Luke and I followed Angel and his crew to Clemente’s mansion. The place was quiet when we arrived. There was no visible security, no signs of life that should have set off alarm bells, but Angel assured me everything was fine, and they had us covered.
We went in with guns drawn, moving through an unlocked door and down a long hallway until we turned into a room and found ourselves staring down the barrel of a nightmare.
Clemente and Lawrence were standing there, cool as you can be, with about fifty armed men at their backs. Looking up, there were more on the balconies above the second and third floors, guns everywhere.
When I turned to Angel, his weapon was already pointed at us.
With blood pounding through my veins and sweat trickling down my back, it hit me all at once. We’d been played. The El Pasos had been working against us the entire time.
“Why?” The word came out harder than I felt.
“Money.”
I raised my gun at him anyway, and he smirked.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’ve got over fifty guns pointed at you right now.”
He wasn’t wrong, and as much as I didn’t give a damn about my odds, I wasn’t willing to let Luke pay for my pride. I put my gun down and let them take us.
They dragged Luke and me down to a room beneath the mansion with no windows or furniture, only plain white walls and two chairs sitting in the center like they’d been waiting for us.
Luke and I spent the next several hours in those chairs, hands and feet bound, while they beat us until I couldn’t open my eyes.
When I spat at them and demanded to know what they wanted, they told me that once the Blood Brothers saw the photographs of us beaten half to death, Lawrence would get exactly what he was after. I knew straightaway it had something to do with Lexi, and just as quickly, that neitherRhyder nor the Blood Brothers were ever going to let that happen.
“Just kill me,” I spat.
Lawrence crouched down in front of me, pulling a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and using it to lift my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“The Blood Brothers have something that belongs to me,” he said quietly. “And I will do whatever it takes to get it back, even if that means killing one of their own.”
He smirked, and the sharp, expensive scent of his aftershave turned my stomach. I smiled back at him and spat directly in his face, and I took real pleasure in watching blood and saliva run down his perfectly composed expression.
That bought me a few more beatings, not from Lawrence, of course, because a man like him would never dirty his perfectly manicured hands. No, he had someone else take care of it for him, and that someone took great pleasure in adding to what was already a pretty thorough job.
I don’t remember much after that.
The beatings came often enough that Luke and I were barely conscious most of the time, drifting in and out, oblivious to whatever was happening around us.
What I do remember is Tracker walking into that room, and the relief that flooded through me when I saw him, with the certainty that if anyone could get us out of there, it was him.
But then the room erupted, gunfire exploding from every direction, and everything after that happened in fragments.
I tried to get in front of the bullet.
I wasn’t fast enough.
Tracker, being exactly the man he always was, took it instead, and I dropped to my knees beside him without asecond thought, cradling his head in my lap, telling him to stay with me, to fight, and not dare give up. More shots rang out, and I caught a glimpse of the Blood Brothers pouring into the room, guns blazing, but all I could focus on was Tracker.
Through the noise, smoke, and chaos, he managed to whisper that he loved me and I needed to look after his woman. He made me promise it, right there with tears burning down my already swollen face, and I promised him.
I meant every word of it.
The last thing I remember is flames and smoke swallowing the room whole, and hands dragging me out against my will. I fought them, or tried to, begging them to let me go back for Tracker, screaming at them to go back in and get him. But I had nothing left in the tank, and when I twisted to look behind me, the fire had already taken over, raging and consuming everything in its path.
I woke up the next day in a hospital bed, Luke in the bed beside me, both of us wrecked.
Quill was there, slumped in a chair with his eyes closed, and Flame sat across from him, scrolling mindlessly through his phone. When Flame noticed I was awake, he was on his feet in an instant, the sound pulling Quill out of his sleep.
