Page 284 of Vexatious Queen

I stepped back and nodded to Myles.

“I need to make a call. When you’re done, meet me in my office. We have someone else to chase down tonight.”

“Aye, we do,” Myles said, slipping the brass knuckles on his fingers.

Liam followed me as I walked to the door.

“No, please. I’m a good guy. I just…ah!”

Sharpe’s screams echoed around me until the heavy door slammed shut.

“What’s the plan,” Liam asked.

“I need to get in touch with Marcus,” I said as my phone rang with a call from Blake.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“She’s gone,” Blake said, his voice shaking.

My blood turned to ice in my veins.

“What do you mean she’s gone?”

I hit speaker and looked at Liam, his eyes grew darker with bottled rage.

“Ren was asleep, and Mo was guarding her, so I went to get some coffee for us. When I got back, Mo was knocked out inside the room, and Ren was gone. Fuck, Nash…I’m⁠—”

My nostrils flared.

“No. This is not your fault,” I said.

“But…”

“Blake. Focus. I need you to stay with Edmundo so I don’t have to worry about him. We’ll get Ren back.”

“How?”

“I think I know where to start,” I said, and hung up.

I opened the door to the torture room and whistled. Theo and Myles looked up at me. Lifting my gun, I fired, and Sharpe went lax in the chains.

“We need to go. Now.”

MARCH 16 – MONDAY 10:50 PM

Ren

The throbbing in my head was so violent that it felt like my skull had split apart from the inside.

“That is not what we agreed on,” a woman snapped. “This is supposed to be quick and clean, and then we get the hell out of here.”

The sound of her voice speared straight through the pain, and I groaned softly before I could stop myself.

What…happened?

My eyes fluttered open, then shut again, feeling like they weighed a ton. The last clear memory I had was falling asleep in the hospital room. White walls. Beeping machines. Blake, sitting beside me as he wrote down song lyrics.

“I don’t care what the plan was,” a man said sharply. “You brought a liability here, so now, she needs to get her hands dirty.”