He didn’t reply.
Kane?
Nothing.
Motherfucker, answer me.
Still nothing. I looked to the group of Ravens who were now watching me intently, recognizing that something was wrong. I lurched toward Heath and shoved the phone in her hands. She scrolled through the messages, her lips parting.
I need a car, a bike, something, I signed, but only Florence could understand me. She relayed the message, and Monty tugged a set of keys from her pocket and tossed them at me.
“Take mine,” she said. “Do you need backup?”
No. Stay here with Arden. I’ll take care of Kane, and if I can’t, then I’ll text, I explained. Florence translated, and I shoved past them all, casting a wary glance back at Arden. I hated leaving her, but I knew this was what she would want.
It was only a matter of time, I guess, before one of us lost our heads. I just never thought it would be Kane, and I never thought it would be what it was.
I rode Monty’s super bike through the city, making it to the destination Kane sent in record time. I couldn’t hear the sirens, but I could see them approaching along the way. Their cop cars weren’t any match for a bike in Manhattan traffic, and I knew it was the only luck Kane was going to get. I parked outside a fancy-looking hotel, a massive crowd surrounding the front doors. Reporters were already there, flashing lights blinding as people sobbed along the street. An ambulance was there too, paramedics carrying men in suits out with gun shot wounds.
What the fuck have you done, Kane?I sprinted to the nearest alley, finding the service entrance to the hotel and breaking it down with my boot against its handle. It slammed open, and I tore inside, the staff thankfully evacuated from whatever scene Kane caused. I stormed toward the stairs, craning my head back. I had no idea what level he was on, and there was only one way to find out. I broke into each one, having to duck back into the stairwell on the eighth floor, narrowly missing more paramedics.
“Where the fuck are the cops?” one of them shouted, and I read his lips when he pressed down on the radio clipped at his collar. “The guy is still shooting up here!”
Fuck.Fuck. I slipped out when they got into the elevator and jogged down the hall, following a trail of blood and halting at the open, blood-streaked french doors to an event hall. It was a sight to behold, Kane Creed shooting motherfuckers down, covered in blood. His face and knuckles were fucked too—like he’d started with fistfights and was ending the night with a bang. He just kept firing rounds, his automatic far from running low. Where the hell he found the thing, I had no idea, but the real horror was the fact thatno one was alive. Kane was shooting at fucking ghosts by that point, just screaming through his teeth, tears pouring down his cheeks through the blood. He was in pain, so much fucking pain, and every bastard lying dead looked a lot like a Buyer. Suits. Fancy dresses. Wealth.
But they were ordinary people. Kane just wouldn’t have been able to see that in his state. He saw luxury and immediately saw a threat. He saw his brother…dead. And I couldn’t just walk in or I’d get shot, but we were out of time. The pulsing lights of red and blue were flashing outside the windows. The cops were there. They were coming.
I waved my hands, took a breath, and stepped in. A shot tore through my thigh. I shouted, the very act of using my throat nearly as painful as the gunshot wound. I fell to a knee,clenching my teeth as I clamped my palm over the wound and forced myself back up. Kane had stopped, thankfully, but he looked stricken as he stared at me, almost as fucking catatonic as Arden.Not you too, I signed fiercely.Don’t, Kane. Stay with me.
He blinked a few times. “Rafe? What the fuck are you doing here?”
Bastard. I limped to him and yanked the automatic out of his hands, tossing it across the room.Me? What the hell are you doing here, shooting up a fucking ballroom of innocent people?
Kane looked around, and he stumbled back a step. It was like he had zero awareness of what he’d done until that moment. I’m not even sure it was him that actually texted me, or the him that was trapped deep down inside himself, screaming for help. Kane hated being vulnerable, and he did a hell of a job stuffing his emotions so deep fucking down that this was the kind of shit that resulted.
We have to go. Now, I demanded.
Innocent?he asked, repeating my words back to me. He looked around and horror fell across his face.These aren’t Buyers, are they?
I shook my head.Idon’t think so, Kane, and the cops are here.
He vomited. It was so violent, his entire body collapsed in on itself, his knees cracking down. He clutched his stomach as his gut emptied. He was yelling again, sobbing again, signing toward me:You promised! Safe! Safe, Rafe!I was breaking, hating myself, retreating into a place I wasn't sure I'd ever recover from, and I knew he was angry, that no one, even me, could have stopped that bullet from hitting Thorne, but it didn't matter. He was right. I was wrong no matter which way I looked at it. I'd made Kane Creed an impossible promise, and I never, ever should have.
I slowly made my peace with what was about to happen. I didn’t hear the officers come in, but I saw Kane slowly raise hishands and I followed suit. I moved to turn around, but someone thrust me to my stomach and cuffed my hands before I could. Their knee pressed into my spine, and I turned my cheek into the bloodied tile, wincing when they jerked me up to my feet.
Kane wasn’t resisting his arrest—thank fuck—but he was still sobbing. He caught my gaze and shook his head, his shame evident. “I’m sorry, man. Fuck. I’m so sorry. You’ll be fine. I’ll tell them you didn’t do anything.” Then he turned to the officer shoving him forward. “He’s innocent. He came to stop me. Please, he’s deaf. At least undo his hands so he can tell you himself.”
They didn’t, and I didn't care because I was guilty. I was guilty of the same thing we all were.Hope.
?Arden?
I don’t remember deciding to stop moving. My body just went quiet, like it reached a limit and shut itself down to keep me alive. I could hear things around me at first, voices blurring together, hands touching my skin to see if I would react, but none of it felt meant for me anymore. It was like being buried with my eyes open. I was still there, still thinking, still aware, but trapped behind something thick and unmoving, watching the world pass without being able to reach it.
Inside that stillness, time stopped being linear. It sagged and warped, stretched thin and then collapsed in on itself, until minutes lost their edges and hours became indistinguishable. I wasn’t asleep, not truly, but I wasn’t awake either. I was suspended in a place where thought circled itself and began to feed. With nothing else to hold on to, my mind turned inward and started tearing at whatever it could reach.
Faces surfaced without warning. Viktor first, intact enough to recognize, then Leah, then Thorne, each one arriving only to decay in front of me. Kane and Rafe followed, then Halden,then Florence, Alexander, Monty, Heath, Mickey, Matthias. Skin slackened. Eyes dulled. Mouths sagged open in silent screams. They crowded around me in stages of ruin, a gallery of people I loved and lost and feared, all of them dead. All of them watching.
Only Viktor and Halden remained cruelly warm. They took their places at either side of me, close enough that I felt their breath even though I had no body to feel it with. They spoke without stopping, without drawing air, their voices sliding straight into my ears as if my skull were hollow.So pretty. So dead. So perfect.The words looped until they lost meaning and became pressure, but I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t lift a finger or close my eyes. There was no fight left in me. There was only endurance, and the creeping certainty that my mind had decided this was the toll for survival.
