“Not my problem,” the buyer calls, hearing the tone if not the words. “You take all of it now.”
“Fuck this shit,” Jace says.
Tires squeal somewhere behind us—then a wall of blue and red bursts through the chain-link at the edge of the lot. Everything happens in a blink.
Men in uniform spill from black SUVs, guns drawn, windbreakers flashing big yellow letters: ATF.
What the fuck. Levi and I exchange glances.
“Federal agents! Drop your weapons! Hands where we can see them!”
The voice cuts through the chaos, echoed by a dozen more. Sirens wail, doors slam. It’s like the whole lot is drowning in blue light and the shriek of radios.
Jace is first to react. He drops his hands, slow and wide, palms out. “Don’t move,” he says, just loud enough for Levi and me to hear. “Don’t give them a reason.”
The buyers freeze in place, van doors half-open, crates half-lifted. The leader swears and starts to move for the cab, but an agent tackles him flat onto the gravel. Another yanks the panel van’s driver out by the collar, gun pressed to the back of his head.
I try not to flinch as the agents rush us, boots pounding the gravel, voices overlapping.
“On your knees! On your knees, now! Hands behind your head!”
I let go of the crate and raise my arms, pulse roaring in my ears. Levi is already down, stone-faced, his hands laced at the back of his head. Jace goes next, sinking to one knee, eyes forward and cold.
“Don’t shoot!” he calls out, voice steady. “We’re cooperating!”
A rough hand grabs my shoulder, shoves me down. Gravel bites through my jeans. My face goes hot with rage and shame, but I keep my mouth shut. My wrists are jerked back, cold metal cuffs snap on hard.
All around us, the buyers are getting the same. Agents bark names, someone reads rights, someone else is taking photos. The van’s contents—those six illegal crates—are lined up like evidence, every secret out in the open.
I taste blood, dirt, adrenaline. I see the gunrunners getting slammed into hoods, agents hauling off briefcases and bags, yelling codes into radios. It’s over. Whatever hope we had is done. We’re just another bust now—wrong place, wrong time, wrong people.
Someone yanks me up by the elbow, drags me through puddles that glint with blue light and rainbow oil. I look for Jace,for Levi, but we’re all in separate lines now, lost in the flood of uniforms, hands, and orders.
And above it all, as I’m marched across the lot, I can’t stop seeing her—Carrie, running away at dawn, out there somewhere, maybe safe, maybe not. Jinn on the wind, vanishing like a ghost. He set us up.
The world is sirens, cuffs, boots, and people screaming orders. I clench my jaw, heart pounding as the agents shove us toward waiting cars. Rain stings my face. This is what it feels like to lose everything in a single moment.
7
CARRIE
The room is dark when I finally come to, late evening light sliding through the blinds in fractured gold lines. My head throbs, the kind of ache that feels like punishment and warning both. Sweat clings to my skin, hair plastered to my neck.
My sheets are twisted tight around my thighs.
I blink, heart thumping, still halfway in the thick heat of the dream I just left. In it, all three of them were there—Levi, Nico, Jace—hands and mouths everywhere, their bodies pressed close, heat and hunger and all that wild, greedy wanting. My breath goes shallow just remembering it. I can still feel Levi’s grip on my hips, Nico’s mouth at my neck, Jace’s voice rough and demanding in my ear. The dream is so vivid my skin tingles where they touched me, where they filled me, where I let go and begged for more.
I press a palm to my cheek. It’s burning. My body is humming, desperate and raw. I’m so wet I could die from it. Shit.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to will it away, but the ache between my thighs only grows, needy and impatient. I’m hot all over, heart pounding like I never left the dream at all. Ofcourse. Of course I wake up like this—horny, aching, every nerve sparking for men I can’t have, shouldn’t want, but do.
Shit.
I drag myself out of bed and find a T-shirt on the floor, pull it on, step into my jeans. The headache is fading, hunger gnawing in its place, but nothing bites as hard as the regret swimming under my skin. I keep replaying how I walked out—half-dressed, hair a mess, no explanation, justgonewhile the sun was barely up.
It’s not just the guys I left behind. It’s Jinn. The way things ended between us is a bruise I keep bumping, no matter how many times I tell myself I’m over him. I remember how he used to look at me, hungry and dangerous, the way he made promises he never kept. For a second I even miss the chaos—before I remember what it cost me.
I glance around the apartment. The emptiness gnaws at me. Marcy’s things are scattered, but she isn’t here. I haven’t heard from her all day. I know where she is, even if she hasn’t bothered to text me—still at the clubhouse, wrapped up in whatever spell Jinn has always managed to cast over both of us. Maybe she thinks it’s her turn now, like if she stays close enough he’ll finally choose her for real.
