Eyes narrowed, he swallows audibly. “I’m not some broken little boy, Grace. I’m Axel Donovan. I don’t give a shit about any of this.”
“Yeah, Axe, you do.” There’s no hiding the softening of my tone. “Stop blaming me for the choices our father made. You wanna kill me, then kill me. But it better beonlyfor what you think I did, and not as a way for you to work through your daddy issues.”
His body goes rigid, his scowl deepening. The barrel presses tighter against my forehead.
I close my eyes. I think this might be it. The moment my brother ends my life.
I wait.
And I wait.
And… nothing.
When I find the nerve to crack a lid, Axe is staring. The pulse raging in my ears goes into overdrive. I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. If he’s decided to let me keep breathing, or if he’s trying to figure out how to clean up the mess after he blows my head off.
With a grunt, he places the gun on his desk. “You got balls, Grace,” he finally says. “I’ll give you that.”
I release a long, shaky fucking breath. “I didn’t… I didn’t come here to mess anything up, okay? I just… I just wanted to come home.”
He sighs deeply and drags his palm over his face. “Look?—”
He stills, his focus slicing to the space behind me, surprise flashing across his face. Then he lunges for the gun on his desk.
“I fucking dare you,” a man says behind me, tone gruff, threatening.
A familiar click makes my body lock up. Metal on metal. A gun getting ready to shoot.
Fingers weave through my hair, and I’m jerked back into a hard chest, the smell of leather and cigarettes hitting my nostrils. That hand cranks my head to the side, forcing me to look up. A skull and crossbones inked into skin. A half-rotted, menacing smile, a barrel pointed at Axe’s head.
Raiders.
My stomach dips. Heartbeat jacking up. Adrenaline rushing through my veins.
“I know that face,” the man says as he pulls me closer. “Look at this, boys,” he calls out as two more leather-clad Raiders pile in. “Two little snakes caught in the grass.”
One grabs for Axe, who’s wearing a murderous expression, ready for a fight. Ready to fucking die. But that barrel presses into my cheek, making him pause. Long enough that he doesn’t have time to block the baseball bat suddenly swinging at his head.
I scream when he goes down, but then a hand is pressing against my mouth, cutting off the sound. Roughly, I’m yanked towards the door, the grip on my hair tightening and lips pressed to my ear.
“Oh, honey,” he whispers, “you and I are gonna have a hell of a time together.”
I clamp my teeth down on the fingers covering my mouth, but he only laughs.
“I bite too, baby girl.”
There’s no fighting this. No way I can reach that trusty knife lodged in my boot.
He’s too strong.
As I’m thrown into the back of a car, I catch a glimpse of them dragging Axe’s big, unconscious body out of the building. The view is cut off when a man pulls a sack over my head and I’m thrown into darkness.
31
Inhale.Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
I will my heartbeat to slow, my panic to drain away.
I will myself to channel the kind of person Jimmy always tells me I need to be—the calm, unbothered, fearless badass. A woman who wouldn’t sweat this. Who wouldn’t be fighting back tears. Who wouldn’t be struggling to breathe because terror wouldn’t be wreaking havoc on her nervous system.
