ONE SEVENTY ONE
Her voice was ragged with fury and grief, the words clawing their way up from some broken place deep inside her. Each syllable was a wound, bleeding out into the heavy, stifling air between us.
I froze.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adam looking up at me, his teary eyes wide and questioning, sensing that something terrible was happening even if he didn’t understand the words.
My stomach twisted painfully, a sick, cold thing curling inside me.
I looked back at Isabella, at the desperate, fragile hope burning in her expression, and I said, very softly, “He fucking punched Tina’s gunshot wound.”
The words hung there, heavy and awful, a blade driven straight into her heart.
Isabella’s mouth opened again, a tremor racing across her lips as if she meant to protest, to deny it, to tell me I was wrong, I had to be wrong but she had seen it with her own eyes. She had walked to the entrance of the kitchen to see it unravel with her own eyes. Not only had Gael punched Tina, who had helped me, nearly sacrificed her own life, her own safety to help me, but he had also thrown glasses her way, shattered against the kitchen floor, if I and Dominic hadn’t raced into the kitchen early this morning, maybe he would have shot her. It was still a baffle to me how she just managed to tackle Gael enough to rip the gun from his own hands to have it on hers.
But Tina is strong and if she had thrown perfectly, okay maybe not perfectly, her little chaotic life on the line to run across the city with me as a fugitive, I was willing to lay even my own life on the line for her.
But I didn’t let her.
I tightened my grip on her arm, grounding her, anchoring her, and repeated, firmer now, each word deliberate and sharp as broken glass:
“He punched her stab wound, Isabella.”
I didn’t soften it. I didn’t pretty it up for her bleeding little heart. I let it hit because anything less would’ve been a damn lie.
Isabella’s face crumpled like wet paper, the horror flickering across it so raw, so pitiful, it almost made me feel sorry for her. Almost. But then she still looked at me — with those trembling lips, with that stupid flicker of hope still clinging to the edges of her expression — and something inside me snapped clean in two.
I leaned in, my voice low and vicious enough to peel skin from bone.
“You’re not protecting him, Isabella,” I spat. “You’re protecting a coward who didn’t think twice about putting his fist into an open stab wound because of his desperation and greed.”
She flinched but I wasn’t finished. Not even close.
“If you had half the sense you pretend to have,” I went on, voice sharpening to a blade, “you’d be thanking your stars someone’s even wasting time keeping him alive after what he did. You will be thanking your stars that Tina hadn’t put that fucking bullet through his skull and he had died on the spot.”
Her mouth parted, a soft, shaky gasp escaping, like I had knocked the air clean out of her.
But I wanted it to hurt. I needed it to. Because the world we were in now? It didn't have room for blind, pathetic loyalty.
It didn’t have room for the kind of weakness she was dripping all over this house like gasoline waiting for a match.
I stepped even closer, my face inches from hers, and dropped the hammer:
“He’s family, sure but you think he deserves loyalty because you love him?”
Her hands were trembling so badly now that Adam whimpered again, a confused, scared sound.
I pointed, hard and mercilessly, at Adam cradled in her arms.
“Get this through your head: if Gael makes one stupid decision that puts my boy in harm’s way, I will fucking put the bullet through his skull myself.”
Her arms tightened around the boy, a full-body clench of terror, but I wasn't done.
I lowered my voice into something even colder. Something that could have frozen blood.
“You should remember,” I said, soft and venomous, “that if I hadn’t dragged you into his house a few years ago, you’d still be rotting on the goddamn streets. Selling yourself for scraps. Shivering under bridges while rats gnawed your fingers off.”
Isabella reeled back like I’d pistol-whipped her.
Her knees buckled so hard she stumbled a step sideways, clutching Adam like a life raft, her mouth opening and closing around a sob she was too proud to let out.
Tears flooded her eyes now, no matter how hard she fought them, fat drops clinging stubbornly to her lashes.
But I didn’t apologize.
I didn’t reach for her.
I didn’t take a single word back.
Because the truth was ugly.
And the truth was all we had left.
I watched her with a gaze as flat and pitiless as a winter sky, my heart a solid block of ice behind my ribs.
"Don't forget who gave you a roof over your head," I said, voice hard as iron. "Don't you dare forget who gave you a second chance when the world spit you out like trash."
She just stood there, trembling violently, her chin quivering, the veins in her neck standing out like cords from the effort not to fall apart in front of me. Her face crumpled, her mouth pressing into a thin, trembling line as her body shook harder, harder, barely holding itself together.
For a long, terrible moment, she just stood there, breathing in shallow, ragged gasps that sounded more like sobs she was too proud, or too stubborn, to let escape.
Then she nodded once, a jerky, broken thing, and without another word, she turned and led Adam away toward the kitchen, their bare feet ghosting across the battered floorboards.
I watched them go, my chest aching, my hands shaking at my sides.
Behind me, the muted television flickered and buzzed, the news anchor’s words a meaningless drone in a world that had already fallen apart.
Dominic hadn’t moved. He sat hunched forward on the edge of the armchair, his elbows resting on his knees, the remote dangling loosely from his fingers like a forgotten afterthought. His head was bowed low, and though I couldn’t see his face, I could feel the tension radiating off him in brutal, punishing waves.
This house was falling apart. This plan was falling apart. We were falling apart. I didn’t know if I could trust even Isabella herself.
And somehow, somehow, we were supposed to survive this.
Somehow we were supposed to stitch ourselves back together with nothing but broken pieces and bleeding hands.
The thought almost made me laugh. Almost.
Instead, I squared my shoulders, turned toward Dominic, and forced my battered heart to beat a little harder, a little stronger. We weren’t dead yet. And if we had any hope of getting out of this alive — we had to start acting like it.
Plan. We needed a fucking plan. Fast.
Dane was still in Vaughn’s filthy custody, probably half-dead or worse, and Adeline — Jesus fucking Christ — Adeline was on Vaughn’s side and I hadn’t even told Dominic that yet. She’d fucking picked her camp and it sure as hell wasn’t ours.
I ran a hand through my hair, nerves snapping, skin buzzing.
I could feel the weight of it all pressing down on me, the blood, the fear, the sheer fucking madness of it, when something flickered across the TV screen, catching the edge of my vision.
A voice. High-pitched, I barely breathed as I listened. The sound of the newscaster’s voice clawed its way into the room, slick and false and grating against the rawness inside my chest.
"Breaking News: an update on the violent fugitives currently wanted by state and federal authorities after a string of homicides and abductions across the city..."
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
