Footsteps thundered closer.
Robert barked orders. His men took positions. Chaos erupted around me.
I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed with everything in me.
Please find me. Please save me—saveus. Please, please, please.
30
JONATHAN
I’d never heard silence ring so loud.
The abandoned loading facility Robert owned on the edge of the river crouched in the darkness like a thing waiting to bite.
Alex, Devin, and I moved low through the shadows, guns drawn, every footstep calculated. My pulse beat so hard it felt like it shook the ground beneath me.
Frankie was inside. Frankie Taylor, my girl,ourgirl—was frightened and alone.
Devin gave a signal—two fingers forward—before sliding behind a concrete pillar. I moved with him, keeping Alex at my back.
A pair of Robert’s men patrolled near the side door, arguing in hushed, angry tones. Another two paced the catwalk above.
We didn’t have the luxury of subtlety.
I surged forward first. One sharp strike of my gun handle dropped the closest guy. Devin took the other, the muffled crack barely echoing before the man collapsed.
Above us, Alex fired upward once—clean, neat—and the two on the catwalk didn’t get back up.
We slipped inside.
The place was a maze of rusted machinery and stacked crates. We moved through with more precise shots and explosions. Eventually voices drifted from somewhere deeper, barking, impatient, desperate. I recognized the tone immediately.
Robert’s men weren’t settled. They were preparing for something.
A door slammed. Then, her voice.
Frankie.
We froze. Even with my heart hammering, I could pick out her cadence, the way she always spoke with that soft edge, even when she was scared.
But she wasn’t scared now. She was furious.
“…don’t talk about them like that,” Frankie snapped.
And then—the shock that stole the air from my lungs.
“I don’t care what happens to me. But I’ll protect my baby from you.”
My vision tunneled.
My baby.
Frankie was pregnant. With one of us. With…mine? Devin’s? Alex’s?
A dozen questions slammed into me, but they all bled into one overwhelming, blistering truth.
I would kill anyone who touched her. Anyone who breathed wrong in her direction.
