My peace.
Preston’s peace.
“I know what it feels like to kill a man now,” he adds when I don’t speak. A weep escapes through my tightened fingers,but I keep both hands clutched to my mouth. “It gives me the same high I get when you’re squirming beneath me, pretending you don’t like it when I make you bleed for me. Well, now I’m bleeding for you,” he shouts through clenched teeth, sounding like a horror movie coming to life. “Is that what you wanted?”
Another gunshot reverberates in the air, the proximity making me jump and slam my head against the underside of the metal horse I’m crouched under. In an instant, my blade, my security, falls from my fingers as black and white dots pepper my vision.
The bile in my stomach crawls up my throat, my heartbeat now thrashing against my skull, buzzing in my ears. He’s a blur in my vision, but his uniform is unmistakable.
Xander’s fingers wrap around my ankles, pulling me out from my hiding place. When he forcefully drags my back to be flush with the floor, my head bounces off the metal plate below me, the endless void trying to pull me under.
Xander swings a leg over my body, straddling my thighs. He tightens his knees around my legs to try and keep me still, the searing pain in my thigh shooting through my muscles. I surely have a concussion now, combined with being shot, but I’m not giving in to him.
I won't make it easy for him.
That Kate is long gone.
The rainbow lights reflect off the body of the gun in his hand. “You know the only solution for this, don’t you?”
I scream, my hands pounding at his chest, his stomach, my brain forcing my exhausted, hysterical physique to relinquish any energy I have left, trying to keep myself alive. I try to use a variety of self-defense moves Preston taught me if I ever find myself with a heavy mass on top of me. My legs kick to try and gain any purchase, but my body is surrendering to the pain, to the throbbing in my head.
I force another scream from my lungs before a bloodied fist whips out, clenching my throat to rob the air from my lungs. “God, we would’ve had so much more fun if you had always put up a fight like this.”
My arms slap at his forearms as he draws painful whimpers up my throat as he clutches harder. My vision continues to blur. I fight for breath, but it's no use.
“If I can’t have you, Kate, nobody’s going to. You understand that, don’t you? Such a shame to waste a pretty thing like you, but you’re giving me no choice, sweetheart.” His hard, bulky body folds over mine to keep me from smashing his sternum with my fists.
Tears pour from my eyes, my lungs an inferno raging for the oxygen he’s denying me of. His nails dig into my skin, my hands flailing to the side, frantically searching on the floor for the thing that’s marked me permanently forever.
Now, it’s the only thing that can save me.
Our lives are on the line.
It’s him or me.
The brief flash of a cool object brushing my thumb has my fingers dancing with the edge of the hilt.
I choose mine.
Something animalistic floods through my veins and chases back the panic as I grip onto the handle and slice the blade through the air without remorse. Hot spray peppers my face, and onto my lips, at the same time, a gunshot obliterates my ears.
FORTY-ONE | PRESTON
Another gunshot rings, the shock through the air shaking the concrete, making my pace quicken as dark park buildings pass me by in a blur of gray and black.
The tech and security room, located beneath the park, is situated at the opposite end of the park. When we finally located Kate and Lex on the monitors, they were in the center of the walkway between the maze ride and the carousel.
Then the park was shrouded in darkness.
I was running to her before the cameras switched to night vision, which instantly happens when all the lights are shut off. Locating the nearest secret exit, I flew up the stairs as the first gunshot rang out through the park, followed by four more that had my knees damn near gravitating to the ground.
I didn’t let them.
I couldn’t trust myself to navigate the maze of tunnels when my heart was somehow sucked into my head. Her name has been a constant, roaring pulse against my skull, making me wonder if I’m losing her.
If I’ve already lost her.
I urged myself through the crippling panic and fear, hoping that my other men, positioned around the park's perimeters, would reach her first.
