No. Not darkness.
Asphalt. Night. The stars, barely visible against bright parking lot lights and the glow from The Den. Car lights. Flashes of bullets and screams, so many screams.
Blood.
“Fuck!” I gasp. My eyes flit from one corner of the room to the other as things slowly start to trickle in, and my reality begins to make sense. “Oh, fuck!”
My hands slide down my knees and tremble against the fabric of my tux. I do a quick inventory, finding myself dirty and scraped up to hell, but I’m not bleeding. My tux is intact for the most part, my shoes are on, and other than feeling sick, I’m not injured. Was I drugged?
It doesn’t make any sense.
I quickly pat down my body, finding my weapons and phone gone. I grit my teeth.
“Think, think, think,” I whisper.
I’m alone in a padded room. The guys and Ella aren’t here, but hopefully, they aren’t far. I have no weapons, no phone, no way to call for help. The harder I try to focus, the more my head pounds, but I shake it away, knowing every second counts.
Pushing up my sleeve, I say a silent thank you when I find my old watch still strapped to my wrist. The leather is worn, andthe glass is cracked, just like always. It’s from the sixties, has no bling or shine to it, making it unassuming. When I first got it years ago, I considered adding tech to the inner mechanics but decided against it for this very reason. If I was scanned for bugs, it would never be picked up, and hopefully, it wouldn’t be taken from me.
I knew if I was ever trapped again, I’d need this—a lifeline to the outside world. Time in the darkness to help keep me sane in the midst of insanity. I know what it’s like to lose my mind to solitude. I’ll never let it happen again.
My thumb traces the glass, wiping a blood smear from it, and I idly wonder whose it is. My eyes flutter closed for just a brief second as the memory of killing someone flashes through me. I swallow it down and look back at my watch. It’s six in the morning on November 1st. It’s only been a few hours since Ella’s party.
I lick my dry lips and run through everything that happened. My fingers spear through my hair as the visions circle through my mind on repeat, each one more clear than the last.
The file that came through just hours before the party—the proof that what I’d been suspecting for weeks was true. I have a brother.
Hunter is my brother.
I’d told the guys, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him, not yet, maybe never. And Ella…fuck. How will she react to something like this? When she realizes how interwoven our lives truly are.
I click my tongue, another memory pulsing through me.
“Come out, come out, little doll. I knew I’d find you here.”
Eric Keaton.
Their abuser, their rapist, his uncle. He came for them, for her. Came for his last moment of revenge, and then, he told me something else I’d considered but hadn’t dared speak out loud.
“I didn’t put him in your life, but you’d be surprised at the lengths people have gone to for information about the infamous Princess of the Bay.”
The Princess of the Bay.
“It doesn’t make any sense. It’s impossible,” I rasp, my voice thick. Even as I say the words, I know they aren’t true. Everything in our worlds is possible. We live amongst thieves, murderers, villains.
Wearethe villains.
“Kept you alive but broken until you turned twenty-three.”
Twenty-three.
I knew her real age. I’ve known it from the moment she fell back into my life. When she dropped to the ground in that elevator, and had a panic attack that shattered my fucking heart. I didn’t even realize who she was, but it didn’t matter. She was so small, so broken, sosad, and she needed my help.
Then, she looked up at me, and I knew, I fucking knew.
Ella.
Mi Cielo.
