Aerin has locked us together at the wrist with the handcuffs from my bag.
As I stare down at them, it clicks in my mind why she suddenly stepped forward so willingly while I was talking.
She baited me.
She distracted me into lashing out so she could get to my bag, likely looking for my phone. Instead she found these.
“You’re going to see what it feels like to have someone hanging over you twenty-four-seven,” she snaps. “And then you’ll?—”
Her words are stolen from her as an almighty explosion rips through the front door and sends us both crashing back into the table with the force of the blast.
7
AERIN
The ringing in my ears is so loud it feels like something is trying to bore down through my skull to reach my teeth.
Smoke and debris cloud the air, catching in my throat, and I cough violently before I’ve even opened my eyes.
Fuck.
What happened?
One second we were arguing, the next there was intense heat at my back and I was flying.
Wood splinters and fragments from the kitchen table surround me on the floor, along with chunks of plaster and crumbled tiles on the floor.
Thick, black smoke floods the kitchen and burns my eyes, forcing them closed in the second it took me to open them.
Everything hurts.
My heart pounds in my chest and my limbs throb, while a twist of hot pain radiates from the base of my spine.
Just as I register it, sharp agony spears through my wrist and I yell as the pain grows hotter and sharper with each passing second.
“Ahhh!”
Attempting to roll over, I’m suddenly dragged a few inches across the floor by my flaming wrist just as I remember that I handcuffed Falco and me together.
I was so angry at his treatment that I wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine.
Now Falco and I are locked together as he brawls with a man on the floor next to me, and there’s nothing I can do to escape.
The stranger, wearing a black balaclava with an eye window, is on top of Falco and punching him repeatedly in the face. Falco’s trying to block with one arm while his other is weighed down by his connection to me.
Panic surges through me like a hot wave, strangling my already restricted breathing, and I choke, erupting into another coughing fit.
My noises draw the attention of the man on top of Falco.
His dark, furious eyes slide from Falco to me.
The moment our gazes meet, my insides turn to ice and the stranger lunges at me.
I scream and try to cover my face. But before his fist can make contact with me, Falco surges upward and punches the man straight in the jaw.
He flies over the top of me and lands in a heap amongst the remains of the kitchen table with no time to recover.
Falco scrambles over me, jerking my arm and injured wrist along with him, and I’m forced onto my side, then my stomach as Falco attacks the stranger with a powerful punch to the face.
