Don’t stop.
Save me.
Don’t kill me.
Slowly, curses switched to moans and stampeding footsteps gave way to limping.
The fight could’ve lasted hours or seconds. The only thing I knew with certainty was I clung to this life—the one I didn’t want to leave—and the break in my arm cemented me firmly into being.
Finally, a stranger’s voice crescendoed over everything else. “You’ve lost, Hawk. Step away from the rope if you wish to remain alive and not meet your maker.”
That voice...I didn’t recognise it.
Shivers stole my muscles.
Cut could still kill me.
The battle was over, but my life could be, too.
I couldn’t breathe.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Disbelief and uprising perfumed the air. Boots stomped forward, the click of a bullet entering a trigger chamber the only noise in the suddenly silent ballroom.
“Let her go, Cut.”
That voice I did recognise. I would know it anywhere.
Him.
I trembled in love.
I wept in gratitude.
He’d come for me.
He’d saved me.
Jethro.
“Never. Lower your weapon, or I pull. I’ll do it, Jet. You know I will.”
Another voice I adored joined that of my lover. “You do and I’ll shoot you until you’re so full of holes even the worms won’t want you.”
My father.
“And if he shoots you, I’ll shoot you three. You’ll be fucking shredded.”
My twin.
Their voices pulsed with barbarity I’d never heard before.
Three men I never thought would be in the same room together, let alone fighting on the same side. How things had changed since that night in Milan.
