She’d never forgive me if he killed us both.
I spit at him, a glob landing in his eye, and he grimaces.
Yanking my knees to my chest, I use both feet to kick him in the dick.
The sound that bursts from his mouth would have me laughing if there wasn’t so much on the line. I turn, leaving a gasping and spluttering Sawyer behind as I grab the revolver.
The metal is cool in my grip.
I pull back the hammer, flip onto my back, point it at Sawyer.
And fire.
Click.
Lucky son of a bitch.
I pull back the hammer again, but he’s already lunging forward. He grips my waist, standing as he lifts me with total ease—and throws me.
Silence screams as my body connects with the glass table. It shatters, shards biting into my skin as my back meets the patio. Slashes sting and split as I groan, needing to turn, but not wanting to cut myself further.
Air is smashed out of me when Sawyer boots me in the stomach. A rib cracks. Glass buries into my back. Everything hurts—my body, my heart, my mind. But I won’t give up.
Heaving out a breath, I flip onto my front, dragging myself through literal glass.
Sawyer kicks me again.
And again.
Then he comes into view. Expensive designer shoes, polished and perfect. Tiredness, agony, bone-rattling exhaustion. It sweeps across me all at once, and I rest my cheek on the ground, pulling in painful breaths.
“She gave up too,” Sawyer says, crouching before me. “After her third dick, she just stopped struggling. Probably enjoyed it.” I stare out across the lake, past glittering fairy lights and memories from days ago, where Guy held me, and kissed me. Justice felt possible. Hope was so damn close.
At this point, filled with bullets and glass, I should give up.
I’m bleeding heavily. My bones are broken. I’m dizzy, and cold, and ready to sleep.
Death is curling around me, so I should feel helpless.
But as fairy lights sway gently in the summer breeze, I smile.
I smile because giving up is never an option.
Alistair didn’t raise a quitter.
My hand darts out, and I swipe the glass across Sawyer’s Achilles heel. It’s tough, and spongy, and the piece of glass closed in my hand will probably leave scars, but I’m still smiling. Especially when I cut his other heel, too.
Sawyer is silent at first, and then a gut-wrenching, beautiful, haunting scream tears from his throat.
He falls back, and I grin, pushing myself up on trembling arms. I watch on as Sawyer’s hands hover at his feet, panting out screams of terror and pain.
He doesn’t even stop me from shoving him back and straddling him. He just keeps screaming, and screaming?—
“Let’s see if I can make you squeal,” I whisper, flexing my hand around the shard of glass.
Lina Fox falls away. The little girl who dreamed of marrying a Sinclair, who loved her parents and Christmas Eve. I step into Monty Reid. A survivor. A killer. A woman who was handed a fate and tossed it aside because she didn’t want to accept that path. Instead, she carved out her own.
And it led her here.
