Limit

by McAdams, Molly

  I couldn’t figure out when I’d fallen to the floor or how to get up.

  Couldn’t figure out how to make my limbs move the way I needed them to.

  How to get away from Zachary’s enraged face as it dominated my field of vision.

  How to escape the drip, drip, drip, of his blood as it fell from his chin.

  “Try to stay awake, you’re going to enjoy every minute of this.”

  He gripped my jaw and shoved my head to the side so I was staring at where Garret hung in my closet.

  Staring at a nightmare.

  My vision blurred, making it look like he was swinging and coming closer all at once.

  “He never stopped wanting you. Wanting what was mine. How fucking poetic that they’ll find him here, unable to continue living without you.” Zachary trailed his nose up the side of my neck, breathing me in. “That is what happens to people who touch what belongs to me. If you think I don’t know about you letting that piece of shit fuck you, you’re wrong. I’m going to enjoy killing him.”

  Tears clouded my vision and quickly fell as he grabbed my legs and began dragging me toward the bedroom.

  I needed to turn.

  To roll over.

  To stop him from taking me wherever he was.

  But my body was so heavy and warm that all I could manage was a weak, mumbled cry of frustration as I tried to fight.

  “We had a plan. We had a goal in mind,” he growled once he had me on the bed. He dragged his hand over his face, smearing the blood there and making it look as if he were wearing a mask. “That plan was never for you to actually leave me. That plan was never to make me look like an idiot. That plan was never to have you forget your place and spread your legs like a goddamn whore.”

  He forced my legs apart and shoved his hand against the apex of my thighs, forcing the tears to come faster.

  “The minute you forgot who you belonged to was the minute all my plans changed.” With his free hand, he roughly shoved my dress up, bunching it around my hips. “I was coming for you. I was going to save you. I have given you the fucking world, and this is how you repay me?”

  My lips moved in a useless attempt to yell at him, to beg him to stop.

  His hand closed around my throat before raking down my chest. The clawed movement both hurt and, somehow, felt like nothing at all. As if it wasn’t happening to my body. “Your mouth really was only good for one thing, and it wasn’t talking.”

  Disappear, disappear . . . please, God, let me disappear.

  “I’m going to make you remember who you belong to. I’m going to make you regret ever tasting someone else’s name. Make you wish you could scream mine. Wish you could come crawling back to me like a bitch. Then, when you’re still unable to move, unable to speak, I’m going to bury you alive. When that bastard comes for you, and we both know he will, I’m going to watch him find you before I take his life.”

  A sob stuck in my throat, and I struggled to breathe around it.

  I struggled to do anything, but my body had stopped responding to me.

  My vision darkened, and my eyelids grew heavy.

  Too heavy.

  I needed to stay awake. I needed to move. I needed to fight.

  He bent and pressed his mouth to mine in a long, slow kiss, biting at my lips in a way that made me feel disgusting and unclean.

  “Let’s play a game,” he whispered, his voice distorted and distant. “How long before I accidentally kill you?”

  Conor

  He’d taken her back to their goddamn house.

  For Sutton, I knew it was a mind game.

  For us, it felt like a setup. It was too simple. We’d been searching for him, monitoring this house and other Tennessee Gentlemen houses, and there hadn’t been a sign of him.

  Yet, that was where he’d led us.

  Every step felt as if it could be the last.

  Every door opened in their house held the potential for there to be a trap on the other side.

  With each cleared room, the possibility grew even higher, and the tension and unease surrounding Maverick, Kieran, and me grew with it.

  When we reached the room that had Zachary’s subdued voice coming from it, Maverick and I waited by the doorway while Kieran swiftly and silently cleared the rest of the rooms on the floor.

  I looked to Maverick, who was on the opposite side of the doorframe from me, his head angled as he listened intently, and mouthed, Can you see her?

  He glanced through the crack in the door, shaking his head as he did. Pressing his hand to the wood, he searched every part of the crack for any sign he was about to set something off before slowly nudging the door wider.

  The dark look that passed over Maverick’s face was answer enough, but he still mouthed, She’s there.

  “I’m going to make you remember who you belong to,” Zachary seethed. “I’m going to make you regret ever tasting someone else’s name. Make you wish you could scream mine. Wish you could come crawling back to me like a bitch.”

  I rocked forward, body tense and blood boiling, but Kieran appeared beside me and stopped me.

  “Clear,” he murmured.

  Maverick checked the door once again before moving to my side. “Sutton’s on the bed, Zachary’s leaning over her.”

  Kieran released a slow breath before that cold, murderous look filled his eyes. He grabbed another blade . . . and then another, gripping three in his left hand and loosely holding one in his right. “Conor, get Sutton. Maverick, look for threats. Leave Zachary for—”

  Maverick pressed a hand against Kieran’s chest and ignored the dark warning that bled from him. “He’s mine.”

  Kieran pushed Maverick’s hand aside. “Look for threats,” he repeated slowly. “I’ll get Zachary away from Sutton.”

  He didn’t wait for confirmation or another argument before he slipped past Maverick and settled against the other side of the threshold, pressing against the door. Eyes searching and head tilted as he listened, waiting for the other shoe to drop the way we had since we’d pulled up to this house.

  When the door was open enough for Kieran to slip through, Zachary’s voice filtered into the hall. “Let’s play a game. How long before I accidentally kill you?”

  A cold, vicious smile tugged at Kieran’s mouth. “Good question.”

  Before the words finished leaving his lips, he threw a knife and then another, stalking into the room as he did. Maverick and I were on his heels, guns up as we cut in different directions.

  Zachary’s agonized roar filled the space and made my heart pound.

  I’d been waiting for this moment.

  For that sound.

  I rushed for Sutton, my stare darting between her and the pile of bodies across the room as I did.

  Each glance in her direction grew longer and longer because something wasn’t right. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t looking at me or anyone. She wasn’t doing anything.

  Kieran gripped one of the hilts sticking out of Zachary’s back and used it to force the man away from Sutton and deeper into the room.

  The sick bastard was laughing manically, as if he wasn’t about to die.

  I holstered my gun, panic swirling through my body and forming a vice around my chest when I reached the bed. There was blood smeared across Sutton’s face and neck and down her chest.

  I grabbed her wrist and curled my other hand around her cheek, turning her head toward me, and nearly thanked God aloud when her eyelids opened, slow and heavy.

  “Sutton?” Fear laced my voice when her eyes shut and her head rocked against the pillow. I gripped her wrist tighter, silently pleading with my touch alone for that pulse to stay steady. “Come on, Sutton, wake up.”

  I quickly ran my hands over her, searching for injuries, and stilled when I saw the tiny trickle of blood on the side of her neck, separate from the smearing. The puncture that it came from.

  “Fuck.”

  “You!”

  I looked up at Zachary’s
voice.

  He was staring directly at me from across the room. Face streaked with blood, making him look crazed.

  Kieran was in front of him, arms hanging loosely at his sides, knives at the ready.

  Maverick had a gun trained on him, his rifle slung behind his back.

  “I’ll fucking kill you for touching what belongs to me,” Zachary sneered. Everything was said with a hint of that laughter. Everything was coated in pain and broken up with choppy breaths.

  “What did you do to her?” I demanded, my body torn between helping Sutton and going after the man I’d fantasized about killing.

  He smiled. The action slow and pained. “She’s mine. Mine to fuck. Mine to command. Mine to decide when she’s no longer needed.”

  “The hell did you do to her?” I roared.

  Another manic laugh, this one low and taunting.

  “Every time you touched her, I was there, in the back of her mind,” he raged. “I’ll always be there. She knows her place. She knows who she belongs to.” The smile slipped from his bloodied face. “And that isn’t you.”

  He tried to charge toward the bed, but had only made it a step when a gunshot tore through the room.

  Zachary fell to the floor, yelling incoherently as he reached for his knee, where blood was rapidly staining the fabric of his pants.

  “That was for Sutton,” Maverick seethed. He stepped forward and shot him in the shoulder. “That was for my brother.”

  My body tensed as my blood roared, raging for me to take my claim in this kill but knowing Maverick needed this. Needed this retribution for Einstein, and I had to let him have it.

  Sutton was my priority.

  I could feel her racing heart.

  And I knew getting her away from this was more important than any stake I wanted to claim.

  I pulled her limp body into my arms and held her close. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  Maverick’s voice was savage when he growled, “And this is for my girl.”

  I tucked Sutton’s head into the crook of my neck and hurried for the door as shots rang out, one after another as Maverick emptied his magazine into the man. As I reached the top of the steps, I heard the echoing click of his gun, and pulled Sutton impossibly closer as I rushed down the stairs and pushed through the front doors.

  And came to a jarring stop.

  There were two men leaning against Kieran’s car.

  One holding a shotgun.

  The other loosely holding a handgun in front of him.

  If I hadn’t spent so much time researching them, I wouldn’t have known the first was Aaron Thornton and the second was Jason Woods.

  That left Garret Vaughn somewhere, still unaccounted for.

  And since I’d have to drop Sutton to reach for any of my guns, I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell at beating them to the trigger.

  “Imagine our surprise when we come looking for one man but found a different one stealing yet another one of our women,” Jason called out, all mocking contempt.

  “When the women ask for help to get away, I don’t consider that stealing,” I shot back, making sure my voice was loud enough for Kieran and Maverick to hear, but not so loud it would give me away to the men in front of me.

  “Things are done a certain way,” Jason shouted. “That isn’t for you to step in and fuck up. Vero wasn’t yours to decide what to do with.”

  “Drugging your wives to keep them with you is that certain way?” I let my gaze dart around, looking for the last member of their generation, then narrowed my glare on them when Aaron laughed. “What did Zachary give her?”

  He shrugged. “Wouldn’t know.”

  Jason smiled, slow and knowing, and glanced to Aaron. “Depends on which time you’re asking about.”

  My teeth clenched. My grip on Sutton tightened. “Let’s start with now and work back.”

  He racked the slide on his gun. “It’s just a little something to keep her obedient and submissive until she remembers her place. If she’s out cold, he might’ve given her a tad too much.”

  “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “I’m not the one who said it,” Jason said, armed hand raised. “From the gunshots we heard, I’m guessing you already killed the man you want dead. Makes our job easier since there are rules we’re supposed to follow—even if Zachary already broke them.”

  “Rules,” I stated dully when Aaron lifted the shotgun so it was aimed at me. Inside, my mind was racing, trying to figure out how fast I could grab one of my guns and shoot.

  How to lessen any of the impact on Sutton.

  “Remaining unknown, for one. Considering you’re here . . .” Jason said thoughtfully.

  “No TenGen on TenGen murders,” Aaron added. “He was too jealous for that . . . and a little too crazy, as I’m sure you noticed.”

  “The torture and fatal games tipped me off.”

  “With your little hacker friend?” Aaron laughed. “Those were my idea.”

  “Oh.” Jason drew out the word and then sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. “Looks like that made you angry. I’ll make you a deal, give us Sutton, and we’ll pretend nothing ever happened. And by nothing, I mean what Thornton said.”

  “You’ve lost your goddamn mind if you think I’m letting her go,” I ground out.

  But both men had guns aimed at Sutton and me, and I had a sinking feeling they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her just to prevent me from leaving with her.

  “No, you’re mistaking us for Larson,” Jason continued. “We’re the normal ones. But I will tell you it can very quickly get worse for you and all the friends you brought to Tennessee if you don’t hand her over. As I said, things are done a certain way, and the girl in your arms is TenGen property. Ours to deal with . . .” His mouth stretched into a wry grin. “However we see fit.”

  “Try to take her,” I said, my tone pure challenge. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

  Aaron racked the shotgun. “With pleasure.”

  A quick burst of fire shattered the morning air, coming from above me.

  I turned, shielding Sutton from the repercussions of that spray, but no return fire ever came.

  “Garret Vaughn,” I said to Kieran as he stalked out of the house. “He has to be here somewhere.”

  “Upstairs. Dead.” He continued toward the men and bent over their bodies, slitting their throats for good measure.

  When he was straightening, he paused for all of a second before turning and storming toward the house again, wrath and the promise of death pouring from him.

  “I’m gonna kill him.” I was about to ask who when he pointed straight ahead, blood-covered blade in hand, and bit out, “You shot my car.”

  “I might’ve grazed it,” Maverick admitted as he jogged outside.

  “You shot my fucking car.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” I snapped. “We need to get Sutton back to the hotel. I don’t know what Zachary gave her.”

  Kieran was murmuring threats as I hurried to the car, and he still looked as if he were contemplating how he was going to kill Maverick when he slid into the driver’s seat.

  When Maverick finally got into the car, he turned in the seat and gave me an annoyed look. “I grazed the trunk.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He nodded, his eyes quickly darting over Sutton’s still body. “That her blood or Zachary’s?”

  “After seeing his face, I’m thinking most of it is his.”

  I hated that there was any on her at all. I wanted to wash it away. I wanted to go back and make sure she’d never been alone so I could’ve prevented this from happening at all.

  But I was so fucking proud of her.

  “Think he made her drink something?”

  My head slanted negatively. “Injection. Two,” I added, thinking about the spot I’d seen on the opposite side of her neck when getting in the car. “Must have been how he got her out of the suite without us hearing anything.”

>   Something haunting flashed across his face, and I knew he was thinking about Einstein—how Zachary had drugged her over and over again before he’d ever tried to kill her. He cleared his throat and reached back to grip my shoulder. “If he liked games, then he liked patterns. He wasn’t drugging her to kill her. She’ll be okay.”

  I nodded, only because I needed it to be true, and held her closer. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I whispered softly against the crown of her head. “I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry I let him near you when I swore I never would.”

  I brought my hand up to cradle her face and passed my thumb across her full mouth.

  “You should know, Lexi is safe. She’s keeping Diggs company and waiting for you to come back, being brave for you. When you wake up, you can tell her that she’ll never have to be afraid of Zachary or his bad-man’s smile again.”

  I studied her face as unspoken words gathered on my tongue, begging to be said.

  Words I couldn’t give voice to.

  Not in that moment, maybe not ever again.

  You should know that I still love you.

  I will always love you.

  Conor

  “You’d think they like staring at their money or some shit,” Maverick muttered.

  I huffed, letting my stare drift along the walls of the Tennessee Gentlemen’s meeting room.

  The walls were covered in frames, and each frame held fifty thousand dollars’ worth of thousand dollar bills. The bills looked to be in perfect condition, as if the Tennessee Gentlemen started hoarding them long before they’d gone out of circulation.

  I’d thought Mickey’s penchant for displaying his wealth was bad when he was alive, but these assholes put him to shame.

  After making another pass around the room with my eyes alone, I focused on the wide doors, ready for what came next to begin.

  Ready to close out this goddamn case.

  By the time we’d gotten back to the resort that morning, Einstein had news for us.

  Zachary and two other men had arrived at the resort a few hours after we’d made it back from the guesthouse ambush in the early hours of the morning.

  Zachary had walked into the hotel, took an elevator up to our floor, and entered a room across the hall and two down from ours. From the way he had smiled at cameras as he went, he’d known two things: at least one of us had been badly injured—if not worse—and the person we had watching the camera feeds was too distracted to monitor the footage.