by Kit Rocha
The door screeched as he pushed it open and stepped out into the alley. The air was chilly, the deep shadows dulled by the eerie gray predawn light. Jared lit his cigarette, leaned against the rough brick, and rubbed the back of his wrist over his forehead.
He had an hour, two at the most, to figure out how to fix things with Lili.
Except there wasn't any fixing it, was there? He'd thought he was doing the right thing by telling her the truth about his job, but he'd failed to make sure she understood what it meant. He'd failed, period. Everything after that was on him.
And knowing it changed nothing. It was selfish to ask her to wait at home in Sector Four while he waded through the slime in the city, and even more selfish to lock her out emotionally in a strange mirror image of the marriage she'd fled. He would never hurt her physically or purposefully, but he understood now that it didn't matter. Every terse answer, every sidestepped question, would pierce her in ways Logan Beckett could never have dreamed of.
Which left Jared shit out of options.
He took a long drag on his cigarette and froze when the back of his neck prickled. Something was different, off—
"I'm sorry." That was it, just the two words—and a hiss of air followed by a sharp pain in his neck.
Lieutenant Malhotra. Recognition swept over Jared along with an unpleasant numbness that left him slumping against the wall. His mind fuzzed, heavy, like fog sweeping out over the reservoir.
The last time the man had dragged him away from his bar, it had been to Council headquarters. His likely destination now—
Except this time, Jared was pretty fucking sure he wasn't going through the front door.
By dawn, Lili had given up any pretense of calm serenity and was waiting for Jared on the roof of the barracks building. She could see the entire compound from here, as well as the roads leading to it. The dawn was chilly but bearable as she huddled in her fur coat, one of the few possessions she'd brought with her out of Five.
The waiting, however, was agony.
Eden's walls gleamed even before the first light spilled over the mountains in the east. The electricity they consumed simply to light their city could have powered the sectors for a decade. That was what Eden did—greedily devour everything as whim struck. Power. Resources.
Lives.
The sectors were dark by comparison. Lights flared here and there—little spots of brightness where people burned whatever they could put their hands on to fight off the cold and the dark. Most had burned low by the time light crept through the streets. One block at a time, chasing the shadows back, and Lili watched it creep toward the outer edge of the compound.
One more street.
One more street, and she'd go to Dallas and Lex. One more street, and she'd admit something was wrong.
Her eyes hurt from squinting. But still she stared at the main street as if she could make Jared materialize by stubborn force of will.
Instead workers begin to appear, trudging toward the marketplace or meeting on corners. Men first, then women, then teenagers ducking between them, and it wasn't just dawn. It was day.
And Jared hadn't come home.
Numbness wrapped around her as she headed for the door. Just a thin layer over terror, but familiar and comforting. She knew how to fear and still function. A legacy of her father and husband that she found useful as she listened to her heels echo on the concrete steps. All the way down to the first floor, into the section of the building reserved for the king and queen.
She tried the office first, and her last shred of hope died when Lex opened the door fully dressed, somber, and silently stepped aside to let her in.
Lili clutched her coat around her to fight off a sudden shiver as she edged past Lex. "You've heard something."
"Gia sent a runner," she confirmed softly. "Jared was closing up the bar this morning, and he just...vanished. Staff didn't hear or see anything."
Lili turned away, but there was no comfort in the rest of the room. Only Dallas O'Kane himself, hard and tired, sitting at his desk looking like Lili was the last person he wanted to be laying eyes on right now.
Her gut knew what that look meant. Her heart needed for her gut to be wrong. "What are you going to do?"
Dallas clenched his jaw and said nothing.
Lex touched her shoulder lightly, and Lili barely felt it through the thick fur and icy numbness. "If the military police picked him up, that means Council involvement—" She broke off and cleared her throat. "It's too risky, Lili. I'm sorry."
She refused to look away from Dallas. "He's yours," she whispered roughly. "I know he is. I know what he's risking. For you."
"For all of us," Dallas corrected. "You think I don't want to go in there after him, girl? If it was just my skin, or my men, I'd risk it. But if the Council decides I crossed the line, they'll blow this whole fucking sector off the map. Jared knew that. And he made me promise."
Her lips were numb now, too. And no amount of huddling in her coat would help, because the cold was coming from inside. "What promise?"
"That I wouldn't risk all those lives for a chance to save his."
Lex pried her fingers open and pressed a glass into them. "We have to wait it out. They've picked him up for questioning before. It might be as simple as that."
Another thing he'd never told her. Her hand was oddly steady as she lifted the glass to her lips, but she could barely taste the liquor. "How long did they keep him that time?"
Dallas stared at her in silence, his gaze so intense she had the sudden queasy feeling that he could see beneath her skin. She'd never felt stripped so bare by a simple look—or felt so demandingly judged.
Whatever he saw made him rise and cross to a safe against the far wall. The keypad beeped as he typed in a lengthy code, followed by a soft click. He returned with a file stuffed with scrawled notes. Not Jared's elegant handwriting, but something tight and barely legible.
He shuffled through them, came up with a printed sheet, and held it out to Lili. "Markovic picked him up last time. Left him cooling his heels for a while before asking him a lot of interesting questions."
She took the paper and blinked until she could focus on the words. And when she did, her stomach turned over again.
It sounded like Jared. She didn't even know how—it was just a report of a conversation, but the observations were witty and pointed, the occasional deft turn of phrase both formal and wryly self-aware.
The picture it painted was an odd one, for a councilman. A man of earnest intentions, one who wanted to do good. Not just within the walls of Eden, but for everyone who stood in the city's shadow. Jared's impression hadn't been that of a man searching for a link to the O'Kanes in order to condemn, but of one hoping for a link in order to...
Something. That was the question at the end of the page. Markovic's endgame. His motives seemed pure, but what he hoped to accomplish remained a mystery. Jared had indicated a willingness to nurture that contact and deduce exactly what Markovic's plans might involve—and whether an alliance with Dallas was truly his goal.
"Markovic suspects Jared's connection to the O'Kanes," Lex said. "If he does, you can bet the others do, too. An O'Kane rushing in to save him would only confirm it."
She might be made of ice again, but the eye for nuance that Jared had helped her develop still lingered. She didn't think she was imagining the slight inflection in Lex's words, or the tightly leashed impatience in Dallas's eyes.
An O'Kane rushing in to save him would only confirm it.
"If Jared is in trouble, Markovic could get damn near any fucking thing he wants from me in exchange for stepping in." Dallas tugged the paper from her hand and returned it to the file. "You know that."
No one knew better. In exchange for her public performance of pain, Dallas had given her safety, a chance at family, and hope for a future she never could have dreamed possible. Dallas O'Kane paid his debts.
Someone needed to tell Nikolas Markovic that. Someone who knew it,
firsthand.
Someone who wasn't an O'Kane.
Dallas and Lex would never ask. If they had to ask, she wouldn't be strong enough for it. If they had to ask, she might do it out of obligation or fear or the belief that her future in Sector Four depended on her risking her life.
If they had to ask, Jared would never, ever forgive them.
That coldness inside didn't feel like her enemy anymore, and now she knew it had never been only the drugs. She could be steel when she had to be, as hard as Lex, as ruthless as Dallas. The courage to shoot a guard and walk across two sectors in the middle of the night was part of her, just like the protective fury gathering beneath her icy calm.
She'd never had a chance to save her family. She wasn't going to sit quietly in her room and wait for news that it was too late to save Jared, too.
Turning, she met Lex's eyes. "How would you get into Eden, if you had to?"
"I'd call in a favor," she answered quietly. "From someone who loves Jared as much as I do."
Gia. It had to be. Not just because Ace was an O'Kane, but because Gia was the one with the connections and the power and the money.
And the secrets.
Lili set down her glass, reached for Lex's hand, and tried to come up with the right words. Something that could convey the depth of Lili's gratitude. For the truth. For a chance. For seeing something in Lili that even Jared hadn't—someone who had the right to fight for the people she loved.
Nothing came. Words weren't enough. So she squeezed Lex's fingers and kept it simple. "Thank you."
"Save it, honey." Lex gently brushed Lili's hair back from her cheek. "You might feel differently once you get inside those walls."
"I'm not afraid of Eden," she replied.
It was the raw truth. She'd survived growing up with her father's unpredictable rages. She'd endured marriage as a child bride, and had come to maturity pouring drinks and planning meals for the people who made Eden the gilded cesspool it had become.
She wasn't the desert or the flowers. She wasn't ice or steel. She was a goddamn diamond, formed under terrible pressure, as hard and unforgiving as the rock Logan had put on her finger.
And she'd cut the fuck out of anyone who didn't get out of her way.
Chapter Nineteen
I understand what powerful men do when you cross them.
Lili's words rang in Jared's brain as another blow snapped his head to the left, and the taste of blood filled his mouth.
He flexed his hands, and the plastic zip-tie cuffs dug into his wrists. The drugs were wearing off, but the MPs hadn't waited to start the beating. Clearly, whoever had ordered it—come, Jared, don't be obtuse, you know it was Peterson—didn't care about information so much as making him bleed.
Another blow, and his nose gave a sickening crack. "Not so pretty now, are you?"
"Still prettier than you," Jared drawled, as if none of it could touch him. Hurt him.
That earned him a growl and a fist in the belly. "I can fix that."
Oh, they could smash him up good, fuck up his face in ways even Bren Donnelly would be jealous of once they were finished. The thought—combined with his lingering high—dragged a laugh out of him.
"Crazy motherfucker," the guard snarled, but fear lurked beneath the words. Fear that Jared wouldn't be cowed. Fear that only made the blows fall faster and harder, and Christ only knew how much damage they were doing that had nothing to do with his pretty face.
"Enough," snapped a familiar voice, and the beating stopped abruptly. When Jared forced his swollen eyes open, he wasn't surprised to see Ashwin standing just inside the door, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression utterly blank.
The guard who'd been hitting him looked queasy. "I was just—"
"I can see what you were doing." Ashwin's gaze slid methodically over Jared, cataloguing his injuries. "If your enthusiasm results in a delay in questioning, the counselor will hold you personally responsible."
Counselor. The word was enough to make a man's blood run cold.
The door opened, and a short woman in a white coat wheeled in a cart loaded with vials and machines. Behind her was a slender, unremarkable man in a dark uniform, vaguely similar to the ones the military police wore. But instead of rank and insignia, his bore only a small, ringed star on the collar.
He stopped in front of Jared's chair and studied him. "Can he talk?"
"I'm not sure." Ashwin's gaze drilled into Jared's, with no hint of the apology he'd uttered in the alleyway. Just even, unemotional assessment. "The guards were overzealous."
Jared seized the opportunity to mumble something unintelligible, but the counselor grabbed his chin, forced his mouth open, and frowned down at him.
Then he backhanded him across the cheek, hard enough for stars to explode behind Jared's eyelids. "Lies will get you hurt, Mr. Capello. I'm sure we'd all like to avoid that." He paused. "Do you know why you're here?"
Jared's mouth had filled with blood by now, and he spat it on the floor, perversely pleased when it splashed on the man's shoes. "Because Mr. Peterson sends his regards?"
The counselor straightened with a sigh and nodded to the woman with the cart. "May as well get set up."
She nodded, then reached for a vial and unwrapped a huge, wicked-looking syringe.
It wasn't fear thumping through Jared's veins, closing his throat a little more with every breath. It was anger, sheer rage that these motherfuckers in the city would claim civility, superiority, when they were no more righteous than the lowest sector thug. Dallas O'Kane would beat a man for information. Apparently, when push came to shove, so would the sparkling leaders in Eden. The only difference was in who would own up to it.
The man with the star on his collar began to roll up his sleeves. "You're here because you're a known associate of Declan O'Kane. You're suspected of being a member of his criminal organization, and of engaging in espionage activities within the city."
His pulse throbbed in his ears, but Jared kept his mouth shut.
"Most innocent people would defend themselves of these charges."
"Charges?" Jared asked softly. "That implies some form of legal process, doesn't it? Not a bunch of fists in a basement room and a cart full of torture devices."
The man laughed—melodic, genuinely amused—and Jared steeled himself against a wince. He did it again as the woman in the lab coat jabbed a needle into his neck.
The world swam in dizzy waves as the edges of Jared's vision went dark and then bright, brighter than the sun in the desert. He blinked, squinted, tried to recoil, but the light was in him, turning the world into some distant, drifting thing he could barely touch.
The counselor knelt in front of him. "The cart, Mr. Capello, is full of medical supplies. Things to keep you alive during our session. I am the torture device. What do you think about that?"
Jared's lips moved, as detached from the rest of him as the pulsing light that had settled behind his eyes. "I think you can fuck right off."
"Yes, good." The man smiled. "What is your occupation, Mr. Capello?"
"I'm a whore." The answer flowed from him without thought, so easily that the injection could only have been a drug to loosen his tongue. He tried to care, but all he could do was keep talking. "Was a whore, I mean. A damn good one. Ask Peterson's wife."
One of the guards snickered, and Ashwin silenced him with a sharp look.
"But you've retired." Counselor Whoever tipped Jared's head back, refocusing his gaze on his face. "And now you have your illegal establishment. Is it a front?"
"It's a bar. People drink, they have a good time." They spill their secrets. He almost said it, but bit his tongue instead. The pain helped center him. Remind him that this man, this utterly normal-looking man with the flat eyes was waiting for him to reveal the wrong fucking thing.
"Are you one of O'Kane's men?"
Whatever the hell they'd shot him up with, it made him want to speak truth, stark and bold. So he did, just in his own way. "I'm
not good enough for that."
"Did O'Kane send you here?"
Jared shook his head.
"Words, Mr. Capello."
His face was swelling, making it hard to speak. "No."
The man's lips pressed into a thin, hard line. "Does he have other agents in the city? Tell me the truth."
Real honesty was made up of a million facts and feelings, filtered through everything from morality and society to kindness and disregard. Love and hate. That made the truth a complicated thing. A tool that you could still use to lie.
Jared had been doing it for decades. He could lie the way most people breathed, lie with his voice and his eyes and his whole damn body. With his soul.
He did it now. "Dallas hasn't sent anyone into Eden."
It wasn't the answer the man with the star wanted. Jared could see it in his eyes, a tiny flash of anger, just as he straightened. He circled the chair, and the next thing Jared felt was a hard, nauseating kick to his left forearm.
Bone snapped, and unbelievable agony washed away everything else in a blinding rush. Jared gritted his teeth, gasped for air, but he was drowning, drowning in pain so inescapable it threatened to swallow the world.
He was still just trying to breathe when the man spoke, as flat and unaffected as ever. "Heal the arm so I can break it again."
Chapter Twenty
Gia was beautiful, deadly, and as viciously protective as any O'Kane.
Under different circumstances, Lili might have found herself a little dazed by the woman who lifted a phone, made a single call, and procured them an armored car with a silent driver and ID tags that got them through the gates without being stopped.
With Jared's life on the line, she was coolly approving. Gia got things done. And the short drive through Eden had made it starkly clear that if Lili couldn't strike a deal with Nikolas Markovic that secured Jared's safety, Gia would be calling in far less harmless favors from far more dangerous men.
"Only after I get you back to Dallas, sweetling." Gia held Lili's chin, her hand steady as she touched up Lili's makeup with surprising deftness, considering they were in the back of a moving car. "Jared may never speak to me again as it is. If I have to choose one person to save, I'll choose you. So don't make me choose."