by K. V. Rose
Max might be dead.
My father won’t come for me.
There, halfway around the world, no one will.
No one will find me.
Panic snakes through my limbs and I try to push away from the car again, try to throw Cade off of me as I scream. But his hand clamps over my mouth and something sharp pinches my skin, right below my ear. And before I can draw breath again, everything goes black.
“Max.” Mamie’s voice is faint as my head jostles against the doorframe of the Maserati. My eyes are closed, and the left side of my body has gone numb from the neck down. The other half feels like it’s on pins and needles—a dim sensation reminding me that I’m alive. Just barely.
“Max,” Mamie says again, her voice hoarse, “we’re here. My car—”
The sound of my phone ringing cuts her words off. It’s in the center console, but I can’t open my eyes. It’s all I can do to keep breathing, and I’m not sure how much longer that’s going to last, either.
Mamie sucks in a breath, but the phone stops ringing.
Silence fills the car.
Then a voice. “You’ll find your brother in Mamie’s trunk.”
The door to the car opens, heat flooding in. It’s Mamie getting out, and an anguished sob escapes her mouth as I hear something that sounds strangely like an airplane, gearing for takeoff.
There’s a low laugh through the phone. “Thank you, Max,” the man says, his words full of amusement. “I really appreciate the way you took care of my niece.”
Niece? I force my eyes open, look toward Mamie and the open door. There’s a runway, beyond the parking lot. Past Mamie’s white Honda.
Oliver is in there.
On the runway, a plane is lining up to take flight. A private jet emblazoned with a gold “J” on the side of it, against the black paint.
Addison is on that plane.
With her fucking uncle.
I fumble for the door handle, but I can’t pick my head up.
The weakness is like a blanket. A heavy, oppressive blanket that I can’t shake off.
“Mamie.” My voice is hoarse. Oliver. I force myself to think of Oliver. I think of his smiling face. His hair covered with worms. Cuddling on the couch with him, watching movies in our apartment.
The one he was taken from.
Eighteen years of misery.
“The car.”
“What’s in there?” Mamie asks me, her voice full of fear, sounding far away as the plane’s engine roars louder. “What’s in the car?”
“The trunk.” My breathing is labored, but I hear Mamie’s heels as she runs toward her car and I stare at the plane.
Oliver is back.
Addison has to go.
Addison’s uncle laughs through the phone’s speaker as my head spins, white spots popping in front of my eyes as more blood pours from my wound, drenching my arm in warmth.
I watch the wheels of the plane start to turn, hear the high-pitched whine as the engines prepare for takeoff. In the corner of my eye, I see Mamie fumbling with the trunk’s latch.
Oliver.
“I’m disappointed in you, Bennett.”
My throat feels thick, every breath painful as the numbness spreads to the other side of my body, a thick fog of exhaustion rolling through my mind.
Her uncle. Her fucking uncle had my brother.
Now he has her. Again.
“I was promised she’d be a virgin.” The man laughs again, and I feel like I’m going to vomit. “The blood on her thigh though? I guess you just couldn’t help yourself. I won’t make you pay for it. She’s still tight enough.”
I turn my head, my stomach convulsing as bile works its way up my throat, then out of my mouth, all along the side of the door. I cough, nearly choking on my own sickness. Every movement sends sharp fire burning through the numbness of my arm.
Another laugh through the phone. “Goodbye, Bennett.”
The line goes dead.
I’m going to get her back.
I’m going to fucking get her back.
Mamie screams as the plane takes off.
My eyes flutter closed as I try to stay conscious. Try to hold on. I want to see him. I want to see Oliver.
But it’s her I think about. Her eyes on mine. Always so willing to look for goodness where there was none.
For once, it isn’t my own trauma that invades my mind, infecting my brain.
It isn’t my father and his men or my own blood, my own pain. Not even Oliver’s pain.
It’s hers.
Her, with her brother.
Her body burning beneath the pine-scented cleaner.
Her, trembling in front of a man who should have cared for her.
Her heart still open for someone like me.
Her words as she guessed at my nightmares. “Fuck him. He’s dead, and you survived.” She had kissed me then. “Fuck. Him.”
Mamie’s voice reaches me as I slip into oblivion, her words sending me under. “There’s a body in the trunk.” I hear her panting, know she ran to tell me. She chokes on an anguished sob, but I can’t open my eyes. I can’t face it. “There’s a body in the trunk, Max!” she screams.
Oliver.
A body.
Bodies don’t have souls. Bodies have nothing. No pain. No fear. No life.
Oliver is dead.
Oliver is dead.
I can’t hold on anymore. I can’t stay awake. I can’t save her. Him.
The last thought I have before I close my eyes is what worse I’m going to do to Addison’s uncle when I fucking find him.
Fuck. Him.
Three Days Later
“His name is Jeremiah Rain—”
“I don’t give a fuck about a punk kid trying to play God.” I know about Jeremiah fucking Rain. Being in Alexandria for three days and rubbing elbows with the grimiest criminals this city has to offer, it’s been impossible not to know about him.
Mamie clears her throat. “He’s not a kid.”
I narrow my eyes at her as she covers the speaker of her phone with her hand, waiting for me to give this fucker a green light. “How old is he?”
“I don’t know, Max. Twenty-four, twenty-five—”
“Like I said. A fucking kid.” Oliver’s age. Oliver’s age when he… I don’t let myself think about it. Not now. Later. When Cade Jameson Cole—a DEA informant with a name change, and a trafficker for the biggest cartels in Mexico—is at the mercy of my hands. Then I’ll think of Oliver.
“He said he can get you a new passport, on the flight and in the air by tonight.”
I curl my fingers around the empty glass, staring down at the table in the suite we rented, not far from Addison’s father and her brother, who is not working with the DEA.
Instead, he’s been surrounded by people far worse. The same people that got to Luca.
The same people that got to Evora.
Cade’s people.
“What does he want for it?” I ask Mamie, not meeting her gaze. Mamie should be dead, but with one arm in a sling and nerve damage in my hand that might never go away, I need someone.
I fucking hate needing someone.
Mamie turns away from me as she talks to the kid, heading toward the balcony’s sliding glass doors and staring out at the noon sun, her voice hushed.
Three days Addison has been gone.
Three days since Oliver died.
A bullet between his eyes.
Bound and gagged in the trunk of Mamie’s car, blood soaked through the interior. Cade hadn’t bothered to cover him. With anything.
And the bruises on his body…his missing tooth…
My stomach churns.
I clench my good hand into a fist, hang my head and close my eyes. I can’t think of him. I can’t do it.
I can’t fucking do it.
He’s buried now, a plot back in Athena, by the house. Why it took three days, and every one of them has been hell.
For Addison, I know, it’s
been worse.
I haven’t been able to get through to her father. I don’t know exactly what kind of psychopath I’m dealing with in Cade but considering the cartel henchmen he has outside of the London estate, considering what I know of Elliot, he’s one of the worst kinds—a powerful one.
Lost in thoughts of what I’m going to do to him, I don’t hear Mamie calling my name until she claps her hands to get my attention. I snap my gaze to her, knocking aside my glass to grab my gun.
She eyes it warily, dipping her chin and cocking a brow as she tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “We’re meeting him tonight at seven. A warehouse.” She glances at the gun in my hand. “Don’t fuck this up. He might be a kid,” she warns me, her eyes narrowed, “but he’s got a lot of sway in this city. And from what I hear, he’s as ruthless as you are.”
I just stare at her without saying a word, but I think she knows exactly what I’m thinking. I doubt it.
She smiles and adds sweetly, “He also said if you call him a ‘kid’ to his face, he’ll ‘slit your goddamn throat.’”
I hold her gaze a moment, think about slitting Cade’s throat. But that’d be too quick for him.
“Max,” Mamie says softly, and I know what’s coming.
I told her Ollie was my brother as she attended his burial, just me and her, and the men who helped me dig his grave. But I haven’t spoken to her about it. I won’t.
The only person I’ll tell is Addison.
She deserves to know why I let her suffer.
The warehouse is down a long, winding road, and the only car parked out front is a black Mercedes AMG, tinted windows making it impossible to see if anyone’s inside.
As Mamie and I get out of the Maserati and I close the passenger door behind me, I notice that despite the fact there’s only the one car, there are two men in suits standing guard outside of the warehouse door. Bright safety lights illuminate every inch of the front of the grey building. The only sound is the crickets in the surrounding woods.
My hand on my holster, I walk with Mamie toward the guarded door.
The men look past us, spines straight, posture rigid.
I’m sure they’re armed, but I don’t see any weapons, and their hands are stiff by their sides.
Coming closer, I see they look like fucking kids, too.
“Hey,” I snap, annoyed they haven’t once looked my way, “I’m here to see—”
“Me,” a voice says from behind me. “You’re here to see me.”
I turn, hand still on my gun, and I come face-to-face with Jeremiah Rain for the first time.
He’s nearly as tall as I am, dressed in a grey button down, black pants. His hands are in his pockets, and in the blinding lights of the building at my back, I can see his eyes are a pale green, reminding me of a snake.
“Max Bennett.” He says my name like he’s weighing me with it, trying to decide just how seriously he should take me.
I step closer to him, hand still on my weapon.
I hear Mamie’s heels click on the concrete as she comes to the side of both of us, likely trying to play intermediary.
“Jeremiah, yes, this is Max. We really appreciate—”
“What is it that made such an important man like yourself need such an urgent getaway?” Jeremiah ignores Mamie completely, and she takes a step back, glaring at him, all of her feigned politeness gone.
He has a strange accent. It isn’t Southern, and it isn’t exactly foreign, but there’s a lilt to his words. I might not have picked up on it if I wasn’t from here, but if I had to guess, I’d say he’s multilingual.
“You just said it,” I tell him, glancing beyond him into the dark forest, wondering where the fuck he came from. “I’m important.”
He smiles, white teeth flashing as he runs a hand over his short, dark hair before he glances at the black watch on his wrist. Dropping his hand, he sighs. “That makes two of us,” he tells me. He nods toward the warehouse at my back. “Let’s get this taken care of.”
“Do you have a night class?” I ask him as he walks past me, nodding toward his guards. I don’t follow him, but I watch him head to the door.
When he reaches it, he turns to stare at me. “A night class?” he repeats, narrowing his eyes.
I shrug. “You’re in college, right?”
Mamie is right behind me, and I see, out of the corner of my eye, she bites back a laugh.
Jeremiah doesn’t laugh. Instead, he nods toward my arm in the sling. “What happened?”
“I was shot. Twice.” Not the first time, and certainly won’t be the last, but I don’t feel like having a longer conversation than I need to with this fuck.
Jeremiah winces, but it’s exaggerated. Fake. “Pity,” he says flatly. His hand goes absentmindedly to his abdomen, but as soon as he realizes he’s doing it, he slides his hand back into his pocket.
I wonder if he was shot in the stomach.
Without another word, he turns away from me, and one of his men opens the door, an electronic beep sounding at the guard’s touch. Jeremiah steps through the doorway, then glances at me. “If you don’t want to fuck up your other arm, don’t ask any more stupid questions.”
There’s an office in the back corner of the warehouse, which is otherwise strangely empty. The cement floors are swept, the air is stagnant, and aside from the clicking of Mamie’s heels as she walks beside me to the open office door, there’s just silence.
The guards didn’t take my gun or search Mamie, which seems stupid on the kid’s part, but I don’t bother mentioning it to him.
His threat is still ringing in my ears, pissing me off.
He steps inside the office, the same cement floors throughout, a bookshelf lining the back wall, a dark wooden desk positioned in front of it. There’s a leather chair behind the desk, and nothing else.
I’m not sure what Jeremiah Rain does here, but I doubt it’s much.
He produces a key from his pocket, takes down three thick books from the shelf, sets them on the desk with a glance at me. He turns back to the shelf, uses the key to unlock a hidden compartment that the books hid, and pulls out a padded, beige mailer.
Slipping the key in his pocket, he faces me, offering the envelope.
I don’t take it.
“Everything is in there?”
His lips turn up into a cold smile. “Why don’t you check?”
“Why don’t you fucking open it and show me yourself?”
His jaw tightens as he glances up at the ceiling, but then he opens up the envelope, pulls out a dark blue, U.S. passport. He flips it open to the biodata page, turns it toward me.
It’s my face, but not my name.
Snapping it closed, he slides it into the envelope, then brings his gaze to mine. “Your flight leaves in an hour from a private jet at Alexandria International. If you’re not on the plane in forty-five minutes, you won’t get on it.”
“Who’s the pilot?”
He holds out the envelope toward me and Mamie takes it, allowing me to keep my free hand on my gun.
He notices, his eyes tracking the movement, but smartly, he says nothing. “A guy in my employ. He has business in Russia too.” He shrugs, slides his hands back into his pockets. “You’re just cargo.”
I let his comment go. “The money is already transferred,” I tell him. “Forget we ever had this conversation.” I turn to go, ready to get out his little warehouse before I shoot the smartass in the head.
“Max,” he says softly. “Are you going for a girl?”
I tense, taking a deep breath in through my nose before I turn back toward him. I don’t answer him, all the memories of my last moments with Addison, the thought of Oliver’s grown body, lifeless in my arms, making my throat tighten.
“If you are,” Jeremiah continues, “you should know it won’t be worth it. She won’t be worth it. If she left you, you should let her go.”
I don’t think. I don’t even breathe. It’s just, one second I’m starin
g at this prick’s head and the next I’m aiming a gun at it with one hand.
It’s a shame I can’t reach for my playing cards anymore.
Mamie is saying my name, and Jeremiah has taken a step back, holding up his hands, his face expressionless.
“She didn’t leave me,” I tell him softly, ignoring Mamie as I step toward the desk. I watch as Jeremiah takes another step back, but he puts his hands down, his eyes locked on mine. “I failed her.”
He cocks a brow, nodding as if in understanding. “And you think you can get her back?” He glances at the gun but keeps talking. “Because I’ve found, from personal experience, if you let her go once, she won’t let you get close enough for a second chance.”
I smile at him and see the first hint of nervousness as he swallows, his eyes darting to the gun once more. A fucking kid.
“You don’t know this girl,” I tell him. “Because this girl? She thinks monsters like you and me can be tamed. Unlike us, she has a heart. And unlike whatever fucking experience you have, she kept it together even when it should’ve shattered.”
“So, she’s a pushover?” the asshole asks.
Mamie groans from behind me.
I don’t lower the gun, but I nod toward my injured arm. “She did that. It’s possible to find a girl with a big heart and a wicked aim.” I lower the gun, but don’t put it back in the holster. Instead, I tap the barrel against his desk. “And the next time you insult my girl, I’ll fucking put a bullet through your brain.” I shrug. “If you want, I can put one through your bitch’s, too.”
Thanks goes, first of all, to you, my readers. I love you all so much, you really have no idea. I’ve connected personally with so many of you and wow, it blows my mind on a daily basis that you spend time reading the sh*t that comes into my head.
Thank you to Christina, Kandace, and Taylor as always. They are the best beta readers I could ask for. This book had many, many different forms and for some reason, they decided to spend their time on all of them. I’m so grateful for the three of you and our friendship. I LOVE YOU. Also, Taylor helped craft the badass throat slitting scene with Max and Colton so HELL YES TO THAT.