“Stop,” I choke. “Don’t—”
His hand clamps onto my throat, fingers digging in, squeezing just enough to promise worse. “You’ll thank me later,” he murmurs, his voice a chilling caress. “You’ll be trained.”
The way he says it, I’m an appliance, not a person. Something animal in me, something cornered and feral, rises, teeth bared. I stop clawing at his arm. I go still. A calculated surrender. It makes him confident. Sloppy.
His jacket gapes. Inside, a shoulder holster gleams under the lantern light—black, oiled, real.
I move. Not a thought, but a reflex born from a primal need to survive. Holster, right side. Strap buckled. Safety off. The math is ugly but familiar: pain now or never. My fingers slip under the lapel, wedging between leather and cold, heavy metal. He registers it a heartbeat too late. His hand crushes tighter on my throat, stars pricking the edges of my vision, but my grip closes on cold steel.
I wrench.
He lunges. We slam into the hedge again, leaves and thorns and breath punched out of me. The gun is heavier than I expect, slick under my bleeding palm. His thumb jams into the nerve at my wrist; my fingers spasm, but I don’t let go. The muzzle yawns between us, an open, black mouth in the dark.
“Let. Go.” His voice is low and deadly, each word a separate, final command.
No, the word is a silent scream in my head.
I pull the trigger, unconcerned with aim or consequences.
The world fractures. The crack of the gunshot is a physical thing, a sound that rips through the garden and tears the night apart. For an instant, everything is absolute—the violent recoil punching up my arm, the sharp, acrid smell of smoke in my nose, the hot sting of powder against my skin.
Trent staggers. His grip on my throat loosens. He looks down at himself like he’s looking at a glitch in a suit—more confused than afraid—then he folds sideways onto the gravel, a puppet with its strings cut.
Silence drops, then slams back into the sound of alarms and distant, panicked shouting. Somewhere to my right, a radio squawks. “South hedge. Shots fired.” Feet pound. The night tilts.
My ears ring so hard I can barely hear my hitched, ragged breathing. My hand shakes violently around the gun, which now feels impossibly heavy. I drop it. It hits the stones with a final, metallic clatter, and I flinch like it’s fired again.
I’m moving before I know it. Stumbling. Running. Branches whip my arms. Gravel chews my feet. My cheek throbs in a sickening rhythm with my pulse. I can’t feel the ring anymore; my fingers are swollen and slick with blood. The diamond is just another shard of glass. I’ll cut it off when I can cut clean.
The hedges break into a service lane. A gate looms at the end, chained but not locked all the way through. I jam my hands into the rusted links and haul. Metal screams in protest before the gap opens like a mouth. I shove through and tear the skin of my back on a protruding wire. The pain is a flare that keeps me conscious, a reminder that I am alive.
The night air hits me fully—cooler, rawer, honest. The estate and its glittering horrors fall away behind me.
I run.
Every step on the broken pavement is a verdict: live, live, live. The alarms fade to a distant, broken siren. My lungs burn. My vision swims, clears, and swims again. Somewhere under the panic, a compass in my soul needles north, fixed on one word: Outsiders.
Headlights shine across the road far behind me. I cut through the trees. My dress snags and tears until what clings to me is only what I need to keep moving.
When I spill out onto another road—vacant, cracked at the edges—I aim myself toward town. Toward the bar with the bad floor and the loud music. Toward leather, laughter, and a code that has always felt more like truth than the law my father wears like a suit.
I don’t look back.
Under streetlights that buzz like tired bees, I run barefoot. Blood stripes my ankles. The ring glints, stupid and bright.
I am shaking. Filthy. I am breathing.
And I am heading for the only place that has ever felt like a door that opens instead of a lock that clicks.
Chapter 15
East
Theguninmyhands is cool and steady. I wish I felt the same.
I field strip the Glock with practiced, mechanical movements, my fingers finding the familiar grooves and pins without needing to see. It’s a rhythm. A meditation. Something to keep my hands busy so they don’t punch a hole through the nearest wall. The sharp, clean scent of gun oil fills the air in the back room of the clubhouse, but it does nothing to cover the metallic taste of helpless rage in my mouth.
It’s been days since the country club. Days since I’ve heard from her. Her father has her on lockdown, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Frankie’s been pacing the bar all night, a low, anxious thrum under her skin that’s setting my own teeth on edge. She cornered me an hour ago, her eyes dark. “Something's wrong, East. I can't feel her. It's like she's… blank.” Her 'witchy' bullshit is never wrong, and the fact that Darla’s phone has been going straight to voicemail for two days has been a slow, grinding poison in my gut. While the club hums withthe easy noise of a weekend night, I’m back here, counting the seconds, imagining her trapped in that house, her face a perfect porcelain mask.
