“No,” I admit. “I struggled for a while. I was your foster brother, and I was older. It was only a few years, but at that age, it seemed like a lifetime. Plus, I was responsible for you, and I didn’t want to cross that line. I wanted to love you, but I didn’t want to fallinlove with you, so I kept an arm’s distance. Maybe that was starting to change, especially after Ash left, and it was just you and me, but it wasn’t our time then.”
“And now?”
“You more than know the answer to that,” I tell her. “You’re not seventeen anymore, and I no longer see you as the little girl I was responsible for.”
“So, what do you see me as now?”
“My fucking equal, Menace. I see you as my whole fucking world.”
Her cheeks flush, and a soft smile pulls at her lips. “Just like that, huh?” she asks, creeping closer, taking the hem of my shirt and knotting it into her fingers.
“Yeah. Just like that.”
“Good,” she whispers, pushing up onto her toes and raising her chin. “You better kiss me now.”
I lean into her, curling my hand behind her neck and pulling her in when something moves in my peripheral. A soft click sounds through the warehouse, and without hesitation, I shove Aria away. She sails back at least ten feet just as a loudBANGrips through the warehouse, and a single bullet skims right between us, narrowly missing us both.
“FUCK!” I roar, whipping around to see a man standing in the entryway, looking shocked that he missed. I spring into action, sparing the slightest glance at Aria on the floor. “FUCK, MENACE. GET UP. RUN.”
She scrambles to her feet and takes off at a sprint as I race toward the hitman, rage boiling in my veins. How fucking dare this asshole take a shot toward my girl. He’s going to pay for that.
Seeing me raging toward him, the hitman lets off a few more panicked shots, clearly having assumed it wouldn’t need to get this far. He thought I’d already be lying dead on the ground, but now that I’ve got my menace back, I’m not about to give that up for anything. Especially not some asshole looking for a payday.
His bullets fly toward me, and I duck and weave, but one grazes my arm, slicing through my skin like a knife through warm butter. Pain shoots through my arm like someone stabbed me with a burning fire poker, and I grit my teeth, but I don’t have time to dwell on it.
Aria flies out the side exit of the warehouse, and peace settles in my chest, allowing me to focus on the shooter.
We have a plan. We’ve had a plan for every place we go. Where to meet in case we get separated. Which direction to run. Best place to hide. I trust that she’ll go exactly where she needs to go and wait for me to find her.
Focusing on the shooter, I race through the warehouse as he frantically tries to pop off another few rounds. I could really use the array of weapons I’d managed to accumulate over the past week, but they’re all sitting at the bottom of the harbor right about now.
Each of the bullets goes wide, and it’s clear this idiot has no formal training. He’s just here to cash in, but he’s out of his element, and as he realizes that I don’t fear him or his gun, and that I could snap him like a fucking twig, he turns on his heel and runs.
Not today, asshole.
My strides quickly eat up the space between us, but I hold back, allowing him just a moment to think he might make it out of here, before launching myself at him and yanking him back toward me.
I have to give it to him. He managed to get inside the warehouse undetected. Hell, he managed to find me, and that must have taken great skill. Or pure dumb luck. I’ll go with option number two.
The shooter tries to get out of my hold, but I’ve got at least eighty pounds of pure muscle and sheer brawn on him. He doesn’t stand a fucking chance, especially when I take the back of his head and slam his face straight into the corner of a brick wall, his skull splitting straight through the center.
Sure, it’s brutal. But I did him a favor by making it fast.
His brain is visible through his fractured skull, quickly swelling, and the moment I release him, he crumples to the ground. His body jerks on the concrete for just a second, but I don’t hang around to watch him die. I need to get to Aria.
Turning on my heel, I prepare to leave the one place we’ve found safety for the past three days and quickly glance around, making sure I have everything. We won’t be returning here. Not now that average Joe back there was able to find me.
It’s time for a new plan. A new home. A new chance at escaping this shitshow.
I slip out of the warehouse and into the shadows, head down as I round the corner, moving toward where I know I’ll find Aria. Instead of the clear path I expected, I walk straight into a wall of bodies—no less than fifteen men, each of them closing in. Four faces stand out to me right away. Four faces that I’ve memorized from staring at the Polaroids burning a hole in my pocket.
And there she is. My sweet girl.
Aria’s at the center of it all, terror stretched across her face as she stands immobilized, pinned against none other than Lux Valen’s chest, the barrel of his gun pressed hard to her temple as she visibly trembles with fear.
My heart races, and I don’t bother looking at the men surrounding me, only Aria, silently letting her know that whatever happens here, I’m going to make sure she’s okay. Just like I always have.
“Give it up, Stone,” Lux says, the leader of the Bone Reapers gang, and the man who personally oversaw Ash’s downfall. “We’ve got you cornered. There’s nowhere to run. Hand yourself over, and I won’t put a bullet through her head.”
