“Did you see the boss? Lux? The guy who had you outside the warehouse. Was he there?” I ask, trying not to show how uneasythis makes me. It would be a shitty situation on a good day, but add four broken ribs, and it doesn’t exactly sound like a good time.
“Yeah. He was sitting at one of the further tables across the room. He was irritated, like he just wanted this shit over and done with,” she tells me, her brows furrowed. “I think we’re in an old Chinese restaurant. There was a sign out front when they brought me inside. Big round tables everywhere, and those things that spin in the middle so you can get the food from the other side of the table.”
“I know the ones,” I tell her, taking her hand and squeezing, remembering just how long I’d been down here before they added her to the mix. “Menace, I don’t want to push you on this if you’re not ready, but I need to know. Did they touch you?”
She shakes her head, a small smile pulling at the corner of her lips as though trying to ease my fears. “No, nobody touched me. At least, not likethat,” she says, holding my stare. “They had me stashed in the back corner of the kitchen, and until they brought me down here, nobody even remembered I was there.”
I let out a shaky breath, and something eases within me. “Okay,” I say, getting to my feet and pulling her up with me. “Can you walk?”
She shrugs, and as I settle my hands onto her hips, she clutches them, testing her weight under her broken and bruised body. “Yeah, I think so. It’ll suck, but I can manage,” she tells me. “I don’t think anything is broken. Not like . . .” Aria pauses, her gaze dropping to my chest and taking in the blood stains on my clothes.
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Liar.”
I grin and lean in, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Come on, we’ve gotta get the fuck out of this goddamn city.”
“Thank God.”
Releasing my hold on her, I move around to where Talon’s lifeless body has been discarded on the ground. I crouch beside him and pat him down, checking to see what other weapons he might have on him before taking the gun and counting how many bullets are left.
Two. Not great. But it’ll help.
I nod toward Collaroy as I find a set of car keys in Talon’s pocket. “Can you check him?” I ask Aria, not wanting her to have to play around with dead bodies if she doesn’t want to, but the sooner we can get out of here, the better.
She nods and inches toward the asshole who first hit her, her face twisted with disgust, before kneeling down and pointedly not looking at the odd angle of his neck. She begins patting him down and checking his pockets while I move on to the other guy.
After getting what we need, I glance back toward the shitty cell and find myself slipping back in through the broken bars and staring down at the Polaroid pictures on the ground. Three down, one to go.
Lux Valen.
Picking up the final Polaroid, I wipe the blood off it, smearing it across the image before slipping it back into my pocket. I could have walked away from all of this and been content with just Aria, but not now. Not after she was attacked for the second time. This ends now.
Two minutes later, we stand at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at the hell we’re about to walk into. Between the two of us, we’ve got two guns, one with two bullets, the other with four, three blades, including one that’s already sticky with blood, and a plan to get out of here. Though I can’t lie, it wasn’t a blast yanking the third blade out of Nico’s spine, but it was what I needed to confirm that the motherfucker was dead.
“There was a padlock on the door,” she murmurs as we hover at the bottom, both of us terrified that this might be the last timewe ever see each other. “I doubt it’s locked but, you know . . . just in case.”
I nod. A padlock isn’t going to hold me back. “You ready?” I ask. Having second thoughts, I take the gun back from her, pull the bullets from mine, and put all six into hers. “Anyone even looks at you wrong, you shoot. Protect yourself. You worry about you. Don’t even think about what I’m doing. Understood?”
“But you—”
“I can handle me, Menace, but unless I know that I can trust you to keep focused, I’ll be too fucking worried about keeping you alive.”
“Okay,” she finally says. “I shoot my way out—”
“And?”
“And if you’re not there in three minutes, I take off.”
“Good,” I say, taking her chin and lifting before brushing my lips over hers in a swift kiss. “I will come for you, Aria. If we ever get separated, I will always come for you.”
She kisses me again before letting out a shaky breath. “I know,” she finally says, “but I’ll be coming for you first.”
A grin tears across my face. “Unlikely.”
She laughs and starts pumping herself up, bouncing her shoulders as though she’s about to step into a ring on fight night, but I see the slight cringe as her movement reminds her just how sore she really is. “Let’s fuck shit up.”
“Okay, Mike Tyson, keep your panties on.”
