by Amelia Wilde
“Explain it to me some more.” It’s a taunt.
He looks confused, torn between his duty and his fear. “Sir—”
They’re beginning to gather now. Closing in. I can see Gerard out of the corner of my eye.
“The only reason you remain alive is because I haven’t yet reached for the knife at my belt.” I keep my tone level, like we’re having a conversation at a dinner party, but the dead silence in the foyer means they can all hear me. Good. “When I let go of your jacket, you’ll have a choice. You can stay out of my way and live, or you can put your body in my path and die. It makes no difference to me.”
A single nod.
I hold him another heartbeat because that’s all I’m willing to spare, and then I let go.
It’s not a guard who blocks the way when I turn back.
It’s Eva, looking rumpled and exhausted and scared. She hasn’t changed out of the clothes she was wearing when she woke me up. She’s stayed in soft leggings and a sweater all day. “You don’t have to do this,” she says. “Let them help you. Don’t leave when you’re like this.”
“I’ll be back soon, sister mine.”
She glances at someone behind me—Gerard, probably—and plants her feet.
I go around her. I’m already gone. I have to get the fuck out of here before I kill someone in the foyer, before I lose myself to that violence. I’ve reserved it for someone else.
In my garage I choose a nondescript SUV, black and featureless, and drive out into a winter night. Snow spirals in front of the headlights. A separate part of me, one not being consumed by blistering pain, is in control of the vehicle. The roads to Bishop’s Landing are bathed in shadows.
It hurts so fucking much.
The pain is all-consuming and irrelevant at once.
It changes nothing. I’m done waiting.
I have waited for hours with Haley in the clutches of a monster, and it’s over. I know she’s at the Constantine compound. I’ve surveilled multiple Constantine properties for years, so I have video of a car arriving in the night. They bundled her inside with her jacket over her head like I wouldn’t know what the fuck they were doing. I know she’s there.
I just need confirmation she’s still in the main house. Caroline’s house. Confirmation they didn’t take her somewhere else—a warehouse, a hospital. An unmarked grave. No. I can’t think like that or I’ll drive this vehicle through the front door.
I would do it, too. Except that Haley might get hurt.
Instead I have to sit in this SUV until I see someone leaving. It’s hell to drive. I can’t keep my back fully away from the seat but it wouldn’t matter if I could. It’s reaching around to my ribs now. The fronts of my legs. Everything hurts. There is a rumor in Bishop’s Landing that I train to stay fit for killing people, but the truth is that when the pain gets this bad, it can cause a cascade of knots and cramps in my muscles that require movement to work out.
I try to stay ahead of them.
I’m not ahead of them now.
As I roll through the maintained, lighted street adjacent to the Constantine compound, a car pulls out of a side gate. The driver lifts a hand to shield his eyes against my headlights.
It’s Rick Joseph Jr.
I suppress a brief urge to run him over with the SUV. It would win against his piece-of-shit car. But he has been useful to me in the past. He likes money, and he likes chances, and the fact that he wants to be a Constantine means he’s worked to get as much access as he can.
He can be bought. I’ve done it many times before. I’ll do it again.
It’s painful to turn away from the Constantine compound when I think Haley’s inside, but I force myself to do it. This is the only way I can be sure to get her out safely. Without a single scratch on her beautiful head. I have to trust that her family won’t hurt her. At least not right away. She’s one of them, after all.
I turn down a side street and race Rick to his apartment. It’s the kind of bullshit place up-and-comers in Bishop’s Landing scramble to rent, with fake columns on the ground floor and glass windows above. It takes nothing to get Rick’s apartment number from the doorman, who doesn’t give a fuck about his job. It takes a pathetic amount of money to buy his silence. The veneer of fanciness on this place doesn’t prevent me from forcing the lock on Rick’s door.
I have just enough time to stand in his shithole living room before he arrives.
He was at Caroline’s house.
Caroline’s focus is on fucking with me at this moment, which is why she’s taken Haley.
Rick was there because he’s working with Caroline. They’ll have a mutual interest.
I’m waiting for him when he opens the door and steps in.
I must be a nightmare, coming at him out of the dark, but I’m merciful. I take his shirt in my fist and punch him before he has time to panic and run. His head snaps to the side.
Rick’s an asshole, and an opportunist. “What the fuck—”
“What the fuck is right, Rick. What the fuck have you been doing at Caroline’s? And here’s the more important question, are you ready to die for it? Because I’d love to kill you.”
I back him up against the door in an adrenaline haze and punch him again. He was with Haley. I know he was. He was with her, and he was with her because Caroline wanted him to be there, and I could kill him. I will fucking kill him.
The second hit is too much for him, and when I release his shirt, he folds.
He gets his hands underneath him and starts to push up. I kick him before he can get to his feet, sending him back to the floor. One more kick to the rib. Every muscle tenses to deliver another one, and another, until he’s dead, but I haul myself back from the edge with both hands.
I stalk into his living room, putting distance between me and that asshole, that motherfucker. There are tricks, there are strategies, to bring myself back when it’s like this, when it’s bad like this, when my fury swallows me whole. I remember the first lines of books. Backward and forward. Random bullshit from my library. It doesn’t matter. Count the words. The pain has me in a tight grip. A crushing grip. But I have to calm the fuck down, if only slightly. Enough that I don’t actually murder Rick Joseph Jr. Because if I murder him, I can’t use him.
He groans when he hears me coming back, and does it louder when I pick him up and pin him to the door by the throat. I want to drive the tip of my knife into his artery until he bleeds but I won’t be able to stop. As it stands he’ll have a black eye and maybe a cracked rib.
“You’ve seen her. Haley Constantine. At the compound.”
Rick doesn’t struggle. “Yeah.” I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “Yeah. She’s there.” He blinks at me in the light coming from his microwave. “Why do you—why do you care?”
I drive a fist into his chest and he makes a sound like a wounded animal. My control is paper-thin. “Tell me how she is. Is she hurt? Is she afraid? Is she hungry?”
Rick’s eyes slide to the left, and my heart implodes. “She’s okay.” He grunts again, and I discover I’ve moved a hand to a kicked rib and driven my knuckles into it. Good. I add more pressure and his teeth grind together. “She’s okay, I swear to God. How could anyone not be okay in a goddamn mansion? Two-thousand-thread-count sheets, and all she can talk about is leaving. Talking shit about her family. Saying Caroline’s holding her against her will.”
The edges of my vision dim. This bastard. This son of a bitch. He talked to her, and he didn’t believe her. My pulse races faster. I’m going to crush the life out of him. Now, now, now.
“She won’t—” Rick sounds more pained by the word. “She won’t stop talking about you. Talked about you on our date. Did you hit it, man? I’m not mad about it.”
An image of Haley springs into my mind. Sweet, soft Haley, who is filthy for me, who cries for me, couldn’t keep my name out of her mouth even in Caroline’s lair. I’m out of my mind, thinking of her trapped there. I’m out of my mind. But the last thi
ng I want is for her to hear from Caroline that I’ve killed Rick. That I’m a murderer. She’ll think I’m not coming to get her.
That’s the only thing that pulls me back from the edge.
I yank him away from the door and throw him into his apartment. Rick crashes over a coffee table and crumples, clumsy and beaten. He puts one hand up to shield himself while I tower over him. “The next time Caroline invites you to her house, what are you going to do, Rick?”
He hesitates for only an instant. “Call you.”
I crouch down next to him so he can see my face. “If you touch Haley, I’ll kill you. No lock in the world can keep me out. No security firm can keep you protected. There’s nowhere you can run. I’ll find you, and I’ll gut you where you stand.”
One more kick. That’s all I allow myself. I stand up and aim for his ribs.
Rick curls into a ball, heaving, and I leave him there.
Winter air snaps into my face as I step out into the cold, already dialing. I swore I wouldn’t do this, not unless I had to, but we’re here now. We’re fucking here. The time has come.
My brother answers on the first ring. “I thought you’d never call.” There’s noise in the background. He’s at his club, or out somewhere.
“Hell must have frozen over.” I wrench open the door to the SUV and climb into the driver’s seat over the frantic protests of the pain.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Lucian says to someone nearby, and the background chatter fades out. It sounds like he’s walking fast. “What’s going on?”
“War,” I tell him, my throat tight.
“This is Caroline, isn’t it?” He swears with creative aplomb. “I can’t believe you fucking whipped her. Of course she’ll react like an injured dog. All for a goddamn business deal.”
“It was more than that.” The words emerge before I can stop them. If it weren’t for the phone, I’d have both hands over my eyes.
He’s quiet. “Leo.”
There’s so much unspoken between us. So much history and abuse in our family. I don’t have time for any of it, not with Haley hanging in the balance. “Like I said, hell has frozen over. Because I’m reaching out to you, brother mine. I need your help.”
Chapter Five
Leo
Lucian arrives after forty agonizing minutes. He must have driven a hundred all the way from the city, and by the time he throws his car in park next to the SUV, I’m standing outside in the cold. The snow is coming faster now.
I can no longer sit in the car.
My brother unfolds himself from the front seat. Lucian always looks like he came from the office, his dark hair neat, his wool overcoat flawless. What gives him away as a Morelli and not a normal businessman is the gleam of violence in his dark eyes. “What the fuck is happening, Leo? If Caroline sent someone to your place—”
“There’s another Constantine.”
He comes to stand in front of me, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. “No shit. They can’t stop breeding. There are probably hundreds by now.”
“This one’s mine, asshole. Haley’s mine. Haley—” I can’t get a fucking grip, but I have no choice. “Phillip Constantine’s daughter. I made a deal with her.”
Lucian’s face doesn’t change. “A deal.”
“Her body for thirty days in exchange for her father’s business deal.”
“Then what did you whip Caroline for?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Lucian doesn’t need to know about the revenge. “What matters is that she took Haley from my house. They have her at the compound. I have to get her out.” Old habit and new rage propel me toward him, make me bury my hands in his jacket and shove him backward, into his car. Lucian doesn’t knock my hands aside, only looks down at them, then back up at my face. “Do you have a way to get her out?”
“What happened to you?”
He’s not asking about Haley, not really. I know he’s not from his tone. He’s asking what made me like this. “We don’t have time for that discussion. Lucian—”
“Just—” He pushes my hands down and away from his jacket. “Christ. It’s cold as balls out here. Can you get into the fucking car? I’m trying to understand. So you’re pissed she reneged on the contract? There are other ways to pursue this.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the contact. This is about Haley.”
Realization dawns. “You care about her.”
It’s more than caring about her. It’s survival. She’s become the air I need to breathe. “Help me get her back or get the fuck out of here. I’m not getting in any fucking car until I have a plan.”
He arches one eyebrow. “Fine. Stand there, then, while I call Elaine.”
There’s only one Elaine I know of. “Elaine Constantine?” The fire and fury surges again. I’ve been on this breaking wheel all day, and there is no room between the low point and the high point. The peak is constant. It’s killing me. “Why the hell would you call her?”
“Because we’re together. I’m assuming by how unhinged you’re acting that you have something like what I have with Elaine. And you think Haley’s at the Constantine compound?”
He did not seem shocked enough when I announced Haley was mine. I see that now. But the thought of Lucian with a Constantine—I can’t imagine it. Mortal enemies. Both of them the children of warring families. Yet there he is, pressing a number on speed dial like he’s called it a thousand times. I’d ask him how long it’s been going on, but I don’t care. I can’t care about anything else. Lucian and Elaine. What the fuck, what the fuck. “I know she’s there.”
“Sweetheart,” he says, and I blink at him like a fool. I’ve never heard him say that to anyone without an acid tone, without it twisting into a cruel joke. “I need to get your mother out of her house for a while. Can you cause a bit of a scene?”
* * *
Half an hour later we’re at the nearest corner to the compound. The first one that’s not under their surveillance or ours. And I’m dying.
Sitting in the SUV is full-blown torture. Every muscle hurts and my back is a thousand fresh cuts. Phantom blood runs down to my waist. Soaks through my shirt. I don’t know what to call it. It’s not a hallucination. More of an echo. But it feels real.
“Just give her another couple of minutes, Leo. Jesus.”
“She could be dead in another couple of minutes.”
This is not my only fear. I can’t name the deeper one, the one at my core, to Lucian. I won’t. It’s enough to know that there are worse things than death. Caroline has done them to me.
Lucian scoffs. “Caroline’s not going to kill one of her own. Not even for being with you.”
“Is she not?” I level him with a glare. “Or are you just saying that because you don’t want her to kill Elaine? She’s more fucked up than you realize.”
The grin Lucian gives me is more bloodthirsty than any expression I’ve ever worn. I’m the Beast of Bishop’s Landing, but that reputation has drawn attention away from Lucian, who is the real psychopath of the family. It’s in his marrow. “Caroline won’t do a thing to Elaine when she finds out. She’ll attend our wedding with a smile on her face.” Lucian insisted on sitting in the SUV with me after he followed me here in his car, and now he turns in his seat and cranes his neck. “Okay. She’s leaving.”
According to him, Elaine called her mother pretending to have a meltdown. Elaine is known for being dramatic, for being wild, and it must have been convincing. There’s Caroline’s security team, going out ahead of her. And another car behind. Lucian starts a timer on his phone. When they’ve been gone for three minutes, we get out of the SUV and stroll for the gate.
I want to run. Everything in me howls to run. But this pace won’t set off any alarms for their security. We’re just two people in dark coats walking down the street.
Lucian reaches the gate first and punches in a code. The gate retracts to let us in, and we’re there.
The driveway is all that’s bet
ween me and Haley. The driveway and God knows how many locked doors. I’ll carve them open with my fucking knife if I have to.
My brother knows where to go. This, at least, is not surprising. Lucian makes it his business to get information when he needs it, and he has what we need now. He leads us to a side door with another keypad. Another code. “Elaine wanted her to bring security. She’ll have brought the men from the main house,” Lucian says to me as we pull open the door and walk in.
The smell hits me like a punch to the gut. It turns my stomach. I swallow back being sick, my head pounding. I hate the scent of Caroline’s perfume. I hate it, I fucking hate it, I need to be away from it.
But first.
I have to get to Haley.
A man in a staff uniform comes out of a door ahead of us and Lucian gets to him first, a big hand on his shoulder, twisting into the fabric of his shirt. “Hello,” says my brother. “We’re looking for a friend of ours. I could snap your neck, or you could tell me where Haley Constantine is.”
The guy breaks and runs. Lucian and I both chase him. This time, when Lucian catches him, I don’t stand back. I have the knife out before I know I’m doing it, I have it pressed to the side of his neck. The tip digs in. A bead of blood surfaces and runs down. He’s trapped, Lucian shoving, me cutting him, and it would feel so good to carve into his neck. It would feel so good to let go.
“Easy, Leo. If you slit his throat, he can’t help us,” warns Lucian, his tone light. I let up on the knife. “No more theatrics,” he says to the man. “Haley Constantine. Quickly.”
We meet one other staff member on the way to the guest wing of Caroline’s mansion. I have the first man’s collar in my fist, my knife to his throat, so Lucian’s free when the second one turns to run. My brother catches him on the shoulder, turns him around, and drives his fist into the center of his face. His nose crunches. He falls. Any more of them show up, and this is going to get complicated. The house is going to burn down with me if I don’t get to her before then.
“Here,” says the man I’m trying not to kill. “Here. Let me.”