“I shouldn’t burden you with this when you’re lying in a hospital bed after getting shot.”
“I’m not going to die, and my injuries aren’t serious. No more secrets mean no more secrets, Bree, so tell me.”
“My guy found something on Hera and Ares. Chad was right all along.”
Pain dances along my skull, and it’s an effort to remain invested in this conversation when all I want to do is sleep. “In what way?”
“His dad was set up, Ash, and it was Hera and Ares who did it. They planted evidence of sex trafficking on him. Jasper Baldwin was sent down on bogus charges. That man died in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, we are on our way in a souped-up black camper van that’s like a luxury ambulance with ample guest space. A security vehicle travels behind us with four Luminary peeps wearing guns. I feel like a bona fide VIP. Mom and Dad are talking in hushed tones at the back of the vehicle while I’m drifting in and out of sleep as the pain meds start to take effect. A drip is attached to my hand, administering saline and morphine, and a nurse monitors the dosage and my vitals while Bree dozes and Jase just stares at me when he thinks I’m not noticing.
“You’re like Creepy McCreep,” I mumble, stifling a yawn as I squint at him through narrowed eyes. “Stop staring at me.”
“I’ve missed looking at your beautiful face.”
Touching the large white bandage now wrapped around my head, I shoot him a wry smile. “Pretty sure beautiful is the last thing I look right now.”
“Pretty sure that’s an impossibility.” He dazzles me with a smile, and I return it until I remember.
“Why are you here, Jase? This doesn’t change anything.”
He glances over his shoulder, ensuring Bree is asleep and my parents are distracted in heated conversation. He leans in and whispers in my ear. “I haven’t slept with anyone else. It was a setup to make you think I was having sex with Meredith, but I wasn’t. She’s actually one of us. She owed me a favor. I made sure Julia overheard my plans for the night, knowing she couldn’t resist rubbing your nose in it. The other women you saw me disappearing with at parties were all for show. I didn’t touch them. I swear.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They forced me to toe the line, baby. They made me break things off with you.” Pain is etched across his face. “They hurt Nix and Creed as a warning, and they have implemented a new rule for children conceived by Luminaries outside of arranged marriage. They are establishing a new orphanage. They would have taken our child, and nothing would have changed. We are still being forced to marry other people.”
“I don’t have the brainpower to comprehend all this right now,” I say in a sleepy voice as I’m slowly dragged back under.
“It’s okay. Sleep, baby. We can talk later. I just need you to know I have remained faithful to you.”
I want to ask how this is possible when it’s his Lust and Envy responsibility. And what about those thirteen women he said he slept with? But I don’t get the chance before my eyelids droop, and I fall asleep.
* * *
I’m trapped in the middle of a nightmare. Screaming and crying rings out around me as I’m forcibly yanked from my bed. A stinging pain rips across the back of my hand, and my limbs feel like Jell-O as I’m lifted over a shoulder. Bree screams. Jase roars at someone, and Mom is crying.
My eyes blink open for a few seconds. The back of the van is wide-open, the doors busted like force was used to get inside. The kind nurse lies in a pool of blood on the floor amid overturned furniture and medical equipment.
My eyes shutter again, and everything is fading. I’m jostled from side to side, and it drags me from slumber. A groan slips from my mouth as my eyes pop open again.
It’s not a nightmare.
Just another horrific development in my reality.
“No,” I whimper, tears filling my eyes as I watch a man in a black cloak force my father to his knees and shoot him in the skull. “No!” I shout, my voice hoarse and dry as Dad slumps sideways to the ground, blood leaking from the round hole in his head.
Mom screams and then goes silent. I try to lift my head, but it feels too heavy.
I’m placed in a new van and thrown down on a cot, and cold fingers take my hand. There’s a sharp pinch and then I feel the cool liquid entering my veins. I try to fight slumber as it creeps up on me, my eyes opening and closing as I watch them load Mom, Bree, and Jase into seats in the back. They strap them in. They are all unconscious, their heads lolling forward.
As the doors slowly close, I spot more commotion outside, and my heart pounds against my rib cage as I watch other men in black cloaks overpower Chad and Ares. They must have followed us. Someone stabs them in the neck with a needle, and they both crumple within seconds.
Pain tightens my chest as I watch them get shoved into a black SUV before the doors on our van are closed, and the vehicle moves forward.
“That’s it, sweetie,” an unfamiliar woman says, patting my hand with her cold fingers as my eyes shutter. “Go to sleep.”
