It feels like I’ve been submerged in a cold basin and I can’t get out of it. My world is turned upside down and I don’t even have a single familiar thing to cling to. I feel lost. So lost.
All my energy goes toward not repeating things, though my right index finger beats a frenetic rhythm on my thigh. Dad sits in the driver’s seat beside me, and I stare.
“Where’s Piper?”
There’s a million questions I should be asking, but the answer to that is the only one I need.
“Don’t worry your head about it.”
I clench my fists around the gun he’d handed me and has left me with, apparently as a constant reminder of my own weakness. But now, when he eyes my hand tensing around it, I can sense just a tiny bit of nervousness in his eyes again. Maybe he knows that if anythingcouldmake me surmount what he calls my weakness, it’s her.
“She’s being taken to my boss,” he answers at last.
“Devil?”
The beating rhythm of my finger turns to a gentler circle on the denim of my jeans. Maybe this isn’t so bad. I know Damien wants her dead, but if Logan’s there… all isn’t lost.
I hate that I have to depend on Logan instead of myself.
“Not Devil,” says Dad, sending a chill down my spine.
“Since when don’t you work for Devil?” I hiss.
“Since I got a better deal.”
I grit my teeth. This is Tragen all over. Only I can believe it about Tragen. I can’t believe it about Dad.
Tragen is really just a glorified soldier, and when he was offered a particularly juicy contract, he didn’t think twice.Loyalty doesn’t matter when you’re a soldier. Contracts do. Rules do. Fear does.
But my dad… he’s already richer than he needs to be. And he’s not motivated by acquiring more wealth. What he cares about is power.
He’s always bragged about his important position at Devil. He was so focused on me being a soldier because of the prestige. Nothing else mattered to him.
And now… he’s selling out? For what?
“I’ve always sided with the winners,” he says easily, pressing the gas pedal to the floor. “Devil isn’t going to win this war. And when the smoke clears, I want to be on the right side.”
“What’s the right side?” I ask slowly. “Who are the winners?”
“Thewinner,” he corrects me. “And that’s Miguel Coltello.”
My blood freezes in my veins. “Miguel Coltello,” I manage to stammer. “Coltello. Coltello.” Then I bite my lip so hard it bleeds to keep from repeating it again.
My dad shakes his head, looking disgusted at me, but he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t need to, anyway. I know what he’s thinking.
Freak.
“He wants to kill Piper, doesn’t he?” I whisper. “She’s being delivered to the man who wants to kill her.”
He doesn’t bother to answer that either, just drives on in silence.
So she’s been taken by Coltello’s men again. Only this time, it’s not Tragen who’s driving me to free her, for his own reasons. My dad’s the one driving, and unless I kill him, she’s dead.
It’s impossible. Not because I give a shit about him. But because I’m locked in the mental prison he’s been building, brick by brick, iron bar by iron bar, since the day Mom walked out.
I sink back in my seat, listening helplessly as his words wash over me.
“Don’t think you ever hid a single thing from me, kid,” he says smugly. “I know just what the two of you have been up to since the day you first brought her home. My son, taking up with the poorest, ugliest girl in town. Pathetic. But I guess she’s the only one who’d date a freak like you, huh?”
