Logan's grip on my hand tightened as he pulled me through the dense undergrowth along the edge of the property. Just like when I'd run from Gino the first time, I didn't feel the rocks and burs digging into my bare feet. I could hear shouts in the distance behind us, and more gunfire, but they seemed to be getting farther away with each passing second.
Finally, we got to the gate. No one was manning it, and we slipped through easily and out onto the road.
Then we kept running.
We followed the road for what felt like miles. The night air was cold around us, and yet sweat dripped down my spine. But I barely noticed. All I could feel was the gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be.
We came to another road, and Logan stopped, breathing hard. I could tell he was in pain. "We need to stop." My voice was hoarse from screaming and crying, and at first, I didn't think he'd heard me.
"No. This way." He tugged me to the left.
A little slower now, we stuck to the side of the road, taking advantage of the darkness and hiding whenever a car went by. I didn't know if Luca would bother to look for us, but Logan was right, we shouldn't take the chance.
My body moved on autopilot, numb and disconnected from my mind as I stumbled along the dark road beside Logan. The events of the night played over and over in my head like a horror movie I couldn't turn off.
Tristan lying motionless on the ground, blood pooling beneath him. My father's cold, dead eyes staring up at the night sky. The weight of the gun in my hands as I pulled the trigger again and again.
I felt like I was no longer in my body. Like I was watching this stupid girl run barefoot down the side of the road, shivering with cold.
Tristan was dead.
The man who'd saved me only to leave me rotting in a cell, and yet somehow made me feel more alive than I ever had before...was gone. I couldn't wrap my mind around it, couldn't accept that I would never again see his dark eyes burning into mine or feel the heat of his touch on my skin.
But I should be happy. After all, this was the same man who'd killed my mother.
It was too much to process, too much to bear. I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out.
I wanted to scream, to cry, to rage against the cruelty of the world. But I couldn't. I was empty, hollowed out by grief and shock and a pain so deep it stole the very breath from my lungs. So I just kept moving, one foot in front of the other, letting Logan lead me further away from the carnage we'd left behind.
I didn't know where we were going. I didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore. The only thing I could feel was the aching void in my chest where Tristan had been, and the knowledge that I would never be whole again.
CHAPTER19
Luna
Three months later
Isashayed onto the stage, my hips swaying to the pulsing beat. The lights were hot on my bare skin as I twirled around the pole, my thoughts drifting as they always did, hardly noticing the men nearest the stage waving their hard-earned cash at me.
It'd been three months since I'd seen Tristan fall right in front of me. Three months since I'd fled with Logan down that dark road and eventually to the neon lights of Vegas. We'd found a cheap one-bedroom apartment not far from the club where I worked, and Logan had just enough saved up from the money Gino was sending him to get us by until we both started working. He pulled it out of the bank as soon as we got out of the city and closed down his account, as did I. It'd been pretty lean for a while, but we'd survived, and we were happy to still be together.
Although, every once in a while, I'd catch Logan quietly looking at something on his phone with a strange expression on his face before he turned it off and shoved it in his pocket. And when I'd ask what he was looking at, he'd never tell me.
After a while, I'd stopped asking.
We thought we could disappear here in sin city, start fresh. I started dancing again, and Logan found a job waiting tables, helping out with bills until we had enough saved again so he could get back into school. I didn't lie to him this time about where I went or what I was doing to earn our rent. I didn't see the point. Not anymore. And he was right. He was a grown man. I didn't need to protect him. We protected each other. And we slowly built our new lives.
But even in the city that never sleeps, I couldn't escape the nightmares that haunted me.
The club I worked for was nice, and the manager was good to me, but I found that dancing was different for now. Before Tristan, when the men who watched me shouted lewd comments when the bouncers weren't watching, it never bothered me. Now it did. And when they offered me obscene amounts of money to strip privately for them—or more—I felt like I was doing something wrong. I felt dirty. I felt ashamed.
Because I couldn't stop thinking abouthim.
To Tristan, I wasn't some nameless stripper, a piece of meat to be consumed and forgotten. I wasn't a whore, selling my body to the highest bidder. I wasn't a replacement for a dead wife, a pale imitation of a lost love.
No, he'd seen through all that. He'd seenme. The real me. Luna. The girl beneath the glitter and the lies. And in doing so, he'd forced me to see him too. Not just as a bodyguard or a ruthless killer, but as a man. Someone who, against all odds, had survived horrifying things. We both had. And our twisted parts had fit together to make us whole.
He'd killed my mother.
