Pain means I’m still alive.
“I don’t think I will,” I rasp. “It was Marko, wasn’t it? You’d never pull the trigger yourself.”
Neil looks between us, confusion clear. “What is she talking about?”
“Nothing,” Christian sneers.
“Sure. Bluffing. Then you won’t mind if I tell them how you had Libby murdered at my wedding.”
“What?” Neil stares at him. Even Archer steps back.
Christian loses it. Drags me up by my hair, chunks tearing free. His grip iron-tight.
“She betrayed this family!” he roars.
“Too bad it wasn’t by your hand. Coward. Just like when Matthias had a gun to your head.”
“I am not a coward!” he bellows. “I’ll rule this city. You’ll stand at my side or rot as my fuck toy.”
“I’d rather slit my throat than have your diseased little pickle anywhere near me.” I bat my lashes. “Or maybe I will slit yours, you fucking?—”
“No, wait?—”
Well, shit.
Archer’s voice is the last thing I hear before the pain and the subsequent darkness that follows tumbles over me like waves against the shore.
three
Blyad.
I comb my fingers through my hair, an exasperated puff of air leaving my lips as I pace back and forth in the bunker’s comms room. It’s late. Almost midnight, but sleep isn’t something I bother with lately.
There’s a lot to be done, and seeing Libby’s sweet face with a bullet between her eyes whenever mine close doesn’t shake the insomnia.
It’s been two weeks already. Two weeks since Matthias and Ava’s shamble of a wedding, and I’m nowhere near getting my boss out of jail or finding out where the hell his wife is.
After Matthias’s arrest at the venue, I rushed back to the penthouse, expecting to see the fiery redhead waiting. Crying. Rampaging. Anything—but she was gone.
The penthouse empty.
A few hours later, we found her assigned SUV in a ditch with a dead driver behind the wheel. A driver who wasn’t one of ours. It had been a setup. The SUV was banged all to hell. Windowsbroken, blood sprayed across the back seat, caved-in doors. It looked like it had been in an accident.
Only, there was no sign of one.
The ground wasn’t disturbed. No debris. The only thing left behind was a set of nearly washed-out tire treads.
The vehicle had been planted. But why?
And that was only the start of my problems.
If that shit storm wasn’t bad enough, video evidence of Matthias killing Elias in cold blood surfaced from an anonymous source. It was impossible. The paperwork Ben was given during discovery listed the coroner’s estimated time of death for Elias while we were all at the compound.
Not that it matters.
The fucking douche of an FBI agent didn’t care that we had video evidence of Matthias sitting in on one of Ava’s classes, as well as more than a dozen eyewitnesses. He claimed we could have doctored the time stamp and paid off the witnesses.
Slimy fucker. We know the only doctored footage was the one he gave the judge.
