Grayson muttered something under his breath, shoving past me with a shoulder check. “You're a fucking asshole sometimes, Adams,” he told me in a low voice. “And you’re wrong.”
I swallowed hard, choking back old bitterness. “I hope I am,” I replied, raw and honest. “But in that case, where is she?”
No one had an answer to that, and I soon found myself standing there alone. Flo was gone with Tucker—we really had to kill that fucker—and Rhett had left with Grayson. The crowd was still going batshit out in the stands, screaming for an encore, but my band was gone. It was just me.
Driven by some kind of all-consuming guilt, self-hatred, and despair, I picked up my microphone and went back out onto the stage. The roadies gave me confused looks, but at my signal, they turned the lights back up.
The screams were deafening, but I ignored them all.
“This… is something new,” I admitted into my microphone, gesturing for a roadie to bring me a guitar. “It’s unfinished, but I’d like to play it for you, anyway.”
Screams encouraged me on, and I sighed heavily as I attached my microphone to the stand and centered my focus inward. I needed to purge myself of Billie Bellerose, and this was the only way I knew how. My band had started with just me, so maybe that’s how it’d end.
Eyes still closed, I strummed the guitar and let the music pour out of me.
The song had no name, but it’d been burning a hole in my mind since the first night Billie had reentered my life. So under the blinding lights of Madison Square Garden, I let it all out once more.
When I was done, the silence was so thick I wondered if the arena had magically emptied out. My cheeks were damp and my throat tight, and I didn’t stick around for the Bellerose fan reaction.
“Thanks for listening,” I said in a rough voice, then immediately exited stage left.
Behind me, the crowd wentcrazy, but my focus was all on one girl standing in the wings with tear-streaked makeup staining her face. One small girl, sobbing her heart out, her arms wrapped around herself as she looked up at me with pure regret all over her face.
“Jace,” Florence whispered, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry. I fucked up. I fucked up big time. Please forgive me.”
thirty-nine
BILLIE
Everything hurt. Everything. My pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears as another solid punch landed on my body. A sickening crack told me another rib had just broken, and I sobbed hysterically. They wanted to knowthings,and I didn’t have the answers they wanted.
The moment they realized I was useless, though, I’d be dead. My only hope for survival was to bullshit them just enough to keep myself breathing, and meanwhile… fuck, I didn’t know. I had no plan. No skills. Nothing useful. But I clung desperately to two thin threads of hope.
Grayson and Angelo.
If just one of them found me, I wassureI could be spared. I pleaded over and over to speak with Angelo, knowing these were Ricci goons who held me captive. So far, though, it was falling on deaf ears.
I lost track of time. They’d started out small, just smacking me around a bit. But as I’d dangled my fake information just out of their reach, they’d escalated. The water torture was the worst. I’d never been afraid of drowning before, but I was now. No question about it.
The one small mercy was that they were pacing themselves. Or preserving my ability to stay alive. Either way, the “questioning” only lasted a certain amount of time before I was tossed back into my cage—a literal cage that prevented me from standing or fully straightening out—and given some seriously stale bread and water.
As I lay there, curled up on my side, holding my broken body and sobbing quietly, the main door burst open with a loud bang. The goons had been keeping me in an old, closed-down night club, my cage on the dirty carpet while they played a hand of poker on the stripper stage.
“What the fuck is going on in here?” a man roared. There was something hauntingly familiar about that voice, but maybe it was pain making me imagine shit. It wouldn’t be the first time.
The goons scrambled to their feet, their poker cards scattering. “Sir, uh, we didn’t know you were in town,” one of them babbled.
“I was told you’re trying to meet with the boss,” the newcomer barked. “He doesn’t take meetings with the likes of you. That’smyjob, so why in the fuck are you bypassing the chain of command?” Why did he sound so much like…?
“Angelo, come on,” the other goon said with a greasy voice. “It’s not like that. Heaskedus to get—”
Greasy goon’s excuse was cut short with the deafening crack of a gunshot. Must not have been a kill shot, though, because a high-pitched scream filled the room a second later. Damn.
Wait.Angelo?
“Talk,” he snarled to the other goon. Fat goon, I called him. “Now.”
“Th-the girl,” fat goon babbled. “Giovanni wanted the girl. Said she had vital information.”
