His head moves an inch, confirming he’s listening.
“His dad and uncle didn’t know about it. You know about the Weed and Tweed?”
I figured he’d do his research. He nods.
“Cade added extra for certain clients. Women.”
He treated them like dog shit. Keeping the handful of girls locked in a room, chained by their necks to the wall. He’d roll them out to special clients.
“I’d been hired to make a hit. Didn’t expect the girl to be there,” I explain. “That’s how I found out about his operation.”
I’d snuck into some aristocratic fuck’s million-dollar terrace flat. I expected outdated furniture, a well-stocked bar, and various stuffy knickknacks.
I found all of that, plus the guy assaulting a barely legal kid.
“Needless to say, he and I got into it.” I’ve thought a lot about the actions I took. How I don’t regret any of them. I just wish I’d done it better. Tighter. Cleaner. The Ghost wouldn’t have made a mess out of the operation, like I did.
Tristan rolls his head. I keep my chin down, studying the pattern of the rug and the cords plugged into the wall’s electrical outlet.
“What happened?” he asks, his voice like gravel.
He’s seen the scar on my leg. The nasty, pink thing that crosses over my femoral artery.
I’m a female working class woman with no education. But I’d never felt so stuck in my life as I did when Cade had me trapped in some shitty little room, where he kept all his playthings. I’d never felt so afraid, my heart squeezing, unable to breathe.
Me or you in the body bag, he’d said, sneering down at me while I bled out.
I’d never been so scared in my life. It hit me then, that’s exactly what he wanted. What he expected. Terror to take over my body and reactions so that I couldn’t fight.
“You’ve got nothing to lose,”Sammie’s ghost had whispered from somewhere within the dark room. It’d been the absolute truth.
My mother didn’t speak to me. I had no friends. No lovers or kids. Sure, I’d started to put some money in the bank, but it’s all meaningless when you’re dead.
I could either try to fight for myself or let this arsehole win.
Cade wasn’t expecting my other leg to move. To kick out. He wasn’t expecting me to grab the medical grade knife and stab it in his chest. Too bad I missed his heart by an inch.
I ran through a dark hallway. When the door opened, I got to an equally dark tunnel. But my feet were running along pavement, meaning I’d gotten outside. I ran and ran.
Clearing my throat, I play with the hem of my shirt. “The first contract I’d ever fulfilled was for Hadrian.”
I know Tristan hates it every time I say the guy’s name, but he’s silent for once.
“That was it,” I say, my throat tightening. “Like he paid out, I thought. . .”
We had this funny connection. My sister. And the fact that we both did what needed to be done to make sure her killer didn’t live. I thought I’d never see him again, and I’m not saying that in some dramatic, slow-moving, Oscar winning motion picture type of way. We had nothing other than that one massively strange blip of a moment that we both knew would stick with us forever. It didn’t mean we’d ever have to talk to one another again, though.
“I was running down the fucking road,” I tell Tristan, my insides burning. “And Cade’s guys are chasing me.”
Cade had roared for his foot soldiers. Fucking animalistic, despite a knife in his chest.
“What happened?” Tristan asks, reaching his arm out.
I grab onto him, my fingers softly tracing his tattoos.
“I’m running down the road, and I’m not even sure how I managed that. I knew there wasn’t shit I could do. Even if Ididn’t pass out, they were going to catch me. And then I see it. All brightly lit up.”
“A police station?” Tris jokes.
