way Dornan met his end. It was fitting, it was justified, and in the end, I think even he knew there was no other way things could have gone down. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for loving these characters. Even – no, especially – the fucked-up ones.

(GYPSY BROTHERS PREQUEL TRILOGY) The first full length Gypsy Brothers novel from the smash hit author Lili St Germain. How much is a life worth? I grew up in Colombia, the daughter of a drug lord. Until one day a drug run went horribly wrong and everything came crashing down around me.

I was given away. A payment for a debt. A transaction. A slave. The Gypsy Brothers Motorcycle Club became my new owners, and I did everything I could to survive. But falling in love with the man who owned me wasn't part of the plan…

Coming January 27, 2015 PRE-ORDER HERE

PROLOGUE Of all the things in life, love is the most confusing. The most all-consuming. The reason we breathe, the light in our darkness. At sixteen, love devastated me, his perfect button nose and sweet-baby smell overwhelming as my father took him from my arms and into the night. At nineteen, love saved me, a dangerous

man with a heart that was determined to own mine. At twenty-nine love almost freed me … but in the end, love broke me. I wish I could tell you that things ended differently — but I’d be lying. I don’t know if he regrets what he did, or if he’s happy, but it doesn’t matter, really. It doesn’t change the fact that the man who loved me ended up being the same man who would destroy me.

Lili writes dark romance. Her debut serial novel, Seven Sons, was released in early 2014, with the following books in the series coming out in quick succession. Lili quit corporate life to focus on writing and is loving every minute of it. Her other loves in life include her gorgeous husband, beautiful daughter, watching Tarantino movies and drinking good wine. She loves to read almost as much as she loves to write. If you want to get an automatic email

when Lili’s next book is released, sign up here. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time. Word-of-mouth is crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review. Even if it’s only a sentence of two, it makes a huge difference and would be very much appreciated.

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