"Agreed," I growled.
As we ran for James's car, as we peeled out of the garage with sirens wailing, I made a vow in the silence of my own mind.
If Carter Wilson had hurt one hair on Daisy's head, if he had struck Anna one more time?—
There would be no arrest. No trial. No lawyers and appeals and endless machinery of justice that had already failed us once.
The billionaire was gone. The CEO was gone. The grieving widower who played by the rules was gone.
What remained was something stripped down to bone and base instinct: a father, a protector, teetering on the edge of a vengeance that would consume everything.
Starting with the monster who dared to touch his family.
16.Anna
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
My head felt like it had been split open and stuffed with cotton soaked in chemicals. The smell hit me next: sweet, cloying, artificial. It coated the back of my throat, making me gag.
Chloroform.
The word surfaced through the fog, dragging memory with it like an anchor. The man in the maintenance uniform. His face was wrong, all wrong, but I'd been too slow to react. The violent efficiency as he'd struck Martinez. The cloth. Damp and suffocating. Daisy's scream, high and piercing, as my vision tunneled to black.
Daisy.
Panic sliced through the chemical haze. I tried to move and immediately wished I hadn't. Pain immediately shot through my wrists. They were wrenchedbehind my back, something hard and unforgiving biting into skin.
Zip ties.
I was on a floor. The chill of the cold concrete seeped through my clothes, into my bones. Despite feeling gummy and resistant, I forced my eyes open, and the world swam into nauseous focus.
A single bare bulb hung somewhere high above, casting weak yellow light that barely reached the floor. A warehouse, maybe? Or a basement. The ceiling disappeared into shadow. Massive support columns rose at intervals, their concrete surfaces stained with age and rust. Old rusty pipes snaked along walls too far away to reach. The air tasted of old oil, metal, and damp brick walls.
No windows. No natural light. No way to tell if it was day or night.
And most terrifying: no sound from outside. No traffic. No voices. Just the hollow echo of my own breathing in a space too large to be anything but a tomb.
A small, muffled sound broke the silence.
Coming from somewhere behind me.
A sob.
My heart stopped. Then kicked into overdrive, hammering so hard against my ribcage I felt it’d crack open.
No. Please no. Please tell me he didn't?—
I twisted my body, ignoring the fire in my shoulders as my bound arms protested. The movementwas awkward, painful, but I didn't care. I needed to see. I needed to know.
A few feet away, pressed against one of those massive support columns like she was trying to disappear into it, was Daisy.
The relief that crashed through me was so powerful my vision grayed at the edges. Then I actuallysawher, and the relief curdled into something colder.
Her small hands were bound behind her back, those tiny hands that drew pictures and held mine and traced letters in the air. Zip-tied. Like mine. Her unicorn pajamas, the ones she'd been wearing when she went to bed safe in Jack's penthouse, were dirty and smudged with concrete dust. Her face was pale as paper, tear-streaked, her grey eyes wide with terror that made her look like a ghost of herself.
"Daisy." Her name came out broken, barely a whisper.
She flinched at the sound, small body jerking. Then recognition dawned in those terrified eyes. "Anna?" Her voice was so small, so broken, I felt it crack something inside my chest.
