In a few hours, Delilah will be safe—I won’t have anything to lose. Rowan won’t be able to use her. Then as soon as I know where the island is, I can kill him for taking my boy from me. Sitting here, doing nothing is making it worse, so I search for my soon-to-be-dead family members.
“What assurance do you have that they’re coming here?” Lennox asks as they walk down the winding hallways towards me.
He sounds the same as always, but Rowan storms past me without a mask for once. He doesn’t answer as he charges into the security room, barking, “Leave!”
Sasha runs out with her bag of meat tightly clasped in her fist. I slip inside before he slams the door. He places his fist against the desk then rapidly clicks against the keyboard, bringing up a GPS tracker with coordinates on them.
“She removed her tracker,” Lennox says.
I’m pretty sure it’s for my benefit as Rowan roars, “That’s why I placed one inside of him! None of their criminal business would bring them to this part of the world. We chose this cabin for that reason, protected from all of them.”
“Who is it?” I play dumb while I smile inside now the cunt is getting a taste of his own medicine.How does it feel to be hunted?
Rowan abruptly clasps my nape. “A fool with information.” His fingers dig into my neck as he looks at Lennox. “Burn it all.” He lets me go and walks out of the room, his shoes clicking against the concrete floor.
Lennox waits for the door to slam to show the most amount of emotion he ever has. “I told you twelve hours. You aren’t supposed to be here.” He pulls something out of his waistband, pushing it into my hands as he urges, “Go. Now, while he’s distracted. I never want to see you again, little shadow.”
“I can’t. They can’t get away with this.”
“Go.” He pushes me again. “Take your wife. Hide. She already knows how to do it.”
The surveillance cameras show the masked guards running through the property, pouring large steel canisters behind them as they go.
“Go!” Lennox rips the door open, pushing me out.
The smell is the first thing to hit me as the male captive’s screams echo throughout the space. “She didn’t fucking do anything!”
Gasoline stings my eyes. The heat is next as the flames crackle to life in the captives’ cells, forcing me to run without registering the knives Lennox handed me. The flames roar behind me, but I run into the cold with my wife as my only goal.
I don’t even fucking breathe until I can see the outline of the other cabin through the trees.
We’re leaving, pretty girl.
As I get closer to the tree line, I nearly fucking crumble at the sight of Delilah weakly slashing the knife through the air as five mirror-masked guards crowd her. My legs pump faster, lungs burning in the freezing air, but my footsteps develop an echo. It’s my mind playing tricks on me, so I keep running.
Weight barrels into me, knocking me to the side as knuckles slam into the back of my head. My mouth fills with snow as I swing my arm back, pushing the blade of the knife into their thigh. But a boot crashes into my ribs, knocking the air out of me.
Delilah.
I need to get to my fucking wife.
More weight is applied to my body, pushing me further into the snow until I can’t breathe. I twist my body to get out from under them as someone else kicks me in the face. Someone angrier. There’s a sharp scratch on my nape, but the drugs don’t work quick enough since I’ve built my tolerance.
I force my body to go lax, just enough for them to get off me. When they do, I jump up, already running to get my fucking wife despite the lethargy creeping into my muscles.
Tires screech against the snow, exhaust fumes clouding the air. I can’t see clearly as I breach the cover of the trees. Everything other than my mind shuts down as I drop to my knees and my head smacks into the snow.
My body swingsas I come to, my wrists bound above my head. One eye is swollen and my jaw is on fire from the last time I woke up in this fucking warehouse.
“Kill me,” I grit through the pain, then spit blood onto the tarp below me. “I don’t give a fuck. Just find my fucking wife!”
The man I spoke to on the phone pauses, wiping my blood off his inked hands as he glares at me. His eyes aren’t as pale as Rowan’s. They’re a deeper blue, filled with hate. In another life, one where I hadn’t seen true evil, I could imagine being afraid of him. After months with Rowan, that’s no longer the case. The tattoos, towering presence as he stands in a pair of shorts, nor my blood staining his skin invoke any fear when I need to get to Delilah. It doesn’t take a genius to realize he’s clearly involved with a Russian syndicate, given the criminal tattoos all over his body. I saw some of them when I was moving around the wings, so the stars on his shoulders tell me he’s high ranking.
The woman at his side loses her anger as she chooses a new weapon from the table set against the wall. She turns with a crease between her brows, but her eyes are freakish, pitch-black like films to match the knit hat pulled down to her ears.
She points the knife at me as she asks, “You’re not Asher?”
“No.” My shoulders burn as I shake my head. “Can you please find my wife?”
