HAYES
“There she is,” my brother coos, a smug smile brightening his terrible face. Kneeling at his side, I try to breathe through the pain but too much is fucked—my ribs ache, most likely fractured, my wrist was crushed under a boot, and two of my fingers on my opposite hand are broken. That on top of the reaper’s lesson? I’m in rough shape.
Roman didn’t waste time taking out his aggression on me for all my hits—my taunts over our past lifetime together. But only when I’m half conscious, broken, tied up, did he have the balls to do something about it.
No wonder he could never get to Ace.He’s a shit heir.
Peeking open one swollen eye, I watch my best friend glide through the shadows as if born from their darkness. My eyes swing to her side and my heart heaves, and I slump forward, body too weak to move.
“God dammit,” I swear, and Roman laughs.
“You brought her.” He nods appreciatively. “It’s good to see you listen to orders for once.”
Maeve stops just before the street light. In the middle of an intersection of Little Italy, we’re surrounded by heavy black chains, a fountain at my back and closed storefronts. Not even a car drives by, the hour too late, the mood too ominous.
The glint of her gun makes me smirk.
“Bruno.” She shifts, and I’m actually surprised to see both of them together. Doesn’t she know how important it is to keep Collins away from this fucker? “Seems like you hurt my second.”
“Second?” He wrinkles his nose, kicking me into the dirt. My head throbs, bile sloshing up my throat.Definitely concussed.“This is who won the games?”
“Well, after Finley defected,” her eyes glint with malice, “and Ethan died during the last trial, Hayes earned that title.”
She takes another step forward, eyes two pits of coal. They remind me of the bowels of Hell.
“Help him up.”
He waves his gun like a finger in the air. “Eh, eh. We’re not on your territory. I don’t bow for you.”
“Maybe you should.” She sneers. “Maybe you’d finally learn your place in this world: at my feet like the snake that you are.”
His smile falls, that legendary Bruno anger filling his eyes.
He hates a woman talking back to him. Add to it that it’sAce—a woman who runs a clan, with more reach and influence than him? He’s boiling up inside. I try not to laugh, but a wheeze escapes my lips.
“Don’t test me, you little cunt,” he snaps, cocking his gun. “We both know you’re surrounded. Making a move right now would end in your death.” He snorts. “Michael should have done us all a favor and taken you out before that Godawful heart attack.”
I try to pick my head up, glancing over to Collin. My viper is standing still, fingers twitching as if she’s trying to stop the urge to intervene. Knowing her? Probably.
Those eyes—uncut emeralds with a line of silver running down the middle—flash when she looks at me again, cataloguing all my injuries. She sees the blood, the bruises, and those eyes flash again with sudden rage.
Rage over me—forme. I’ve never had that before.
“And you forget,” Maeve drawls, taking another step, “whose territory this really is. Am I surrounded, or are you?”
There’s the echo of guns locking, and Roman has the brain cells to shift, gulping loudly.
He might have soldiers set around, intent to kill Maeve the minute she signs the deal, but he forgets she’s smart. She trained to be better than any man.
And she’s a psycho. Thank God she’s on our side.
Coughing, I laugh, ribs aching. “You don’t have a chance.”
He kicks me, swearing at me in Italian. “Shut your mouth!”
Maeve levels the gun on his head, quicker than a rolling storm. “Do it again.”
“Roman, you remember how trigger-happy Ace is,” Killian says from the opposite end. A winter breeze whips through us, snow flurries drifting into my gaze, and the reaper appears like a nightmare. “How’s your shoulder by the way?”
