I look over at Hook. He’s staring straight ahead, his jaw so tight I can hear the bone creak. The dash lights cast a ghoulish blue glow over his face, making the hook on his arm look like a jagged shard of frozen moonlight.
“How do you do it?” I ask, my voice cracking, raw with the deranged edge of a man losing his grip.
Hook doesn’t blink. “Do what?”
“Leave her like that.” I gesture vaguely back toward the warehouse, toward the memory of Tahlia’s screams. “She’s your entire world. You just chained her to a radiator like a fucking animal and walked away. Doesn’t it make you want to vomit? Doesn’t it make you want to turn this car around and just crawl into that dark room and never leave her side?”
Hook’s hands tighten on the steering wheel until the leather groans. The speedometer climbs—eighty, ninety. He swerves around a sedan, the horn blaring behind us like a fading ghost.
“Drop it, Peter,” he says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
“I’m serious, James. I’m losing my fucking mind over a girl I can’t find, and you’ve got yours right there. You’ve got her locked down where no one can touch her, where she’s safe, and you still look like you’re heading to your own execution. Is it because you know she hates you now? Is it the guilt, or is it just the fact that you’re a monster who’d rather have a bird in a cage than one that flies?”
Hook slams his foot on the brake.
The SUV fishtails on the wet asphalt, the tires screaming before we skid to a bone-jarring halt on the shoulder of the highway. The silence that follows is deafening.
Hook turns to me. The look in his eyes isn’t ice anymore—it’s a fucking blizzard. He lunges across the centre console, his good hand catching the front of my jacket and slamming me back against the door. The surgical steel of the hook comes up, the tip of the blade pressing into the soft skin just beneath my ear.
“You don’t mention her name again,” Hook snarls, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of bitter coffee and rage. “You don’t speculate on what I do to keep her breathing. You think you’re the only one drowning? You think I don’t hear those screams every time I close my eyes?”
“Then why?—”
“Because I’m the one who knows what happens to girls like her when men like us get distracted!” he roars, his voice shaking the cabin. He presses the hook deeper, the sharp point drawing a single bead of blood that tracks down my neck. “I am keeping her alive. If she hates me for it, if she spends the rest of her life trying to cut my throat, at least she’ll be alive to do it. You? You let yours get snatched. So don’t you dare judge the way I hold onto mine.”
He stares at me for a long beat, his chest heaving, the madness in his eyes reflecting the mess in my own. We’re both ruins.Two broken men racing through the rain to save things we’ve already destroyed.
He lets go of my jacket and shoves himself back into the driver’s seat. He wipes the rain and sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, his hand trembling.
“We’re going to find her,” he says, his voice dropping back into that terrifying, silken monotone. “And when we do, you’ll realise there is no version of this story where we come out clean. You want her back? Fine. But don’t expect her to thank you for the blood you’re about to bring home on your hands.”
He shifts the car back into drive and floors it.
I touch the puncture wound on my neck, my fingers coming away red. I don’t care about being clean. I don’t care about being thanked. I just need her back. Even if she looks at me the way Tahlia looks at Hook. Even if I have to be her jailer to be her saviour.
“I just want her,” I whisper to the dark.
Peter
The neon sign for The Gilded Cage flickers through the downpour like a dying heartbeat, casting jagged streaks of electric pink and bruised purple across the flooded gutters. It’s a shithole wrapped in sequins, the kind of place where secrets are traded for cheap gin and the air always feels like it’s ten percent cigarette ash.
Hook doesn’t slow down. If anything, he guns it.
The SUV hits a massive puddle, sending a wall of muddy water over the sidewalk as we roar toward the main entrance. My heart is a frantic bird hitting the cage of my ribs. Every neon pulse feels like a strobe light to my brain, showing me flashes of Wendy—her eyes wide, her mouth open in a silent scream, her body being handled by men who don’t know she’s the only thing keeping the world on its axis.
“You ready?” Hook asks. He’s not looking at me. He’s adjusting his grip on the steering wheel, his surgical steelhook glinting as it reflects the pink neon. He looks like a demon coming home to collect.
“I’ve been ready since the moment she disappeared,” I snap, checking the safety on my sidearm. My hands are steady, but my mind is a fucking riot. I want to pull the walls of this building down. I want to find Silas and turn his guts into streamers.
Hook doesn’t park. He doesn’t even pull into a spot. He swerves the SUV straight onto the curb, the tires screeching over the concrete, and stops ten feet from the heavy, brass-plated double doors.
“Stay behind me,” Hook says, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm, silken tone. “And Peter? Try not to get blood on my leather. It’s a bitch to clean.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He’s out of the car before I can even unbuckle, moving through the rain with a predatory grace that makes the two bouncers at the door freeze. They’re big guys, necks thicker than my thighs, but when they see the hook and the arctic-blue madness in James’s eyes, they reach for their waistbands.
They never make it.
Hook is a blur. He doesn’t even use the gun yet. He swings the hook, the steel whistling through the rainy air, catching the first bouncer across the forearm. The man screams, a wet, jagged sound, as Hook follows up with a brutal kick to the other one’s kneecap. A sickening crack echoes in the alley.
