I shook my head, the words meaningless.
He smiled, patient. “She owed us, you see. A lot. But she didn’t have what we needed.” He leaned in, lips brushing my ear. “You, on the other hand—you’re worth quite a bit.”
The words hit like cold water. My brain tried to process, but every muscle was locked. “You’re full of shit,” I said, but it was barely more than a whisper.
“Am I?” he said, smiling wide. “She sold you. Signed the paperwork and everything.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a folder—real, thick, with a notary’s stamp visible through the clear sleeve. He waved it in my face, then tucked it away.
“You’re mine now,” he said.
The world tilted. Something inside me wanted to scream, but it was frozen, trapped in the space between my ribs.
I looked at my arm, at the ring of ink that bore Quiad’s name. The band of platinum on my left hand, the wedding ring that still felt like a holy relic.
“I’m a McKenzie,” I spat, voice shaking but louder. “You try to take me, my husband will fucking destroy you.”
For a second, the man in the suit actually laughed. “You think he’s going to save you? You think anyone cares enough to look?”
He stood, then, and raised his hand. The blow landed across my mouth, fast and surgical. I tasted blood before I even felt the pain—hot, coppery, flooding my tongue. I watched it spatter across the front of my shirt, a bright red badge of failure.
The men behind me let go, and I slumped to the ground. Every nerve ending screamed, but I forced myself up, clawing at the wall until my knees locked.
He crouched again, wiped the blood from my chin with the back of his hand, and smiled. “Let’s go,” he said, and jerked his head at the muscle.
They lifted me up, one man under each arm, and started walking. The world spun past in blurred streaks of color—market, sky, the empty stretch of road. I tried to fight, but my limbs were useless, all the power gone. At the edge of the parking lot, I caught a last glimpse of the market, the banners and the white tents and the people moving in oblivious circles.
I wanted to scream, but my jaw wouldn’t work. I looked at my wrist, at the name burned into my skin, and thought: Please, Quiad. Find me.
Then the world went dark.
I came back to myself in a universe of pain. The world spun on a dull, red axis; the inside of my skull throbbed with each heartbeat, and every surface of my body ached like I’d been run over by a tractor and then hit for good measure. Somewhere above me, men were talking, their voices filtered through cotton and the shrill of my own pulse.
Someone shook me, fingers digging into my armpits, hoisting me upright. The back of my head bounced off brick, sending a scatter of fireworks across my vision. I tried to move, but my limbs were dead weights. I opened my eyes to a blur of concrete, trash, and sunlight, all washed out and violent.
The man in the suit crouched in front of me again, close enough to see the individual grains of stubble along his jaw. My mouth tasted like metal, a slow ooze of blood dribbling down my chin. He looked at me with the kind of studied indifference you’d give to a wild animal, then reached out and grabbed my face, turning it left and right.
“You’ll heal,” he said. “Pretty faces always do.”
He stood, straightening the cuffs of his shirt. “Get him in the car,” he said, bored now. One of the muscle men bent to haul me up, hands rough under my arms.
There was a lull, a beat in the script, the kind of silence that makes your hair stand on end. The world froze in that instant. Even the birds in the alley shut up.
Then came the roar.
It started as a vibration, a low-frequency rumble that shook the brick wall against my spine. Then it resolved itself into a voice—a bellow so animal and loud it bordered on the supernatural.
“What the fuck are you doing to my brother?”
I had just enough time to see the faces of my captors go slack with confusion before the McKenzies exploded into the alley like a natural disaster.
Knox hit first, a human battering ram, plowing the first man back into a row of trash bins so hard the metal caved in. The man in the suit reached inside his jacket—maybe for a weapon, maybe for a phone—but a blur of denim and ink intercepted him. Ransom, all bone and fury, tackled the suit man to the ground, pinning him with a forearm across his throat.
Bodean was suddenly at my side, his eyes wild and shiny as he tried to pull me to my feet. “You okay?” he hissed. “Say something, man, say you’re alive.”
I managed a grunt, which was the best I could do. My lip stung like it’d been split open with a razor.
In the chaos, I lost sight of the man in the suit. When I looked again, Ransom had him upright, one arm twisted behind his back, pushing him toward the brick wall like he was cattle. Ransom bared his teeth and growled in the guy’s ear. “How’s it feel, asshole? You like hurting kids? Try this on for size.”
