Spots dance at the edges of my vision, my eyelids fluttering close to streaks of blue lights flashing past my window, before darkness drags me under.
40
MASON
Smoke curls into my lungs,scorching my throat all the way down to my chest. I swallow the sting of withdrawal, which has been a good distraction from what really hurts in my chest.
“Sure, you don’t want one?” Hugo asks, taking another drag.
I shake my head, resting my weight against the cold metal railing, my gaze locked on the London skyline glittering below, a city built from broken stars.
When I saw Jack Romney—the fucker who had been playing chess on both sides, keeping a foot in London while running an underground network namedMemento Mori, the same organization responsible for the scars on my chest—holding Eva at gunpoint, everything human in me switched off.
I thought I knew rage. The heat that rises in my chest when someone crosses me, or the crimson that paints my vision when another man is in her proximity. All that was a drop in the ocean against the thought of losing her. To watch her break in front of me. To never see her face again.
I was at the very brink of losing my sanity altogether.
In those moments, I would have traded everything to hold her just one more time. To have her safe in my arms.
And I did. I held her exactly one more time before I lost her for good.
I drove Eva back to London, as I had promised her brother, the only way he would take me to her. She walked away without another glance. It took all my will not to follow her, but I couldn’t stand the way she looked at me that night, like I had taken her everything.
That was three weeks ago. She still hasn’t returned to Fort.
The clock on my phone flips over to 9 p.m.
I scroll to my recent calls and tap dial. It rings seven times, then voicemail. I stare at the screen a moment, then hang up.
Ping.
Thea Ashbourne
She’s fine.
As expected, Eva slipped back into that dark space that I’d dragged her out of. She’s lost too much—more than a mind already ragged at the edges can bear. Thea stays with her through the nights because, apparently, it's worse. I didn’t ask what ‘worse’ meant. I didn’t need to. Instead, I beat my door down, my fists turning to wrecking balls, desperate to feel something—anything—to crack at the thought of it.
Thea’s the only link I have. My girl won’t answer me. Not a call. Not a text.
I didn’t just lose Eva. Idestroyedher. There is a difference. The former lets you sleep at night. If I could go back, I would tell her everything and let her stop her brother that night. But even the darkest torments in the world can’t claw the fucking time in reverse.
What’s done is done.
We’re done.
Yet, here I am. Back in London. The day before the funeral.
“There is still time to change your mind,” Kane puts a handon my shoulder. “Reginald and Alessia are making an appearance. We don’t have to go. Let her grieve in peace.”
“I’m not planning on creating a scene, fucker,” I mutter. “I just need to see her.”
“We all know what will happen when you do,” James chimes in from the corner, crushing the beer can in his fist. “And I don’t think we can take our weapons inside the Etheridge funeral, lined by coppers.”
“There is no way you’re walking away from her,” Hugo agrees.
“I will.”
Every fracture in her beautiful face that’s carved into my brain, I caused them. I’m not doing that again. Tomorrow will be the last time I see my girl, and then, I’ll let her go.
