Heinous Crimes Cm Wondrak

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 Heinous Crimes
Mafia Princess: Book Three
CM Wondrak
© 2024 Candace Wondrak
All Rights Reserved.
Book cover by Quirah Casey at Temptation Creations.
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Chapter One – Giselle
Chapter Two – Cade
Chapter Three – Giselle
Chapter Four – Luca
Chapter Five – Giselle
Chapter Six – Zander
Chapter Seven – Giselle
Chapter Eight – Giselle
Chapter Nine – Giselle
Chapter Ten – Ezekiel
Chapter Eleven – Giselle
Chapter Twelve – Giselle
Chapter Thirteen – Luca
Chapter Fourteen – Giselle
Chapter Fifteen – Cade
Chapter Sixteen – Giselle
Chapter Seventeen – Ezekiel
Chapter Eighteen – Zander
Chapter Nineteen – Giselle
Chapter Twenty – Giselle
Chapter Twenty-One – Giselle
Epilogue – Giselle
 Chapter One – Giselle
For a religion that lauded itself on forgiveness, Christianity sure was violent. Just take their most well-known symbol: a
crucifix. And not only that, but a crucifix with Jesus, God’s alleged son begotten by a mystical encounter with a virgin, nailed
to it. His head hanging low, his body thin and gaunt; they never stray away from how terrible Jesus supposedly looked before
his death.
Of course, he didn’t stay dead, but that’s beside the point.
Whether or not he knew he’d stay dead didn’t matter. He sacrificed himself to save humanity. Sure, there might be
something to applaud for that, but going back to the religion itself: why so violent? Shouldn’t religion be an escape from the
already violent world we all lived in?
I was a daughter of a self-made mafia king, so I knew all about the violence this world contained. The true depths of
mankind’s greed and sick hunger.
And I shouldn’t be here. Not only should I not be here, sitting in the front pew of this church after mass had ended, but I
shouldn’t be alive. Just three weeks ago I’d tried to throw myself off a bridge because I couldn’t handle the weight of being
alive in this world anymore—and unlike Jesus Christ, I had no godly father to bring me back from the dead days later.
No, I didn’t have God, but I had the next best thing: Father Charlie.
I supposed I was here because of him, because he’d saved me that night, listened to me talk, told me the hardest part of this
world was to live in it, to continue on even though there were no promises the struggle would get easier.
Father Charlie had saved my life, and now… I didn’t know why I was still here. I felt purposeless. Forsaken. Alone. My
father would never understand; he was the one who sold me out to Rocco Moretti, so he obviously didn’t care.
No one cared about me. I had no friends, no loving mother to combat the acidity my father threw at me. I had no one, and I
think that’s what made it worse.
What was I supposed to do with my life? How was I meant to go on when I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like in
a week, or a month, or a year from now? How the hell could I be expected to go on alone for the rest of my life?
Father Charlie had walked down the main aisle at the end of the mass, and everyone had gotten up and gone with him. From
what I’d seen before, some people didn’t leave right away. They stayed to talk to him, to talk to other parishioners. That had
given me the option of moving to the front once it was emptied, and now I sat, staring up at the statue of Jesus Christ hanging on
the wall behind the altar.
Violence. It always came down to violence, one way or another. Jesus was proof of that. I was, too. I guess when humanity
was involved, asking for non-violence was simply asking for too much. We, as a species, were vicious and vile, angry and
self-absorbed. Hateful.
And I was one of them. Try as I might to find peace in this whole religion business, I just didn’t think I could. My mother
might have found herself in this, she might’ve enjoyed listening to Father Charlie drone on about similar things each week, but
it just wasn’t me.
Now, that didn’t mean I’d stop coming, because what the hell else was I going to do with my life? At least it gave me
something to do while I wasn’t in school.
Hah. School. Surrounded by other teens with normal lives, normal problems.
No one knew me. No one tried.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, staring at that cross, wondering why everything always had to come back to violence
and blood, but it had to be a while. I picked at the gloves on my hands. Short things, satin, the color white, the color my father
wanted me to wear in public.
White was an angel’s color, and I was his so-called angel. With my yellow hair in such contrast to his pitch-black locks, I
supposed he wanted to play up my innocence to the world, even if it was a lie.
Because it was. It was the worst lie of them all.
“What’s on your mind, child?” Father Charlie’s voice entered my head, snapping me back into reality. He must’ve finished
with everyone else, because he was in the process of sitting down beside me. He groaned as he sat in the wooden pew with
me, gathering up his robes so he did not accidentally touch me with them.
Father Charlie was always careful about that. He was the only person who knew what I’d gone through, how it had made
me feel, how I cringed at the thought of touching anyone, and so he let me have my momentary peace.
I did not tear my eyes off the cross in front. I couldn’t. I stared hard at the statue of a crucified Jesus as I thought about the
violence and the hate; everything religion stood against, it seemed its followers contained in droves. How many wars were
started throughout history because of one religion or another?
How could anyone find peace in something like that? I just didn’t get it.
“Do you remember my mother?” I asked quietly, still staring at that statue. My mother had died so long ago; if it wasn’t for
pictures, pictures which I had to dig through the house to find, since my father had long since packed them up, I wouldn’t even
know what she looked like.
 She’d been beautiful. Thick, pretty yellow hair, like mine. Blue eyes that I did not inherit. She’d been a beauty, a stunner, a
woman so gorgeous that my father had to have her.
But beauty was like religion. Just another reason for violence and hate.
Father Charlie was quiet for a while. He’d told me in the past he remembered my mother, but we never really spoke about
her. I didn’t know if she simply came to mass and went to confessionals every week, or if they spoke beyond that.
And then, after a minute of silence, he spoke softly, “Yes, of course I remember your mother. She was a beautiful soul. You
remind me very much of her.”
That got me to draw my eyes off the Jesus statue and bring them to Father Charlie. The moment I met his warm, amber stare,
I realized just how sad he sounded when he spoke of her. Even after all this time, to still sound so despondent about her… she
must’ve been an important member of this church.
When I said nothing, Father Charlie went on, “When I heard of her passing, I… it came as a shock to me. She was so lively,
so full of faith and love. She deserved the world. It truly isn’t fair sometimes what life throws at us.”
Whether or not he’d say that about any member of this church, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. What I did care about, in that
moment, was the sincerity in his tone, how serious and thoughtful he appeared sitting beside me.
I believed him. I believed every single word he spoke, and that wasn’t something I could say about other men in my life.
I said something then I’d never voiced in my whole life, but it was something I’d caught myself wondering on more than
one occasion: “I wonder why she never left my father.”
After all, if she would’ve left, maybe she could’ve taken me with her. Surely she could’ve gone somewhere, anywhere,
where it would’ve been too much of a hassle for my father to track us down and drag us back to him.
Maybe she’d still be alive. Maybe I could’ve had a normal life. Maybe a forty-something-year-old man wouldn’t have
taken my virginity and made me dread the thought of ever having a husband of my own.
Father Charlie was slow in saying, “From what I recall, she didn’t have family other than your father. She… didn’t have
anywhere else to go. She wanted a good life for you, and she believed your father’s money would provide it.”
I knew what he wasn’t saying, though: money did not always provide happiness. Just look at me. Look at what he did to me
not too long ago. He fucking sold me for a night, and he didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit about the scars inside, how I would
forever hate myself for it.
Miguel Santos was a terrible human being and a worse father, and I hated him.
“I know you are skeptical about all of this,” Father Charlie whispered, “but your mother found solace here. I’m glad you
came to me when you did, Giselle. If there is only one person I can save in this world, I want it to be you.”
As he spoke, as I gazed into his eyes, I swore I saw the corners grow watery. The emotion in his voice almost made me tear
up—and I had no idea why. But I was starting to understand why my mother came here so often. It wasn’t the religion or the
services. No.
It was for Father Charlie.
I wanted to hug the man, as stupid as it sounded. I wanted to lean into him and close my eyes, listen to his calm, soothing
voice wash over me as he told me everything would be all right.
But I didn’t. All I did was look away and mutter under my breath, “I’m not worth being saved.” And as sad and pathetic as
it was, I genuinely believed it. The things my father trained into me, the things I knew how to do—kill a man with a pencil, for
instance—separated me from the rest.
And that said nothing about the things I thought about. Killing my father, first and foremost. Someone with murder in their
heart and on their mind wasn’t worth saving.
“Everyone is worth saving, child, even you.” Father Charlie almost stood, but he hesitated, and even though I wasn’t
looking at him, I could feel his wizened eyes on me. “Especially you.” And then he got up and wandered off, to take off his
robes and clean up after the mass.
It never occurred to me what he meant, not until it was too late.
Really, things hit a little different now that I knew he was my real father.

I stood in the shower, hot water pelting my head at a temperature that might be uncomfortable for some. It was fine for me. I
could hardly feel it. Everything felt so… different. Off, almost. Like I wasn’t really in my body. Not in control. Just a passenger
watching time tick by.
Damian—or Atlas, I supposed—wanted my help in taking my father down. My father, who’d hired some Greenback
Serpents to kill Father Charlie and ransack the church. My father, who’d raped me and left me for dead, thinking the Serpents
were going to kill me the moment they laid their hands on me.
No, not my father, because my real father was dead. Miguel. Miguel fucking Santos was not my father. He never was.
Everything in my life had been a lie, and I’d never questioned it.
How stupid was I?
It was like my mind had too much to think about, too many warring memories in my head I couldn’t think straight. I angled
my head down and stared at my hands. I blinked, and just for the quickest of seconds, I saw them covered in blood instead of
water, the blood of the Serpents who’d killed Father Charlie.
My dad. My real, biological dad.
A priest who’d had an affair with a younger, married woman. Something like that went against everything he stood for,
didn’t it? And yet… and yet, even with that sin, he was still the best man I’d ever met.
I wished I would’ve had more time with him. I wished I would’ve known. I wished… God, I wished everything was
different, that my mother was still alive and that Father Charlie was, too. I wished we could’ve been a family, a real family,
instead of the lies we lived.
My hands curled into fists, my fingernails digging into my palms so hard they might’ve broken the skin. I couldn’t feel it. I
couldn’t feel anything except an overwhelming hatred for one man, the very same man who was the reason my parents were
dead.
Miguel thought he had it all planned out. Teaming up with Rocco, he’d blame the Greenback Serpents for shooting me and
killing me—even though there wasn’t a body, that’s what he would say, because he had no reason to believe they’d keep me
alive. He and Rocco would demand a paternity test from Atticus and test it against Nixon Hawke, and once it came back that he
was the father, another spot on the Black Hand would open up.
And then they’d get the Palmers on their side, with whatever other dirt Miguel had dug up on the Hand. They’d stage a
coup, a takeover, and Miguel would only stop when he booted Atticus Jameson from the Hand, along with Shay, so he could sit
at the top.
Too bad for that asshole I wasn’t dead.
My fists shook, and I dropped them to my sides. There was no shampoo here, no soap for me; it was clear Damian wasn’t
actually living here while in town. He’d told me he’d send a few of his guys out for food and everything else I’d need here
while we planned.
I couldn’t go back to Cypress, not until everything was ready to be set in motion. We’ll have one chance to take Miguel off-
guard, so we had to come up with a foolproof plan.
I shut the water off and stepped out, getting water all over the floor since there was no towel or rug. I moved before the
vanity, and once I stood there, I reached for the mirror, wiping off the steam from the reflective surface.
The face that stared back at me was the face I’d grown accustomed to seeing: pretty, flawless, more like my mother than my
father… because my father wasn’t really my father. I could see it now. Miguel’s eyes were pitch-black, the darkest brown
imaginable. Mine were more of an amber color, lighter and warmer, more akin to Father Charlie’s.
My real dad. I had my real dad’s eyes.
Since there was no towel, I couldn’t really dry off. I had to get dressed in the same clothes I’d worn before. In reality, I
wanted to burn these clothes; they were the clothes I’d worn when Miguel finally showed his true colors to me. They deserved
nothing more than the trash heap, but until I got new threads, I’d have to wear them.
I couldn’t even brush my hair. I probably looked like a drowned rat when I walked out of that bathroom, but it was a
necessary pause on the conversation Damian and I were having. I needed to wash off the feeling of Miguel’s hands on me—
along with other parts of him.
Damian was sitting in the small dining area between the kitchen and the living room, and when I walked out of the hall, he
looked up, a small smile tugging at his lips. “You still look like shit, baby girl. Why don’t you tell me what size you are, and
I’ll send the boys out to grab you some new clothes, too?” His dark eyes twinkled as I approached and sat down across from
him, though he didn’t say anything more than that.
I looked hard at him. At his smirk. At his dark eyes. At all of his tattoos, especially that teardrop near his eye. That thick
golden chain, ever-present around his neck. The older shirt, and what I knew were torn jeans beneath the table.
All in all, he didn’t look like a criminal warlord. He looked like a stereotypical thug—but I supposed that was the point.
He was Atlas, and yet, at the same time, he wasn’t. To everyone else, he was just Atlas’s right-hand man.
“I don’t care what clothes they get me,” I said as I rested my hands on the table between us. No gloves. What was the point
in gloves now?
“Come on, baby girl. Don’t be difficult now. Just tell me your sizes, and I’ll send ‘em out.” The smirk grew into a full-out
smile when he added, “Sizes for everything, baby. Everything.”
That might’ve made me blush before, but now? Now I simply held his stare and rattled off my sizes. Pants, shirts,
underwear, and bras. Damian never took his eyes off me, and his grin only deepened once I finished.
“There,” he whispered as he pulled out his phone. “Was that so hard?” I assumed he must’ve been typing out a message to
the guys he had guarding the entrance to the building—still wasn’t sure if this was a house or something else. Either way, we
weren’t in Cypress. We weren’t close enough to be caught.
Once the message was sent, he set his phone down and cracked his knuckles. “I suppose that means it’s just you an’ me for a
while. Sorry if this wasn’t obvious before, but I don’t want to leave you alone here.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Don’t trust me, Damian?” Since no one else was around, I added, “Or should I call you Atlas now?”
 A low chuckle escaped him, and he tapped the table between us. “Damian is fine. You understand the whole Atlas thing
needs to be kept on the DL, right? No one can know, except you and me.”
“I won’t tell anyone, and I’m not stupid. I know leaving this place would be dumb. I don’t need guards at all times.” Under
my breath, I muttered, “I got that enough with my… with Miguel.”
That got him to give me a look. “Miguel, eh? Figure you’d distance yourself from dear old pops before we put an end to his
schemes?”
Damian didn’t need to know the whole truth. What Miguel did to me… I’ll keep that to myself, but he might as well know
the rest. “He told me the truth before your men picked me up. My mother had an affair with a priest years ago, and that affair
resulted in me.”
“Shit,” Damian whispered. “An affair, huh? And with a priest, no less? Say, it wouldn’t be the same priest Miguel hired
some Serpents to take out, would it?” The look I gave him right then was all the answer he needed, and he shook his head and
swore under his breath. “Goddamn. I’m sorry, Giselle, I really am.”
I wanted to move on from that particular topic, though, so I said, “Besides, isn’t it stupid to leave me here with Serpents
who want to teach me a lesson for killing some of their brothers?”
“They know those brothers you killed went against the code. We don’t do nothing inside no church,” Damian said, fury in
his gaze. “Those men thought they’d go behind Atlas’s back and accept a job from Miguel Santos. No, you did what I would’ve
done once I got my hands on them, so in that way, you saved me some trouble. Now, those boys I sent to Cypress’s church, on
the other hand—”
“That wasn’t me.”
“I know. It was that damned Black Hand priest. What’s his name again?”
“Ezekiel,” I murmured, remembering what he’d shown me beneath the church, and then what he’d shown me before the
altar. His bare back. All those scars. The truth of his monster. Ezekiel and I were more alike that I could’ve ever known.
I guess sleeping with a man of the cloth was something that ran in my family. Like mother, like daughter.
“Father Ezekiel. Is that really his name? Sounds off.”
“It’s his name.” I spoke that part a little too quickly, because the glimmer in Damian’s eyes flickered with amusement after
that.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a crush on the man. He is a man of the cloth, you know. Although, apparently priests have dicks,
if what you said is true. Who knew? I guess every man has urges. Plus, our Father Ezekiel is a killer, so—”
“He killed those men for me,” I told him. “Do not go after Ezekiel. If you must get your pound of flesh, you can get it from
me—after we take down Miguel.” I would not let Damian sic anyone on Ezekiel, especially when what I said was true: it was
all for me.
Damian chuckled. “Huh. Maybe crush was too juvenile a word. You love that priest, don’t you?”
I leaned back, and as I did so, the hands I had on the table fell onto my lap. I had to look away, unable to keep up the eye
contact between us, for whatever reason. “Someone like me isn’t capable of love, Damian.”
“Don’t say that, baby girl. Love is universal. Good men, bad men, men of the cloth—we’re all capable of that pesky
feeling.” Damian stared at me for a bit before adding, “Don’t worry your pretty little head. I won’t have the priest killed for
what he did. You have my word.”
It should make me feel better, hearing him say that, but it didn’t. I was a strange mixture of feelings right now, and until I
had some extended time alone, I feared I’d be a mess.
“So,” he abruptly changed the subject, “let’s discuss Miguel. I got some eyes on him, but they can’t shadow him all the
time. Do you know anything we might be able to use against dear old ex-daddy?”
Some people might wonder if telling Damian anything would be a mistake, but I was past the point of not trusting him. He’d
had many opportunities to kill me himself, and he hadn’t. If he was only using me to take Miguel down, then so be it. After all,
that’s the only thing I wanted in this world, too.
Well, that and one other thing.
“Miguel is teaming up with Rocco Moretti,” I said, earning myself a glimmer of amusement from Damian. I didn’t know if
he knew this or not, so I kept going, “They think Nixon Hawke isn’t a real Hawke, that he’s Atticus’s son from an old affair. I
talked to Shay about it, and she didn’t seem surprised, which means—”
“It’s true,” Damian spoke with a nod. “And that means two spots will open up on the Hand once the Palmers find out. I
assume ex-daddy wants those spots for himself and Rocco. Makes sense. What I don’t get is why you had to get engaged to that
Luca boy.”
Luca. Luca Moretti. The one heir out of every other heir I should feel nothing toward. I guess Damian was right: that pesky
love didn’t care who you were or why it shouldn’t exist. When it happened, it happened, and there’s nothing you could do
about it.
My heart panged when I thought about Luca, how he was in the dark about all of this. He knew his father had me for a night
three years ago, but he didn’t know the half of it now.
 “My—” It took everything in me to stop myself from saying my father when I was talking about Miguel. Old habits.
“Miguel wanted me to be in misery since I wasn’t his real daughter.”
“And why would engaging you to Luca Moretti make you miserable? Besides being stuck with a husband you didn’t
want?”
This particular secret I’d told others before, recently too. The men who’d taken a piece of my heart in spite of how
fractured and black it was. I supposed there was nothing holding me back from this truth now.
I told him: “Three years ago, my father gave me to Rocco Moretti for a night.”
That mustn’t have been what Damian was expecting, because a muscle on his jaw twitched, and it took him far too long to
say, “He did what now?” His voice came out different, lower than normal, rougher, like a glimpse of the true gang leader he
was.
I couldn’t look at him right then, so I had to turn my face away and stare at the nearest wall as I repeated, “He gave me to
Rocco Moretti for one night, and Rocco made good use of his time with me.”
“Fucking bastard.” It was Damian’s turn to lean back in his chair. “So that’s why you like wearing those gloves. That
fucking asshole. How the fuck could he do that to his own—” He seemed to realize what he was saying, because his chest
hummed out a growl of a sound. “He knew then you weren’t his daughter.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Then he suggested I go to the same church my mother frequented before she died. I thought he was
trying to help me, but really, he just wanted my real father to see the state I was in. He wanted to torture us both—and he did. I
almost threw myself off a bridge. Father Charlie… my real dad, is the only reason I’m still here today.”
Instead of saying something, Damian got up. His chair scraped against the tiled floor as he got to his feet, and he walked
around the table, coming near me. He set a hand on the edge of the table and the chair behind my back before dropping to his
knees—but he didn’t touch me. He gave me space.
The man that was Atlas was respecting my boundaries without being asked. How strange was that?
I had to take my gaze off the wall and bring it to his face, studying the intense expression he wore. The way he was looking
at me, not quite like pity, but more like empathy, made my stomach twist.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and there was probably more he could’ve said, but he didn’t. He only watched me with those
dark eyes, eyes that were much like Miguel’s, only they were set in a face I didn’t mind staring at. “We’ll get that asshole back.
You and me.”
I didn’t know what came over me, but I found myself lifting a hand and bringing it to Damian’s face. My fingertips brushed
near the place on his cheek where the teardrop tattoo sat. When his warmth flooded me through my fingertips, I sucked in a hard
breath and fought the chill that threatened to sweep over me as a result of skin-on-skin contact.
Holding his stare with my own, I whispered, “I never imagined…”
Damian did not pull away, nor did he stand. He remained where he was, kneeling beside my chair, one of his hands curled
around the edge of the table and the other on the back of my chair as he asked, “Never imagined what?”
My hand was now fully cupping his cheek, the warmth of his skin undeniable on my palm. “I never imagined I’d sort-of like
Atlas.”
“Sort of, eh?” The corner of his mouth curled upward in a half-smirk. “I can work with that, baby girl.” That nickname that
I’d loathed in the beginning was now kind of familiar. I was beginning to like hearing him say it.
“I’ll take care of you,” Damian murmured, turning his face in toward my palm and breathing me in. “Whatever you need,
whatever you want—just say the word. I’ll make sure no one ever hurts you again.”
I believed him. Call me stupid, call me naive, call me whatever you want, but I believed him.
His eyes closed, and for a few moments, neither of us moved or spoke. It was almost like he was relishing the feeling of my
hand on his face, like he had to memorize the touch of my palm on his cheek, breathe me in and commit me to memory.
This… it was almost too intimate. Even though we were both clothed and nothing was going on, my truth was laid bare to
this man, this man who was a stranger to me in all respects—and yet, at the same time, he wasn’t a stranger.
He came to Cypress to take Miguel down, but more than that, he followed me here. I intrigued him. He came to the party
with all the heirs to see me. He bought me a beautiful gun that was now forgotten in the Moretti residence, even etched it with
my name, for me. He leaped at the chance to take me away from Miguel—and he had no idea the things Miguel would do to me
before handing me over.
So maybe this man, this Atlas, was more than a stranger to me after all.
When his dark eyes opened, he was looking right at me. With his face still turned in toward my palm, it was a very intense
expression, one I felt in my core. His chest rose and fell with heavy, ragged breaths, and he growled out, “You will have your
revenge, Giselle, I swear to it.”
It occurred to me then that Atlas, the leader of the Greenback Serpents, the man that had been a thorn in Miguel’s side for so
long, was beside me, kneeling. Kneeling for me. Kneeling to be close to me.
My hand was slow to slip off his face. “Do you get on your knees for everybody, or is it just me?”
That smirk turned into a full-blown grin, and Damian’s answer was perfect: “Just you.”
 “Mmm. Interesting.”
“Oh,” he breathed out, “it’s very interesting.”
My lungs suddenly felt tight, and it was a struggle to even say his name, “Damian, I—” Whatever else I might’ve said died
in the back of my throat, so instead of trying to find the right words, I simply slipped off the chair and sank to the floor with
him.
Before I knew what I was doing, I leaned into him, pressing my forehead against his cheek and hugging myself to him. I felt
his arms slowly wrap around me, and though part of me wanted to stiffen out of habit, I managed to stay relaxed.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Oh, don’t thank me yet. We ain’t out of the woods yet, but we’ll get there. We’ll—” Whatever else he was seconds from
saying, he stopped himself when I brought a hand to the other side of his face.
I lifted my forehead off his cheek the same moment I turned his head toward me. Our noses touched. He was so close my
eyes couldn’t focus on him properly. All I could think about, all I wanted… was to forget, forget the shitstorm that had become
my life, forget the truths I’d learned, forget everything.
And the only thing I wanted to do? Well, in that moment, the only thing I wanted to do was discover what his lips felt like
on mine.
I wanted to kiss him, and I wondered if he wanted the same thing.
I didn’t get the chance to find out. Before anything else happened, before I brought my lips to his, the front door to the place
burst open and someone rushed in, holding a gun. Damian responded in kind, leaping to his feet while simultaneously pulling
out his own iron, which he then pointed at the intruder. The men he had guarding the place must’ve already left to get me what I
needed, which meant it was just me, the intruder, and Damian.
The two were at a standoff, and the intruder said, “Step away from the girl.” A familiar, low voice that brought back certain
memories… certain dimly-lit memories.
“Like hell am I gonna do that,” Damian hissed back, finger on the trigger.
Oh, shit.
I jumped between them, yelling, “Don’t shoot each other!” Please, God, the last thing I needed was for these two to shoot
and kill each other. I stood between Damian and the intruder… AKA Cade Cunningham.
Cade, who, I might add, looked downright devilish in all black, with thick black gloves on his hands and a silenced pistol
pointed directly at us. At Damian, really. His wide, strong chest rose and fell with furious breaths, and his green eyes were
narrowed in our direction.
“Step away from him, princess,” Cade whispered.
“Yeah,” Damian agreed. “Move out of the way, baby girl. Let me handle this asshole.”
They both fumed, and from what it sounded like, they both really wanted to shoot the other. I, however, was not going to let
that happen.
I placed my hands on my hips, whipping my head between both men. Damian might not be as tall or as physically
impressive as Cade, but that’s because he wasn’t from a family of assassins. Cade killed people for a living. Damian killed,
yes, but it was a different beast entirely.
I settled on the gang leader behind me. “Damian, I trust Cade.”
Damian didn’t ask why, though he did take a while to lower his gun. Around the same time, the door Cade had bust through
completely fell off the hinges, crashing to the floor as the last hinge still hanging on tore off the door frame.
Cade sidestepped so the door wouldn’t fall on him, and Damian hissed out, “Goddamn it. This place is a rental. I ain’t
never getting my deposit back.”
Finally, Cade put his gun away, and while Damian went to inspect the damage, I walked over to Cade and asked, “How’d
you find me?” That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Out of everything that could’ve happened, out of everyone that
could’ve shown up… why Cade?
Not that I was complaining, because I wasn’t. Who could ever complain when the semi-grumpy, sexy as sin assassin came
to save you?
 Chapter Two – Cade
I took to watching her place after our little talk. It wasn’t strictly her place, though; it was the Moretti family’s place, at least
while they were here in the city. A fancy hotel in downtown Cypress. And since the unit was so high up, watching it wasn’t
easy. Luckily I’d found an empty office space across the street and rented it out myself. Not quite the same floor as their unit,
but close enough.
Someone wanted Giselle dead. Someone had shot her, miraculously missed anything important, and now put out a hit for
her, requesting my family take the job from the Guild.
I’d talked to her out of a professional courtesy. The girl and I had history, as much as I didn’t want to admit it. She… she
really was too young for me, but the sadness in those amber eyes made her seem older.
Her history wasn’t a good one. I’d been her first. Her first chosen. Out of a twist of fate, we’d met twice at the Playground,
and ever since I couldn’t seem to get the girl out of my head. It was like I knew I shouldn’t want her, but I couldn’t help myself.
Like I’d gotten a taste and now all I could think about was getting more. More, more, more; I’d never have enough. Never have
my fill of her.
I didn’t trust anyone with her, least of all that Luca Moretti. Not Luca, not Rocco, not even that Zander guy. Whoever was
out to get her, I’d find him and put a bullet in his head. I’d do it for her, but I’d also do it for myself, because even though she
was technically a married woman now, she was mine.
I know, I know. I shouldn’t think like that. It wasn’t right. It’d only end up disastrous for me. Falling for a girl who was now
a married woman? Fucking stupid as hell.
But…
But.
That morning, I had a meeting with my father. Isaac Cunningham, the head of our family, the man currently trying to get onto
the Black Hand. I had to tell him… I had to inform him I was canceling the contract, that our family could not accept it, even
though I already had. We’d lose some standing with the Guild, but that was a small price to pay for refusing to kill the girl you
might be in love with.
My father was in the room we’d changed into a study, and he’d looked up from his desk the moment I’d walked in. He
looked a lot like me. Add twenty years to me, and I imagined I’d look just like him. The same blond hair, the same emerald
eyes, the same hard cut jaw and discerning glare.
The Great Dragon.
And the look he gave me when I walked in told me he already knew what I was going to say, but he’d still force me to say
it, to admit it out loud. To admit my failure. It wasn’t often I failed, let alone refused a job.
I didn’t sit across from him. I stood, my arms folded over my chest.
“Well?” My father cocked his head at me as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, waiting. “Let’s hear it.”
“I’m turning in the contract, on behalf of every Cunningham,” I told him point-blank. “None of us will be killing Giselle
Santos.”
“It’s Giselle Moretti now, from what I hear,” he muttered. He set a hand on his knee, his fingers tapping. “I trust you know
how stupid it is to involve yourself with a married woman. It will not end well for you, son.”
“She did not want this marriage.”
“Women in our circle very rarely do, but they have a duty to their families.” He let out a harsh sigh, and then leaned
forward. His hands were now flat on his desk. “I won’t say I’m surprised. I’m not. However, I do think you need to stop and
take some time to yourself, Cade. Refusing a job, a job you’ve already accepted on behalf of our family, is something you’ve
never done before.”
I never met anyone I didn’t want to kill before. Life had tossed me one hell of a curve ball.
“I don’t want this to become a habit,” my father finished.
“It won’t,” I promised. “I’m meeting with the Lioness today to tell her.”
“She won’t be pleased with you, but you already know that.” He got up and walked around his desk, coming toward me. He
set a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it as he said, “Look, if this is what you feel you must do, then I’m behind you one hundred
percent. Do I wish you would’ve come to terms with your… feelings for the girl before accepting the job in the first place?
Yes, but I also know sometimes we can’t help it.”
He leaned closer to me, his voice dropping to a whisper as he added, “If I may give you some advice: make it worth your
while. Don’t waste this opportunity. You want the girl? Go after her. She’s no longer Miguel Santos’s heir, so she’s fair game
all around, even if she is a married woman.” He gave me a crack of a smile, released my shoulder so he could pat me on the
back, and then wandered over to his desk, sitting down once more.
Now that… that was not advice I thought I’d receive from my father.
“Now, I’d get the hell out of here if I were you,” my father advised. “The Lioness doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
No, that she did not.
 I turned on my heel and left his office. I was out of Cypress twenty minutes after that. On the way there, I called up Archie.
Out of all my siblings, he was the closest, both figuratively and physically. He’d be able to get to Cypress in less than an hour.
He answered on the second ring, and from the sound of his voice, I took it he was still half-asleep, “Yo, bro. What’s up?
Must be something really important to wake me up at—” There’s a pause as he must’ve checked the time. “—ten in the
morning.”
My lovely brother had accustomed himself to a life of best had at night. He was good at what he did, but he liked to party a
bit too much, if you asked me. He was still in his twenties, so I guess it was more acceptable for him, but whatever. The idiot
was the only reason I’d gone to the Playground in the first place.
So, really, all of this was his fault when you thought about it.
“It is. Get your ass out of bed and get to Cypress. I’m going to send you two addresses. One’s for an office space I’ve
rented out, and the other… I need you to watch the other while I’m out of town. I should get back late this afternoon—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell is going on? Why do you need me? Where are you going?”
“I’m meeting with the Lioness to return a contract I accepted.”
“Shit. Dad know?”
“He knows.”
Archie groaned. “Fine. I’m assuming I’m watching that girl you were talking about before. What’s her name again?
Antelope?”
My jaw ground. My brother, trying to be funny. “Giselle.”
“Ah, right. That’s the one.” He was lucky I had too much on my mind, otherwise I would’ve told him how shitty a joke that
was. Archie sounded worlds more awake when he said, “Just send me the addresses. I assume there’s a lockbox somewhere
for the stakeout space? I’ll need the code to that, too.”
“Thanks, Archie.”
“No problem. I just really hope you get the girl after all this, because man, what a pain in the ass—”
I hung up after that, not needing to hear him complain. I sent him the info. If all went well, I should be back before nightfall,
but that depended on how long this meeting with the Lioness took. She wasn’t going to be happy, and when she wasn’t happy,
she let the world know it.
I wouldn’t say she was my boss, but… well, no, she was definitely my boss.

The meeting took a while, mostly because the Lioness made me wait. The woman was never late, so she was doing this on
purpose. I sat there, at Guild headquarters, in that room made of glass, for what felt like an eternity before she strolled in, a
hard frown on her face. A middle-aged woman, she took no shit from anybody. I respected her, and she, in turn, respected those
who actually completed the jobs they accepted.
She was not happy. Oh, no, she wasn’t happy with me in the least. She reamed into me, talked about how unprofessional
this was, how it was making my entire family look bad, all that shit.
Trust me, I knew how bad it’d make us look. I’d already wrestled with it. Now I had to face facts, and the most important
fact was that I could not kill Giselle. Not for a mysterious client, not for anybody.
The last thing the Lioness told me before I walked out of that conference room was: “Whatever you’re doing this for, I hope
it’s worth it.” A remark meant to be acidic and biting, but that wasn’t how I took it.
Of course it was worth it. Giselle was worth it.
It was as I was in the elevator, heading down to the lobby, that my phone rang. I picked it up and saw Archie’s name
flashing across the screen. Something inside tensed up, and I answered it immediately. “Archie, what’s going on?”
“Uh.” I could hardly hear him. It sounded like he was on his bike. “Yeah. About your girl? Someone took her. Right out of
that hotel suite.”
My jaw ground. No one else was there with her? Didn’t make sense. “And you didn’t have your scope, or what?”
“Uh, no, I do have my scope, but I figure since someone’s out to get her, I can tail them wherever they go and find the
source. Cut the head off the beast for good.” Ah, so that’s why it sounded like he was on his bike—because he was. He must’ve
been following whoever took her.
The elevator was not something you could speed up, unfortunately. The floors ticked by one after the other, and I grew
antsy. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Whoever it is, he didn’t shoot her at the hotel, so—”
I was alone in the elevator, which was the only reason I felt comfortable saying out loud, “He’s taking her to a secondary
location, which means he wants something from her.” Whether that was information or to simply take his time in torturing her, I
didn’t know. Either way, I needed to fly once I was in my car, break every single speed limit there was on my way back to
Cypress.
Fuck. It was going to take entirely too long for me to get back.
“Keep me updated,” I said. “Don’t make any moves without calling me first.” I hung up after that, my nerves fucking shot.
 Why, oh why did Giselle constantly find herself in trouble? That girl’s life couldn’t have been easy for once, could it?
Everything she’d gone through, everything she’d been forced to live through… if there was one person on this whole fucking
earth who deserved a break, it was her.
And I’d do whatever I could so she could get that goddamn break, even if I had to wreak bloody havoc on every single
person in Cypress.
Archie called within thirty minutes, telling me the man who’d kidnapped her brought her to a warehouse of sorts, on the
outskirts of the city. I told him to keep watch, don’t go barging in; we didn’t know how many men were inside. Going in alone,
as capable as my brother was, might be suicide.
And then he called again, twenty minutes after that, to tell me a tall, older, Hispanic man had arrived at that same
warehouse and gone inside. I didn’t need to know any more details. That man was Miguel Santos.
Was he the one doing all of this? He wanted Giselle out of the picture in a violent way so he and Rocco could become the
saviors of the day? Or perhaps he wanted to pin her murder on someone else, eliminate them from the running.
It didn’t matter. Whatever game Miguel was playing, I wouldn’t let him win.
Turned out, the secondary location was only a temporary one, because Miguel’s plan was to hand Giselle over to a group
of gangsters who wore leather jackets with a green serpent patch on their sleeves and backs. I didn’t know who they were, but
they weren’t from Cypress; the Black Hand would know about them, if they were.
Those men took Giselle to a third location, where she stayed. She wasn’t in Cypress anymore.
My brother got set up outside the house, a good distance away, before calling me. I was thirty minutes away. So close, and
yet still so fucking far. “Looks like these guys are waiting for someone. Their boss, maybe? I don’t know. I have no idea who
these guys are, but I’m set up down the street with my scope. What’s your ETA?”
“I’ll be there in—” I checked the car’s GPS. “—twenty-eight minutes. What kind of neighborhood is it?”
“A development that hasn’t gotten developed all the way yet. I’m parked in front of another house, but this one looks empty.
I ain’t exactly discreet here. You think—” He paused, and then hurriedly said, “Shit. Someone else just pulled up. A guy with a
lot of tattoos. He’s going inside the house.”
A guy with a lot of tattoos wasn’t overly descriptive, but a certain someone did flash in my mind’s eye. “Short dark hair,
golden chain around his neck?”
“Yep. You know him?”
“His name’s Damian. He’s also in the running for the Black Hand.” Fuck. Were he and Miguel private partners or
something? Was Miguel trying to be buddy-buddy with everyone in secret? But why the hell would he hand over Giselle to
him…
Why would Damian want her?
Scratch that. She’s a young, pretty girl. It’s obvious why anyone would want her. Miguel had already sold her out once.
Why not a second time?
I was too busy thinking to pay attention to what my brother was saying. “Repeat that.”
“I said it looks like that Damian guy kicked everyone else out of the house. I don’t know for sure that there’s no one else in
the house, but I could pick a few of them off now, rush inside and grab her? Assuming Damian is the head honcho here.”
“He is.” He had to be. “But don’t do anything yet. I want to grab him, ask him a few questions. You’ll cover me with the
scope.”
Archie sighed. “Fine, fine. You’re no fun, you know that?”
“Did she look all right? When you saw them take her from the car to the house?”
“She wasn’t bleeding, if that’s what you mean. She had a bag over her head, so I couldn’t see much, but I didn’t see any
fresh wounds on her.”
We stayed on the phone during the last stretch of the drive. I had my gun sitting on the passenger seat, ready to go. I was five
minutes away when Archie said, “Looks like the goons are leaving. Don’t know why. Less bodies, at least. Now no one’s
guarding the front door.”
Small mercies, I supposed, although the jury was out whether it would truly be a small mercy. Only if Giselle was still
alive. Only if she was safe. Once I had her in my arms, only then could I relax.
Once I arrived, I ended the call and parked my car on the street, just before the house. I grabbed my gun, threw a quick
glance around, and then got to work.
And that brought us to now, with Giselle standing before me, her amber eyes angled up at me and her soft, delicate voice
asking, “How’d you find me?” The way she was looking at me made me forget all about the other man in the room—the man
who’d lowered his gun and was now muttering something about how he’d have to go buy a new door.
Right. Because I’d kicked it so hard it flew off the hinges. No time for lockpicking when I had to save my girl.
I didn’t want to lower my gun, but Giselle looked unharmed. Not only that, but I couldn’t shake the way she’d looked at
him, how quietly she’d told Damian that she trusted me, like… like she trusted Damian, too.
What the hell was going on here?
 I rested my gun at my side, the metal cold in my hand. I so desperately wanted to reach out for something warm, to feel her
soft skin again, and the only reason I resisted was because of the other man in the room, who’d tucked his gun into the
waistband of his torn pants and was now kneeling near the broken door.
“This shit’s steel,” he muttered before glancing up at me. “What the fuck are you, Superman or something?”
I ignored him, all of my focus returning to Giselle. “Are you okay? I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I was out of town. I
had my brother watching you.”
“Watching me,” Giselle repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Ever since the contract was put out on you, I’ve been watching to try to figure out who it is, who wants you dead.” I took a
tiny step closer to her, angling my head down. She really was so small compared to me. Over a foot shorter than me, and a lot
thinner. It felt like I hadn’t been with her in ages, even though it truly hadn’t been that long. “Your father—”
Shadows passed over her face, and she looked away as she muttered, “We have a lot to talk about.”
Still staring at the door on the floor, Damian muttered, “I can’t have a safehouse without a fucking door. I need to go to the
store and buy another one.” He threw a pointed look in my direction.
I frowned at him, and my frowning only deepened when I watched him stroll over to Giselle and say, “Why don’t you and
your… giant here take some time while I run to the store to buy a new fucking door?” That last part was spoken to me, his
black eyes daggers as he glared at me.
“We’ll be fine here,” she told him, reaching for his arm, touching Damian ever so slightly—but I still saw it. Just a quick
touch, fleeting and passing, but for someone with her past, every touch meant something.
Fuck. She really did trust this guy, didn’t she? When the hell did that happen? Because, from what I remember, anytime they
were near, she acted as though she was disgusted with the man.
Damian threw me another look, but I stopped him before he walked outside: “Wait. Let me call my brother and tell him not
to shoot you the moment you walk out that door.” I went to set my gun down on the table and then pulled out my phone, well
aware Damian was glaring at me even harder now.
Archie picked up on the first ring. “How’s it going in there? Get your girl?”
“Giselle is safe,” I told him. “Things… aren’t what they seem. You can pack it in, Archie. I’ll handle it from here.”
“That’s it? Kind of anticlimactic, don’t you think?” He sighed. “Whatever. You—”
“I owe you one,” I finished his sentence, already knowing what he was going to say. In a family like ours, favors were
something you tucked away for later, for when the shit really hit the fan. Whatever he’d need help with in the future, it wouldn’t
matter. I’d do anything to pay him back for helping me with Giselle.
I ended the call and gave Damian a nod. The man mockingly saluted me before heading out, leaving Giselle and I alone in
the house.
Giselle watched him go, and then those eyes of hers fixated on me once more. Seconds ticked by, and I heard Damian’s car
start outside. Soon enough, nothing but silence surrounded us. The expression she wore was one I couldn’t read, almost like
she was trying to hide something from me.
Her yellow hair was wet, and yet the damp strands still framed her face. She wasn’t wearing white, for once, and in spite
of the circumstances she looked just as beautiful as ever. Strong and bold, yet unsure and weak at the same time. A living
contradiction.
“So,” I broke the silence between us, “care to explain the whole Damian thing?”
Her eyes closed, and she turned her face away as she muttered, “There’s so much you don’t know, Cade. So much.”
“Then tell me. Tell me, princess, because I just returned the contract to the Guild. No one in my family will lay a hand on
you—but that doesn’t mean someone else can’t accept the contract themselves. You know this already, but you’re not safe
anywhere.”
Giselle’s eyelids lifted, and she flicked a thumb toward the living room. “Come sit with me. I’m tired all of a sudden.”
And she looked it. She certainly did look tired. I supposed getting kidnapped tended to do that to you. I, myself, had never
been kidnapped, but I could imagine it well enough. She had to have been terrified—or she was simply exhausted from being
so strong and on-guard constantly as she was.
I followed her toward the living room, where a sectional sat, a couch that looked to be untouched. This whole place,
actually, looked to be newer. No wonder Damian was so upset about the goddamned door.
Giselle sat down first. I took up the spot beside her. I did not sit close enough to brush my leg against hers; today had been
enough for her. She did not need me to invade her personal space.
Now, if she invited me to invade her personal space… then that would be a different story. I’d invade without hesitation.
“What did your brother see?” she asked quietly, fiddling with her hands on her lap.
“He saw you get taken from the Moretti residence and brought to a warehouse, where he saw Miguel. Then these gangsters
brought you here. I thought—I thought these guys would tear you up. Care to explain why they didn’t?”
“Greenback Serpents,” she told me. “They’re a gang who’ve been a thorn in my… in Miguel’s side for years now. Petty
theft, vandalism, trying to turn his men against him. Nothing too huge, but bad enough Miguel has been trying to find their leader
for some time.”
And then Giselle let out the breathiest of sighs I’d ever heard, her shoulders slumping. She leaned her head back on the
couch, eyes on the ceiling. “Do you want to hear the whole story? You already know some of it.”
There was nothing I could say besides, “Yes.”
The story was not a happy one, and it started so long ago. Her mother had been religious. After Miguel had sold her out to
Rocco Moretti for a night when she was just fifteen years old, he suggested she visit the same church—and she did. That priest,
Father Charlie, saved her life that night, and they formed a close bond after that.
And then, not too long ago, right before she and Miguel had moved here to try to get on the Black Hand, Father Charlie was
murdered by some Greenback Serpents. Giselle had killed them in retaliation. She’d found them mid-deed and enacted her own
bloody vengeance.
Giselle then thought that was that… until they came here and she began to suspect her father wanted her dead. That
possibility was further cemented after she was nearly killed and quickly married off to Luca Moretti because Miguel had a
secret pregnant fiancé.
The person who tried to kill her before was one of her father’s men. Damian had been the one to save her that night; he’d
been following her, knowing she was the one who’d killed some of his crew. He was, from what it sounded like, the Serpents’
leader, even though he’d never call himself that.
She thought Miguel was the one who put out the contract with the Guild. Miguel obviously wanted to paint someone as the
murderer; the Guild worked secretly, so the truth would never come out. Miguel could paint whatever story he wanted, and
Giselle would be too dead to correct him.
It’s why she was here now. Miguel had handed her over to the Serpents after having one of his men kidnap her from the
Moretti suite. He had assumed the Serpents would torture her and then kill her for what she did in that church, but he assumed
wrong. Damian had found out Miguel had bought some of the Serpents, and he wanted revenge on the asshole.
Revenge on Miguel was something I understood all too well.
“I don’t understand why your father would hire those Serpents to kill Father Charlie,” I said, bringing up something that
bothered me. I’d heard bits and pieces of the story before, but now that it was all together, it still felt like something was
missing. An important piece of the puzzle.
“My mother… I don’t think she really loved Miguel.”
It struck me then how, this whole time, she kept tripping up when she said Miguel’s name, and it hit me: she didn’t call him
her father. Any time she started to, out of habit, she stopped and corrected herself by using his first name.
Ah. Okay. I think I understood now.
“She had an affair. Miguel had her killed when he found out she was unfaithful, and he spent years looking for the man
she’d been with. His ego couldn’t let it go,” Giselle whispered. “That man… was Father Charlie.”
“Fuck,” I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
“Miguel told me all of this when he had me in that warehouse. He assumed the Serpents would kill me, so it wouldn’t hurt
to tell me the truth, finally, after all these years.” Giselle’s hands curled into fists. “All my life, he never loved me. Everything
was a lie.”
Miguel. What a fucking asshole. I wanted to take my hands to his neck and squeeze until his lips turned blue and his eyes
bulged. He deserved to go out in a gasping, helpless mess. A bullet to the head would be too fast, too painless. No, that asshole
should die in absolute misery for the pain he’d caused Giselle.
“I assume Damian knows all of this?” I asked. “And that you two are coming up with some kind of plan to take him
down?”
She nodded once. “He wants the same thing I do: to see Miguel crash and burn. I don’t care who gets on the Hand, but it
sure as hell can’t be my… it can’t be Miguel. Anyone but him. Everyone but him.”
I let out a loud breath. “What’s the plan, then?”
“We haven’t gotten that far yet. We didn’t have too much time to talk before you came to save the day.” Giselle’s hands
relaxed, and she lifted her head off the couch, turning those amber eyes to me. “Thank you, by the way. I… I didn’t know you
cared enough about me to do this.”
Something in my chest swelled. My heart? Of course my fucking heart. This girl had wormed herself inside me, refused to
leave, and now I was basically a slave to her. Helpless and desperate in the way I wanted her, not to mention in the way I’d do
anything to keep her safe. The world had hurt her far too much as it was already.
I wanted to reach for her hand, but I stopped myself, and I settled for leaning a little closer to her and whispering, “Of
course I care for you. You don’t have to thank me for any of this. I…” What was I trying to say? “You got in my head that first
night and never left it, princess.”
Her lips were slow to quirk into a smile. “Even though I’m too young for you, dragon man?” Dragon man was what she
supposedly called me before discovering my true identity. Course, if she’d known anything about the Cunningham family, she
could’ve put it together herself. Each member of my family had tattoos similar to mine.
 The sigh that came from me right then was full of frustration—not at her, but at this whole situation. At current events. At,
yes, her damned age. She was fourteen years my junior, young enough that I shouldn’t look at her twice. I didn’t get off on that
fresh-faced baby-eyed look most other eighteen-year-olds seemed to have.
But Giselle… fuck, Giselle was different. She’d seen so much, been through so much. She wasn’t a normal eighteen-year-
old. That’s the only way I could justify my feelings for her in my head. The world—Miguel, mostly—had forced her to become
an old, injured soul.
“You are,” I agreed, though I knew she’d only said that because it was something I’d told her at the Playground. “You are
too young for me.”
“Plus, I’m a married woman now,” she said, and unless I was mistaken, a mischievous glint glimmered in those eyes as she
studied me, once again throwing my own words back in my face.
I nodded once. “You are a married woman, yes.”
“So many reasons why you shouldn’t be here right now. I’m not your responsibility in any way,” she spoke, her voice
dropping to a bare whisper. “But you are here. You did come for me.” That smile of hers grew when she asked, “If there were
twenty people in this house, would you have killed them all for me?”
“If it meant saving you, I’d kill countless.”
To any other girl, to any woman who hadn’t grown up surrounded by self-made mafia kings and mob lords, something like
that would scare her off. But to Giselle, to someone who wasn’t afraid of getting her own hands bloody, that declaration was a
sweet nothing whispered into her ear.
Giselle held my stare for a while after that, and I wished I knew what she was thinking. Her face gave nothing away, that
smile long gone. The way she scrutinized me made me wonder if something heavy was on her mind. She might’ve told me the
revelations she’d just found out, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it, more she wasn’t saying.
All of a sudden, she got to her feet and started to walk away, toward the hall. “Come with me.” That was all she said, and
the way she said it made me believe it was not a request. More like a demand.
If it was anyone else making demands of me, I would’ve refused, but since it was Giselle, I got up and followed after her—
though I did take my gun with me. I started after her down the hall, but I took a quick detour to the front door. The hinges were
broken, not to mention the damned thing was severely dented, but I lifted it off the floor and rested it against the wall near the
open space so that it covered some of the entryway.
Better a little than none, seeing as how I had no idea how long that Damian guy would be gone.
I hurried after Giselle once it was done, not sure where she’d gone to in the house. It was a newer, one-story abode, even
though it looked like it could be two full stories from the street. That’s the thing about all these newer houses: lots of attic
space.
I found Giselle standing in the first bedroom on the left, where a chair sat before the bed. She didn’t address the chair, but
she did turn towards me and say, “Take off your clothes and get on the bed.”
That… wasn’t what I thought she’d say. Not by a long shot.
And that was why I stood there and did nothing but stare at her. In fact, I stared at her for so long, she had to repeat herself:
“Take off your clothes, Cade, and get on the bed.” She folded her arms over her chest, cocking a hip at me as she assumed an
attitude. An adorable attitude, but an attitude all the same.
I stepped closer to her. “And why should I do that?” Now was so obviously not the time for that, and yet, judging from her
expression, she wasn’t going to let it go.
“Because I’m telling you to get on the bed after you take your clothes off,” she said, radiating feistiness. It reminded me of
the night she’d handcuffed me to one of the beds at the Playground. As if sensing my train of thought, she added, “I won’t tie
you down, but I do want your arms to stay above your head.”
“Princess,” I said, forcing out a low chuckle, “I don’t know if—”
She tilted her head at me, and the look she gave me right then shut me up. This, I realized, wasn’t up for debate. Taking off
my clothes and getting on that bed for her… there was no other way this could go.
Even though my brain knew now wasn’t the right time to get frisky, the head between my legs had other ideas. It twitched,
threatening to grow hard just from the mention of getting naked for Giselle.
“Fine,” I said, walking toward the bed. As I moved around her, I went to set my gun on the bed, near the pillows. “But this
is staying close.” It had to be within reach, just in case. With this girl, you never knew who’d show up next wanting her dead.
As I turned around to face her once more, I started to unbutton my shirt after untucking it from my pants. One after the other,
I worked my way down, revealing the black dragon design on my chest. Giselle’s gaze dropped to the tattoo and continued to
fall as I undid lower buttons. She watched me with a strange mix of emotions on her face. Some hunger, yes, but also something
else, something harder.
Or maybe it was just because today was a rough day for her, getting kidnapped and finding out that the man she thought was
her father was in fact not her father, and that her biological father had been the priest she’d found dead.
Giselle probably wanted to forget. Forget the day’s events, forget its truths, forget all of it. If someone had to help her
forget about it all, it might as well be me.
Once my shirt was undone, I pulled it off and set it on the simple nightstand beside the bed. I slipped my shoes off while I
whipped off my belt, and then I worked on the button and zipper on my pants. Let’s just say by the time I was completely naked
my cock was rock hard.
How could it not be? Giselle was safe, and she wanted me on that bed, in the light of the afternoon. A very different
atmosphere from our two encounters at the Playground, but one I’d gladly take.
No masks. No pretending.
Baring myself to her, I moved to the bed. I got in the position she wanted me in: on my back, my hands above my head. She
clearly wanted to be in charge right now, and I’d let her. I’d let this girl do whatever the hell she wanted to me, and I wouldn’t
complain. How could I, when she was all I could think about?
Married or not; it didn’t matter. Whether she had feelings for other men didn’t matter. Not right now. No, right now this girl
was mine.
She said not a word to me as she started to undress. Piece by piece she took off all her clothing, dropping them to the floor
haphazardly. I had to lift my head off the pillow to watch her, needing to see her, to experience the beauty that was Giselle
during the day and not the stolen hours of night.
My cock turned to steel as I watched, anticipation growing steadily in my veins. Giselle was gorgeous, even with that scab
on her stomach. She hadn’t healed fully; couldn’t forget that. Maybe that’s why she wanted to be on top—she was worried I’d
hurt her.
That was ridiculous. I’d never hurt her. I’d rather die than inflict an ounce of pain onto this girl.
Giselle was slow in crawling onto the bed. She did not position herself over me right away. She took her time, dragging her
stare along my body, taking in the way I lay and how my own gaze was utterly fixated on her.
She had my attention. She had more than that. Truthfully, this girl could have whatever she wanted from me, and I would not
complain. She could take everything and leave me in a pile of bones and dust, and I’d still be a happy man.
Determination set on her face, and she straddled me. Setting her hands on my abdomen, she positioned herself over me, and
only when her gaze locked with mine did she sink down. She came down slowly, taking my length in inch after inch.
There was no foreplay, so her core wasn’t exactly dripping wet, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good. Of course it
felt good. She was… fuck, she was so tight and warm, I had to throw my head back and close my eyes. Just for a moment, just
while I got reacquainted with that welcoming space between her legs.
I let out a groan. I couldn’t help it. She felt too damned good. I wanted above all else to move my hands to those thighs, to
hold onto her as she set the pace; it took every ounce of restraint inside me to refrain.
Giselle began to rock those hips, drawing herself along my length in an agonizingly slow rhythm. She had to keep her hands
on my abdomen to help keep herself upright, and every so often she winced, as if her midsection was hurting her.
Come to think of it, it looked a little bruised. I let my eyes fall to that spot on her stomach, wondering if there was more to
the story she hadn’t said, if Miguel had hurt her while she’d been in his clutches in that warehouse.
Fuck. I was going to kill that motherfucker.
My breathing turned ragged, and my thoughts of rage toward Miguel and what he could’ve possibly done to her were taken
over by the way Giselle rocked above me. Her white skin flushed pink, her cheeks rosy as she moved, her tits bouncing with
each rock of her hips. All the while her pussy stayed tight, clamped around my cock, milking me for all I was worth.
She set the pace. She was in charge. She was the one on top, and even with that bruised scab and that damp hair, she was
still an angel, gorgeous in her fury.
I knew it then. I knew it. I’d been fighting it for a while, I think, probably since that first night at the Playground, maybe
even since I’d first seen her at that Black Hand party downtown. The girl in white, the only white in a sea of black.
It was an almost painful realization. Somehow, someway, it had happened. Sometime during our fleeting conversations,
during our passion at the Playground, sometime during the roller coaster of finding out she was engaged and then secretly
married to Luca Moretti, I’d fallen for her.
I was in love with her. Hopelessly. Foolishly. Irrevocably. It wasn’t the kind of love you had for someone after dating them
for so long; it wasn’t a natural progression. This love had come out of nowhere, took me by the throat, and forced itself upon
me, and its nature was so strong I had no choice but to bend to its will.
I had to clench my hands into fists to stop myself from reaching for her, to stop myself from grabbing her thighs and
squeezing, from rolling her onto her back and taking charge. God, I wanted nothing more than to tell her what I’d just realized,
but now… after everything she’d gone through today, it probably wasn’t the best time.
So, I’d let her do what she needed to do. I’d let her decide how and how long, how fast we went, and when we stopped.
When things calmed down, when we had the chance to breathe, maybe then I’d tell her.
Giselle was a goddess above me. Our position, with her on top, threw me back to our second time together at the
Playground. Only this time things felt more real, we were each laid bare, no masks to give us a sliver to hide behind. No
pretending. This was real and there was no denying it.
 Time ceased to matter. It could’ve been hours or it could’ve been minutes. I didn’t care. I’d stay locked in this position
with Giselle if given the choice, let the world around us fade away until it was just the two of us.
Unfortunately, sooner or later the pressure inside reached a boiling point, and I couldn’t push off the orgasm if I tried.
And I didn’t try.
When I felt that familiar swelling of my balls, my hips began to rock under her. Didn’t really do much, but I couldn’t quite
control it. It was that pre-orgasm feeling, where your body did whatever it wanted until that release finally arrived.
And when it came, it fucking came. The orgasm slammed into me, my body spasming beneath Giselle’s, my cock spewing
its seed directly into her core and coating her inner walls with my cum. A low moan escaped me, my body shuddering at the
powerful release.
I cracked open my eyes after that, finding Giselle hadn’t slowed. She kept up the same pace she had before I’d come, only
now her pussy was slick with my cum. My cock disappeared into her core with every bounce of that lithe body.
Hey, if she wanted to keep going, who was I to stop her? If she wanted to go all fucking day, then we’d go all fucking day.
The only thing that sucked, the only thing I’d change about this if I could, was that she didn’t want me touching her. I wanted
nothing more than to drag my hands all over that body and take in the smooth curves, the soft skin, every single inch of it.
But I would never push her. If this was all she was comfortable with right now, then this was what we’d do.
I did, on the one hand, find it odd that she’d touched Damian’s arm. A stupid thing to be jealous of—especially stupid since
she basically had an army of men at her disposal who, I was pretty damn sure, were in the same boat as me—but not something
I could control.
Jealousy over a touch on the arm. It’s stupid. It’s fucking ridiculous.
It had to be goddamned love.
 Chapter Three – Giselle

Maybe sex wasn’t something I should want right now, after… well, after Miguel did what he did. But at the same time, I
wanted to make a more recent memory, one where I was in charge of the whole thing. Be with someone else to wipe away the
feeling of those hands and that dick.
Miguel thought he’d scar me, hurt me one last time before handing me over to a group he assumed would kill me. He was
fucking wrong. I would not let him win.
Cade was more than willing. Of course he was. He was my dragon man, my mysterious masked stranger. He was
everything I could want, everything any straight girl would crave. He’d helped me overcome my past once, and now, albeit
unwittingly, he was helping me again.
I was on top. I moved how I wanted to move, at the pace I wanted, and I’d continue to do so for as long as I wished. The
man had come once; we’d see if I couldn’t get him to come again.
My stomach hurt from what Miguel had done to me, but I pushed through the pain. I’d spent three years of my life in pain
and misery, going from day to day like a damned zombie. I could handle the pain. I could ignore it. I’d lived with it for that
long, and I’d live with it until I died. Some pain never truly went away. Sometimes it stayed with you, clung to you like a
repressed memory, always there, ready to sting.
My skin was on fire. My breathing had turned hard and erratic, but I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going. Cade was as
attractive as ever beneath me, and the man did his best to keep his arms over his head—he was probably happy there were no
handcuffs involved this time. It meant he wouldn’t be stuck to the bed if I ran away.
As if I could run away from this. No. From here on out, there would be no more running away. Only running toward.
Toward vengeance, retribution. Toward revenge and all the pain and chaos it would bring.
I was going to kill Miguel Santos. That was a promise to myself.
My hands were flat on Cade’s abdomen, on those impressive muscles that lined his lower stomach, small, defined squares
that told me just how strong he was. How dangerous. His body was sculpted in all the right ways, it was true. The body of a
killer, of an assassin, a hitman who had to be dangerous, even without a gun.
And right now the man was all mine.
I was thankful for him, truly. If it wasn’t for him, I didn’t know where I’d be right now. Perhaps dead. Perhaps a shell of
myself, like I was before. I owed so much of who I was today to this man, it was almost unreal.
He… I needed him. I needed him so much more than I ever realized before. I didn’t know much about him, it was true, but I
trusted him. I trusted this man, that I was safe with him, that he’d never hurt me. That he’d do whatever he could to save me. It
wasn’t something I could say about many other men in this city.
I inhaled through my nose slowly before letting out a shuddering breath through my mouth. My back arched, and I could feel
myself inching closer to the edge. My legs were growing sore; I had no idea how long I’d been going at it, but it had to be a
while. My legs felt like jelly.
That wasn’t going to stop me, though. I’d power through. I’d keep going, even if it killed me. Nothing would stop me.
Of course, it was but two seconds after I thought that thought that I heard someone walking down the hall, so I was forced to
slow my pace and turn my head, watching as Damian strolled into the room with a smirk on his face.
Damian leaned on the wall near the door, that smirk only growing as he took our position in. Those dark eyes of his roamed
over Cade spread beneath me, and once they landed on me, he couldn’t look away. An almost lustful expression crossed his
face as his gaze took in my bared figure. My ass, my back, the side of my tits he could see, and lastly my flushed face and
parted lips.
If it had been anyone else who’d walked in on us like this, I would’ve tried to cover myself, but for some reason, all I
could do was stare at Damian and feel my inner core tighten around Cade’s cock.
Cade started to sit up under me, like he was going to shield my body from Damian’s greedy stare, but I stopped him by
setting a hand on his chest and pushing him back down. The look he gave me was questioning, but he said not a word.
Damian, on the other hand, had something to say: “Once you two rabbits are done, I’m gonna need Superman’s help with
the door.” His smirk widened even more when he finished, “Don’t let me stop you.” He made no moves to leave the room, like
he wanted to watch.
The heat on my face was there for a whole new reason now. Everyone in the Playground seemed to enjoy having an
audience, and that dream I had, where all the men who’d found themselves in my thoughts had materialized and either watched
or shared me, pushed to the forefront of my mind.
Hmm. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having an audience of one in Damian.
I was slow in turning my face away from Damian and bringing my eyes back to Cade. The look Cade was giving me was
one of confusion, curiosity, and maybe even slight jealousy, like he didn’t want Damian to see me naked.
How chivalrous.
 I closed my eyes and resumed my fucking of Cade, though I moved slower than I had before. Everything in me burned, and
knowing Damian was watching with what had to be interest made me feel some kind of way.
Good. It made me feel good. That, combined with the way Cade felt beneath me, was enough to make me forget why I’d
needed this in the first place. Whatever happened, whatever led up to this, none of it mattered anymore. The only thing that
mattered right now was the high I currently chased.
I didn’t feel pain, and the hatred I had within me for Miguel was pushed down by the feeling of being so wanted, so
desired, that it was all I could think about.
Cade had once told me he didn’t share—which was, coincidentally, also when he told me he was contracted to kill me, so I
knew I could take that with a grain of salt—but he seemed to be doing just fine right now.
My movements grew jerkier, my rocking more fervent. I couldn’t get a full lungful of air, no matter how many times I tried.
My back arched, and I cried out when Cade’s cock hit me just right. The muscles in my lower half tensed up, my whole body
one big ball of nerves that needed to unwind.
I heard Damian move, and I cracked open my eyelids just enough to see him through slits. He’d moved away from the wall,
taken the chair I’d been tied to before, and carried it to the side of the bed, probably so he could get a better view. With his
knees spread, I could see a hard bulge in his pants, his arousal clear.
The old me would’ve thought having an audience, even an audience of one, was kind of gross… but now that it was
happening, I couldn’t deny the way it was kind of hot. Knowing Damian had eyes for me, knowing he was watching me with
Cade, getting turned on, filled me with a smug sense of satisfaction nothing else could.
And then it all became too much. Too much for little old me. I threw my head back and let out a breathy cry as pleasure
exploded within me, and I rode Cade’s cock harder, prolonging the electric sensations jolting through me. It was an orgasm like
no other, and even when it ended I still felt tingly all over.
“Damn,” Damian murmured, sluggish in leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees. “You really are fucking
gorgeous, baby girl.” The way he said it, like the only people in the room were me and him, sent a chill down my spine.
But, because it was Damian, and he so obviously liked pushing people’s buttons, he turned his smirk to Cade and said,
“Don’t you agree, Superman?”
Cade coughed awkwardly, and though I hadn’t moved off his cock yet, he propped himself up with his elbows, his green-
eyed stare moving to Damian. To say the scowl he wore could kill would be a vast understatement. “I don’t remember inviting
you to watch.”
Damian’s reply came swiftly, “I don’t remember inviting you to break my goddamn door, but here we are.” He slapped his
knees and stood, cracking his neck as he so clearly showed off the bulge in his pants. “Whenever you’re ready, Superman.” He
abandoned the chair he’d moved, going to leave the room—but not before tossing a wink my way.
Once he was gone, I found Cade was busy staring at me. I bit my bottom lip in anticipation of what he was going to say. I
supposed I should get off him, but… well, I was kind of frozen in place after all that.
Like, only now was the slight mortification of what I just did in front of Damian—a stranger, basically—hitting me. And it
was hitting me hard.
“Well,” Cade whispered, his lips tugging into a handsome frown, “that was… not what I was expecting. Didn’t know you
had an exhibitionist streak in you. Although, maybe I should’ve guessed after you kissed me in front of your husband and that
bodyguard who is clearly in love with you.”
The mention of Zander made my heart ache, and I finally slipped off Cade’s midsection. I gave my back to Cade as I
whispered, “I don’t think Zander loves me.”
Everything Zander had ever told me… how could I be sure it was true? How could I know any of it was true? Damian said
he saw Zander’s face under the hood, that Zander was the one who’d shot me that night.
No. If you loved someone, you couldn’t fucking shoot them.
That part of the story I’d kept from Cade. I didn’t know when I’d see Zander again, but when I did, I wanted to talk to him
about that night first, stare into his eyes when I demanded the truth from him.
Cade got up, and from the sound of it, he put on his clothes. I made no moves to get dressed, though I did keep my back to
him.
“Don’t trust him?” Cade asked.
“I used to, but now… now I wonder how much of Miguel’s scheming he was aware of, if he knew…” I sighed as I went to
touch the aching memory of a gunshot on my stomach.
Zander could’ve killed me that night. Easily. He was a good shot. There was no way he’d missed that badly. The stupid
hope that he loved me, that he’d go against Miguel Santos for me, was nothing more than a dagger to the heart.
“I’m sorry, Giselle.”
At the mention of my name, I had to look over my shoulder at him. My dragon man was fully dressed, and though his dick
was still a little hard, it was tucked away, less noticeable. His blond hair was a little messy, but he still looked damn fine.
“Don’t be,” I told him. “It’s not your fault.”
 He walked around the bed, gingerly sitting beside me. “I know, but… I don’t like seeing you in pain, princess.” A moment
passed before he gently asked, “Can I touch you now?”
At first, I thought I didn’t hear him right, because what the heck was he talking about? We literally just had sex. That
involved a whole lot of touching in certain places. Although, now that I was thinking about it, I did make him put his hands over
his head the whole time.
And he’d done as I asked. He didn’t complain one bit.
A nod was my answer, and Cade immediately responded by lifting a hand to my face and tucking some of my hair behind an
ear. That same hand dropped to my chin and angled my head up. His tall frame bent down to mine, and his lips met mine in a
kiss I could only describe as firm.
Firm. Eager. Warm. Not an overly passionate kiss, but a kiss that told me he was here for me and he meant every single
word he said. Comforting. It was exactly the kind of kiss I needed after the day’s events, the perfect kind of kiss, one that
immediately grounded me, pulled me back into reality and stopped me from spiraling.
Cade was measured in pulling his mouth off mine, and once I no longer felt the familiarity of those warm lips, I cracked
open my eyelids to find him staring at me from inches away. His fingers still cupped my chin, forcing me to look at him even
though I wasn’t about to turn away.
I decided it then. I would not let Miguel win this. I would not let him reopen the wounds of my past, wounds I’d tried so
hard to heal. The last thing I’d let him do was turn me into the depressed, zombie-fied version of myself I’d been these last
three years.
Miguel thought he could break me? Hah. The broken Giselle was in the past. The Giselle of today wanted nothing more
than vengeance.
And she’d have it.
“Go help Damian with the door,” I told him, even though the last thing I wanted was to be left alone. Having people care
about me—having them really, truly care—made me want to be around them all the time. It wasn’t until you learned how great
it was to be with someone that you realized how awful it was to be so lonely.
I’d spent too much of my life alone, and far too much of it doing whatever Miguel wanted. I was not his daughter. He was
nothing to me but the villain in my story—and I’d stop at nothing to make sure that bastard got exactly what he deserved.
“Go,” I said again, softer this time.
Cade didn’t want to go; it was written on his face. He obviously wasn’t a fan of Damian, but he’d go along with it for me.
His tall frame bent once more, and as his fingers fell away from my chin, his lips pressed against my cheek in the softest kiss
imaginable.
He got up and left after that, and he grabbed his gun on the way out. I took my time in getting dressed once I was alone. I
could overhear the guys bickering about the door and how to install it properly; Damian’s nickname for Cade was Superman—
not the worst one in the world. He might not have the black hair and Clark Kent glasses disguise, but his size definitely went
hand-in-hand with it.
As I dressed, I thought about the men that had each wormed their way inside, in spite of me trying to put up walls. Could I
trust any of them? I honestly didn’t know, but I did know one thing.
I wanted to take Miguel down, and even though I had Damian and his Serpents behind me, I’d need more. More eyes in
Cypress. More ears. More people willing to do whatever it took to see this through to completion.
I needed my men.
After making sure I was presentable, I went to hang near Damian and Cade. Damian had to buy a drill too, by the look of it,
and it appeared that the old front door’s frame was easily taken out and replaced by the new one. It was a newer house, after
all.
I sat at the dining room table, watching them make sure the door was level, and then Cade had to hold the door just right
while Damian screwed in the first hinge. “No more breaking down doors, Superman,” Damian quipped. “I don’t know what
you think of me, but I ain’t made of money.”
All Cade did was roll his eyes.
By the time they were done installing the door and cleaning up the mess Cade had made by breaking in, it was dark out.
Damian’s Serpents weren’t back yet with clothes and whatever else they were supposed to get me, so he called them and told
them to bring some food, too. Pizza, because every planning session needed some pizza.
Cade had taken up the chair beside me, while Damian paced the length of the kitchen, saying something about no fucking
pineapples better be on any of the pizzas. Putting pineapples on pizza was disrespectful or something.
“How are you holding up?” Cade’s question made me turn my head toward him.
“I’m better than I was earlier,” I said, and that was the God’s honest truth. Miguel thought he could break me before handing
me off… wouldn’t he be in for the shock of his life when he saw me again? “I need you to call Luca and Ezekiel for me.”
His fingers tapped the table, and he didn’t say anything right away. That gave Damian enough time to finish his call and
stroll over to us. He pulled out the chair opposite me and slumped in it. “Food should be here in an hour, along with some
essentials for you, baby girl.”
I was pretty sure I saw a muscle in Cade’s jaw tense when he heard Damian call me that, but I didn’t address it. I repeated
what I’d just told Cade: “I need Luca Moretti and Ezekiel here.”
“Luca Moretti? You absolutely sure you can trust that boy?” Damian sounded suspicious.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t know for sure, but I need him on my side regardless. The more we have backing us up, the more
likely we can take Miguel down.” My eyes flicked to Cade. “How badly does your father want on the Hand? If you help me…”
I knew Damian didn’t give a shit about being on the Black Hand, but Cade’s father… I’d never met the man. I’d hate to ask
Cade to help me if it meant him going against his father’s wishes.
Hey, they might have a good relationship. I had no idea what that was like, since I had no clue who my real father was until
after he was already dead.
Cade ran a hand along his jaw. He was starting to get stubbly, but it wasn’t a bad look. No, I didn’t think Cade could ever
look bad. “He wants on, but I don’t think it’s the be-all, end-all for him. With his company and the Guild, our family already
juggles a lot.”
“If it comes out that you helped me, it means automatic expulsion from the running.” I looked at Damian. “Same goes for
you.”
Damian shrugged. “Ah, I don’t give two shits about this Black Hand stuff. I only came here for you.” Pretty much mimicking
what he’d already told me. “Atticus and I, we have an understanding. He didn’t know you were the reason I came here, and he
knew me joining their little family of criminals was a far-fetched idea, but—”
It was Cade who interrupted, “I don’t get why Atticus even invited you here.”
“When you’ve made yourself an urban legend, word gets around. He didn’t invite me. He invited Atlas.”
“And you’re here on behalf of Atlas… not because you want on the Black Hand, but because you want Giselle.”
Damian clapped. “Look who’s putting it together. Well, some of it, anyway.” At that, he tossed a wink my way, as if him
being Atlas was our little secret. “You want your other boyfriends here? Fine, we’ll get ‘em here. Put ‘em to the test, too. See if
they run and tell anyone you’re here and unharmed.”
“Miguel will assume the Serpents tortured and killed me. I’m sure he’s written me off completely already,” I told them.
“We’ll use that to our advantage.”
“What about that old bodyguard of yours?” Cade asked, and Damian’s dark eyebrows came together. Both men watched
me, as if they both waited for an answer. They each had to know how much I’d grown to care for Zander, but only Damian
knew the truth.
I… I still wasn’t totally convinced it was Zander. It’s like half of me knew how logical it was, and that half of me had put
all the pieces together: how he’d acted at the hospital, how he’d known I would sneak out of the house and go to the
Playground, how he’d told me once he wasn’t a good guy.
And the other half? The other half just didn’t want to believe it. The other half of me had fallen in love with him and
wanted to believe the best in him.
Silly for a mafia princess to fall in love… although, since I wasn’t Miguel’s daughter, I supposed I wasn’t a mafia princess
after all.
“Let’s get Luca and Ezekiel here first,” I finally spoke. “I’ll deal with Zander later.”
Deal with him could’ve meant a lot of things. Talk to him, see what he had to say, decide whether I believed him or not…
kill him. It could mean so much, and the crazy part was, right now I didn’t know which I leaned toward most.
 Chapter Four – Luca
My heart fell out of my body when I came back to the suite to find the door open and Giselle gone. She was just… gone.
Completely gone. And I didn’t mean gone as if she’d run away or moved out.
No, all of her stuff was still here. Her golden cross, and even that ivory gun.
My father jumped into action while I was a mess. He got hold of the security footage from the hall, and what we saw…
someone had broken in and kidnapped her, taken her downstairs using the stairwell, where there weren’t any cameras; a blind
spot in the building.
That was the first time I caught myself wondering, because it didn’t make sense. Giselle had only just moved in. She hadn’t
been with me that long. Whoever had taken her must’ve done their recon on the hotel we were staying at long before she’d
moved in, because no alarms had been raised at all, and no one other than the security camera in the hall on our floor had
caught anything.
It was almost like someone had planned this for a while, since before she’d moved in, and if that was the case, then that
meant…
Well, that meant my father was in on it. He and Miguel had basically sprung this marriage out of nowhere. We didn’t even
have a goddamned wedding, and neither of us had actually signed the marriage papers. It was all forged, all forced, like it was
nothing more than a part of their plan for getting on the Hand.
The possibility that it was my father and Miguel scheming behind Giselle’s back and mine made me feel only slightly better
as the afternoon turned into dusk. If they were behind this, then maybe, just maybe she was still alive somewhere. Maybe
Giselle was still breathing.
But, like I’d mentioned, it was a slight hope, because at the same time, I knew now what atrocities my father was capable
of. I knew the things he could do, what he could hide. Even if he and Miguel had planned this, Giselle might not be alive. She
might’ve gotten a bullet to the head this time, instead of the stomach.
Rocco and Miguel called Atticus around five o’clock. They had a meeting with the Black Hand about Giselle’s kidnapping
at six. Rocco wanted me to go, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t shake the feeling he wanted me to play the worried, fretting husband
when all along he’d been the mastermind behind this.
But I didn’t have proof. I only had my suspicions, and when things were life or death, you had to be unequivocally certain.
I didn’t eat dinner. I couldn’t. I sat there, in the room I’d only recently begun to share with Giselle, hunched over on the
floor near the bed, my back leaning against the frame. My head was turned down, Giselle’s ivory gun in my hands.
It was beautiful. Beautiful and deadly. The grip was ivory, etched with flowers and vines. Her name was written on the
steel. She’d told me that Damian had gotten her this gun, and I never really understood why—I didn’t know they were close.
But I supposed there was a lot about my wife I didn’t know. I liked to think I knew the important bits, the parts of her past
that made her who she was today… in no thanks to my fucking father.
God, I hated him. I hated my own father because of what he did to her three years ago. How could someone do something
like that and come home to his wife and son and act as though nothing at all had happened? What else was a lie?
My hands curled around the steel of the gun, my arms trembling as I wrestled with my inner emotions. I didn’t want to be
here. I wanted… I wanted to be wherever Giselle was. I wanted to find her, to hold her, to be the man she deserved.
I was slow in getting to my feet, still holding onto her gun as I decided I’d fucking walk every block of this city. Every
street. Every sidewalk. I’d scour the entire fucking city to find her. I’d do anything and everything I could. I’d—
Right then, my phone rang.
I assumed it was my father, so I took my time in setting Giselle’s gun in the nightstand near the bed before answering it. The
number I saw flashing on the screen, however, did not belong to my father. It was unknown to me, not in my contacts.
A stupid hope rose within me: it could be Giselle calling from somewhere.
I answered it without hesitation once that possibility dawned on me. “Hello?”
Alas, the voice that spoke next did not belong to Giselle, although it was familiar. “Luca? This is Cade Cunningham. Are
you alone?” The heir that was normally brooding and quiet, off by himself because he hated being lumped in with heirs that
were at least ten years his junior. He was, I was pretty sure, the oldest heir in the running.
Had word already spread? I didn’t know how something like that was possible, but it was the first thought that came to my
mind once he said his name.
“Yes,” I said, “what do you want?” If he didn’t know about Giselle, I wouldn’t tell him. I knew there were some… let’s
just say complications between them, but I owed him nothing. I owed him absolutely nothing.
Although, maybe he’d help look for her.
“I’m going to list off an address. Memorize it. Don’t write it down. Come immediately.” As mysterious as ever, Cade
offered no additional details—which would’ve been useful right about now, since I had no idea what the hell he was going on
about.
“What—” I started to ask what this was about, but he cut me off.
 “Shut up. Don’t ask questions. Just come, and come alone.” And then he rattled off an address that wasn’t in Cypress. He
said it a second time before asking, “Are you listening?”
I snapped back to reality, “Yeah, I’m listening. Say it one more time.” This time, when he repeated the address, I mouthed it
back. While still on the call, I hurried out of the bedroom and went to grab my car keys, and at the same time, I input the
address to get directions. “It’ll take me forty minutes to get there.”
“Good. Come now, and remember—”
“Come alone, yeah, I got it.” I walked out of the suite with a brisk pace. “Cade, before you go, I don’t know if you heard,
but Giselle—”
He hung up. Cade hung up on me, right after I mentioned Giselle’s name. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t grind my gears—I
was on edge, obviously, as worried and anxious as a person could be without going insane—but there wasn’t anything I could
do to change it.
Cade and I weren’t friends. We were barely acquaintances. We really only shared a single thing, and that was Giselle. For
him to call me and tell me to meet him somewhere outside of Cypress, well… the timing was odd all around.
This didn’t have anything to do with Giselle, did it? It was too much to hope for.
Alas, that didn’t stop me from hoping in vain as I drove out of Cypress, away from the Black Hand, away from my father,
away from everything. I didn’t care about the Black Hand position or who ran what in Cypress. The only thing I cared about
was the girl currently missing.
Giselle. Oh, Giselle. My hands tightened on the wheel when I thought of her, so hard my knuckles turned white. This world
had been anything but kind to her, and I hated that I couldn’t press rewind and change the past. What she had to go through, what
she had to keep to herself these past three years…
None of it was alright. None of it was fine. Everything was so messed up, and I didn’t know how to fix things. I had the
feeling nothing would ever be the same again.
I sped. I broke a few speeding rules and traffic laws on the way to try to beat the time the GPS on my phone said I’d arrive.
The world became one of night, dusk giving way to a black sky. Eventually I made it out of Cypress, to whatever city butted up
against it. The directions took me to a development whose houses actually had yards—something you didn’t really see in
Cypress. Many of the plots were empty, with a few having semi-built houses on them. A newer development, then, still in
progress.
I came upon the address Cade had given me, and I pulled into the driveway, slow to shut off my car. My eyes spotted two
strangers standing near the front door, wearing leather jackets with similar patches on their arms. They were drinking beer, it
looked like, along with eating… pizza?
Why the hell would Cade want to meet here? Did he know those guys?
Whatever. I’ll just go inside, see what he wanted, and then get back home as soon as I could.
As I got out of my car, I squared my shoulders, held my head high, and readied myself. I had no idea what I’d be walking
into, and knowing Cade… or, not knowing Cade, didn’t help anything.
But he’d sounded urgent on the phone, so that had to mean something.
My legs took me to the front door, and the two unfamiliar men sized me up as I approached. Neither one appeared too
impressed with me, but that went both ways. “Uh,” I started, “I’m here for Cade?”
The two guys glanced at each other, something unspoken passing between them, and then the one on the left flicked his
thumb toward the door. I guess his way of telling me to go in.
I stepped past them and pushed inside the house, and immediately my gaze was drawn to Cade, who stood to the right of the
door, where the front hall opened up into a dining room of sorts. His large body blocked most of it out.
“Cade,” I started, the front door swinging shut on its own behind me, “what’s—” Whatever else I might’ve said died in the
back of my throat when Cade stepped aside and let me get a good view of the girl who’d been sitting at the table behind him.
My heart skipped a beat, and I could barely get her name out: “Giselle.”
Giselle was slowly getting to her feet, but I didn’t give her the chance to say a word before I rushed over to her and flung
my arms around her. I pulled her in close, holding her against me so tightly nothing and no one could pry me off her.
I buried my nose in her hair and breathed her in, the relief slow to flood my system, almost like a part of me didn’t want to
believe this was real. Like this was some kind of dream. “Oh, my God,” I whispered against her head, “I thought… I thought
you were gone. I—”
My arms fell from her back only so my hands could cup her face. Words just wouldn’t cut it here. I brought my mouth to
hers, kissing her, wordlessly telling her just how worried I’d been for her, how frantic I’d been these last few hours.
Seriously, it was like the world had shifted for me. Like, seeing that security footage with the masked man carrying
Giselle’s unconscious body had been a light bulb moment for me.
I would never let anyone take this girl from me again.
I think she was taken off-guard by the kiss at first. Maybe she wasn’t expecting it. Or maybe… maybe it was nothing more
than an old habit thanks to a certain someone. But, after a few seconds, her mouth became less stiff and she kissed me back,
murmuring my name against my lips, “Luca.”
God. No one had ever said my name like that. No one. Not even close. Seriously, no one could ever hold a candle to
Giselle.
Cade was apparently still standing two feet away, watching the whole thing, because right then he cleared his throat, like he
wanted Giselle’s and my embrace to end. Too bad for him, I was still getting reacquainted with Giselle’s soft, luscious lips.
Hey, they were lips I was worried I’d never see again. There’s nothing like losing someone to make you realize just how
badly you wanted them in the first place.
She might’ve only been my wife because it was forced on us by our fathers, but I knew it then: she had to be mine. Whether
she was my wife or not, it didn’t matter. I needed her, and I’d do whatever I could to prove it.
I was in no hurry to stop kissing her. A whole minute might’ve passed with Cade watching and probably scowling at us, but
I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was in my arms, her lips attached to mine.
Even though I wanted to kiss her forever, there was something I needed to find out, so after a while, I tore my mouth off
hers and whirled on Cade. “What the hell, man?” I demanded, and I made sure to step in between Cade and Giselle to shield
her from him.
The man who’d taken her from our suite had worn a mask, but he was a rather large guy… like Cade. I didn’t peg Cade
Cunningham as a kidnapper, but I guess you never knew.
“What the hell?” he echoed, frowning at me. “I called you out of courtesy—”
“Because I told you to,” Giselle whispered behind me.
A muscle in Cade’s jaw tensed. “And because she told me to, but that doesn’t mean you can waltz in here and make out
with her anytime you want.”
“She’s my wife,” I hissed. It didn’t matter to me that she was only my wife because our fathers had schemed behind our
backs. Semantics didn’t matter to this particular conversation.
Giselle sighed. “Dear God. You two are acting like boys. Can you both shut up about it already? Luca, if you want
something to eat, there’s still pizza in the kitchen.”
“I’m not hungry,” I muttered—and I wasn’t. I hadn’t eaten dinner, but until now, I’d been way too stressed out to even think
about eating. How could I eat, after all, while knowing someone had stolen Giselle?
That someone was apparently Cade, go figure.
“Why the hell did you kidnap her?” I asked Cade.
It wasn’t Cade who answered. It was someone else, another guy who came strolling over from the kitchen area across the
hall, his mouth currently full with pizza. A man with tattoos crawling up his neck and down his arms, a single teardrop near his
eye. A man with a swagger-filled walk and a golden chain hanging around his neck, someone who always butted in where he
did not belong—like that party I threw for the heirs.
Damian.
“It wasn’t your boy Cade,” he said. “It’s a long story, so why don’t you sit down so our girl can tell it to you?”
It took a while for two things to register. One: Damian was here. Why the hell was he here? And two: he called Giselle our
girl, and that wasn’t right… unless I missed something very big.
“What…” My mouth might’ve fallen open at that. “What are you doing here?” I decided to let the our girl thing slide,
mostly because things were complicated enough with Giselle already. I wasn’t the only guy she had a thing with.
“Again, that’s something you need to ask our girl,” Damian repeated himself before taking another bite of the pizza slice he
was eating. No plate, of course, because the man was too cool to use a plate, I guess.
“Can you give us the room?” Giselle asked.
Damian was quick to say yes, while Cade muttered a hard and fast, “No.” Unless I was mistaken, Cade sounded like he
was jealous of me.
Hah. Good.
Giselle’s lips puckered into a pout, and before I knew what was happening, she was slipping her hand into mine. “I guess
we’ll go into the bedroom, then,” she spoke off-handedly as she started to drag me along.
I could see it, the moment Cade realized his mistake. Cade knew it too, because he tried to say we could talk out here, but
Giselle had already made her mind up.
As she took me along, it finally dawned on me that she wasn’t wearing gloves. Her hands were free of them, her bare skin
on mine. Damn. Her hands were soft. Once I noticed that particular detail, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Soft hands. Soft lips. I bet she had a soft everything.
Once we were in the bedroom, I noticed a chair had been placed to the side of the bed and the sheets were all rumpled, like
something had happened on that bed and, oh gee, I don’t know, someone else had maybe watched…
“Uh, this seems like a weird setup,” I remarked dryly.
Giselle let go of my hand to close the door. It was only when she stood beside me, staring at the bed and the oddly-placed
chair that she said, “I had sex with Cade and Damian watched, but that isn’t why I wanted to talk to you alone.”
 Ah, okay. She was as blunt as ever, I see. No holds barred. Just a straight shooter, right to the point. That was Giselle. Not
sure if that’s something I should be grateful for or not. I guess her being truthful was better than her being a liar or someone
who hid things from me.
Hard not to be jealous, though. Impossible.
It took everything in me to not address what she’d said and simply say, “Giselle, what the hell is going on? What
happened?”
Giselle’s soft hand once more slipped into mine, and she led me to the bed, where we sat on the edge together. I couldn’t
look at the bed, because all I could think about while staring at the crumpled sheets was the fact that she’d just had sex with
Cade and Damian had watched—like, what? When the hell did all of this happen?
Did she like Damian too? How the hell was I supposed to compete with all these guys?
But that was a selfish thought, because obviously other shit was going on, so I pushed it away.
“I was kidnapped earlier today,” she started. “By one of Miguel’s men.” Her hand slipped out of mine, and she stared at the
wall facing us, a pensive expression on her beautiful face. She almost seemed… sadder than usual.
And then I found out why. Miguel wasn’t her father. The priest who’d saved her life three years ago was… the very same
priest who was now dead. Damian was in league with the Greenback Serpents, and he wanted to take Miguel down because
he’d paid off some Serpents to kill Father Charlie.
Oh. Now I understood Damian’s fascination with Giselle from the get-go. He’d known all along Miguel was the snake in
the grass.
Miguel’s men handed Giselle over to the Serpents, thinking they’d torture and kill her. What Miguel wasn’t expecting was
for those Serpents to bring her to Damian, where she was actually safe. Safer than she was in Cypress.
Once she was finished telling me the story of the day’s events, I found myself asking, “Why would Miguel tell you all of
this? Why would telling you the truth about your biological dad matter in the end?”
Her mouth hardened, her jaw setting. “He wanted me to die knowing I’d been too late to save my real father from death. I
think he’s always hated me because he’s known all along I wasn’t his daughter, and because he’d already had my mother killed,
I was the only thing left for him to torment.”
Shit. Was that why… was that why Miguel had agreed to give Giselle to my father for a night? Because he could? Because
why not? The thought made me sick to my stomach, and images I never wanted in my brain rose up. It took everything in me to
push them away.
Giselle spoke in a whisper as she stared off into space, “I knew he never loved me, but I just thought that was who he was.
A man incapable of love. My whole life, I’ve always been his pawn, just as I’m sure he’s now using my disappearance to his
advantage.”
She turned toward me, her knee brushing up against mine as her amber gaze locked on my face. “Luca, I don’t think it was a
coincidence that you weren’t home when Miguel’s man came for me. I think Miguel and Rocco planned it together.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I think you’re right.” There might’ve been a time when I wouldn’t want to admit something
like that, but… I now knew my father was a sick son of a bitch. Who knew how many young girls he’d hurt, the same as
Giselle? “They had a meeting with Atticus and the Black Hand tonight.”
Giselle did not act surprised. “I figured they’d act immediately. I want to take Miguel down, Luca, and I want to know if I
can count on you to help me.”
My reply came instantly, “Of course you can count on me. I will do whatever you want me to do, Giselle.” I found her hand
and squeezed it. “I will always help you. You never even need to ask. All you need to do is tell me what you want me to do,
and I’ll do whatever it is. Anything.”
“You might come to regret saying that,” she said, and then she didn’t say anything else. She stared at me for a long time, a
heaviness on her face I couldn’t discern, like there was more she wasn’t saying—and that was unlike her.
“What else?” I prodded.
“I need you to act like you’re on your father’s side. Be my eyes and ears. I can’t show my face in Cypress yet, not until
we’re ready to strike, so I’m relying on you and the others. I need to know what dirt Rocco and Miguel have on Atticus,
besides the whole Nixon thing.”
I nodded once. “Okay. I can do that, no problem. I might be able to hack into his computer, see if anything’s there. Maybe
even his phone while he’s sleeping.” Even though I’d agreed, the way Giselle was staring at me didn’t change.
Which meant there was more.
“Luca, Miguel’s not the only one I want to take down,” she whispered. “I know how hard it is to go against your father, so
if you don’t want anything to do with it when the time comes, I’ll understand—but you need to know: I will kill Rocco. I’ll
probably kill him before Miguel, and even though I care about you, I need you to know it’s nothing personal against you. Just
that asshole of a father of yours.”
The way she said it, so level-headed, so evenly, made me realize she was one hundred percent serious. Endgame to this
was Miguel Santos’s death… and my own father’s.
 Weeks ago I might’ve fought her, I might’ve ran straight to my father and told him of her plans—or even taken care of her
myself—because family was everything, right? When you were raised by a man like my father, you were taught that family was
life.
But my father had forsaken our family a long time ago, lied to me and my mother the entire time. As much as I didn’t want to
admit it, I knew he needed his comeuppance. I wanted that for Giselle.
I swallowed. “I understand, and I want you to know that when the time does come, I won’t stop you from doing what you
need to do.” I might not be able to, you know, watch her kill my father, but I wouldn’t stop her.
She sighed out a lungful of air, full of relief. “Thank you, Luca. I… I was worried you wouldn’t understand. I might not
want to be your wife, but I’d still hate to lose you over this. You’re… you’re a good man. You must’ve gotten it from your
mother.”
“I think she’d love you,” I told her, squeezing her hand again. “Not to change the subject, but once this is all over, you’re
saying you want a divorce?” A gentle smile crossed my face, soft and unsure. Now probably wasn’t the best time for jokes.
But she chuckled at that, and my smile only grew. I did love making her laugh. “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “But, yes, I
think you and I need to separate. You don’t want a wife who’s broken and being pulled every which way.”
“If that’s what you want… but for the record, I don’t think you’re broken, and as much as I don’t understand what you see in
someone like Cade, I’d rather have you while you’re being pulled every which way. Better than not having you at all, Giselle.”
Her full lips tugged into a smile. “You are something else.”
“I hope that’s a good thing,” I whispered back.
She nodded once, and she pulled her hand from mine, bringing it to my face, where she trailed her fingertips down along
my jaw. One of her fingers brushed up against the corner of my mouth. “You’re not a bad kisser, you know.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Better than Cade? At least tell me I’m better than—” I didn’t get the chance to say more, because
Giselle lifted her face to mine.
Giselle kissed me slowly, evenly, steadily. It was the kind of kiss where you could sigh into the other’s mouth while you
savored the taste of their lips on yours. Even though it was a gentle kiss, my head still spun. Giselle had that way about her, a
way of making you forget everything else while you were with her.
God, I wanted to memorize the way her lips felt on mine, tuck away the memory for later, for when I was alone and she
wasn’t beside me.
Shit. I had it so bad for this girl. I didn’t know why, I didn’t know how, but it was the truth.
Giselle pulled her mouth off mine and muttered, “You should go. I don’t want your father to think something suspicious is
going on.”
She was probably right. Still, it was a struggle to pull myself away from her, to get up and head to the bedroom door. Even
though Giselle got up with me, it still pained me to leave. I wanted to stay here with her, to sleep in that bed with her and hold
her all night, tell her everything was going to be fine.
But I wasn’t the only one she had on her team. Not the only man she liked. I didn’t know how this would end—not only
with Miguel and my father, but with Giselle and her circus of men. I didn’t know if she’d choose or if she’d refuse to.
If she refused, would I be able to handle sharing her long-term with other guys I may or may not get along with? That
question swirled in my head as I walked with Giselle to the front door of the house. We passed Damian and Cade in the dining
room. The latter was scowling, while the former appeared amused at the latter’s attitude.
Would they be okay with sharing long-term? Cade didn’t seem happy about it at all, but then again, Giselle did say that
she’d had sex with Cade while Damian watched.
I stopped before the door, turning toward Giselle. Her head was angled back, her light brown eyes seeming happier than
they had when I’d first arrived. “I’ll probably steal Cade’s phone,” she said, causing the man in question to mutter a confused
‘What?’ “So if you find anything out, just call his number, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, though I could’ve said so much more.
“And don’t talk to anyone about me. That includes Zander. I… I want to be the one to reach out.”
I understood where she was coming from, I think; it’s a conversation she would rather have herself. “I’ll be in touch. Please
stay safe, Giselle. I… I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. I went crazy today, thinking you were gone. I—”
It was as I talked that I realized: I needed her. I’d come to need her in such a short time. They were not feelings I could
ignore or deny. They were strong and blinding, to the point where I came to the conclusion I didn’t care if she never made a
decision between the men at her side. I needed her, and that’s all that mattered.
If that wasn’t love, I didn’t know what it was.
She gave me a soft smile. “I’m okay, Luca. You don’t have to worry about me.”
But that’s the thing, wasn’t it? As I turned to leave, ducking out of the house after that and hurrying to my car, I knew that
wasn’t quite true. Giselle might want it to be true, but it wasn’t. She might be okay now, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t worry.
Giselle would never let this go. Not Miguel and not my father. She wouldn’t stop until she saw them get their just desserts.
She would literally stop at nothing, even if it meant her own downfall.
 And that was why she needed us, why she needed all of us. She’d dig her own grave if she had to in order to take down my
father and Miguel. It was up to us—to me, Cade, Damian, Zander, and even that priest she liked, whatever his name was.
It was up to us to save her.
 Chapter Five – Giselle
I went to sit with Cade and Damian, a smile on my face from Luca. I didn’t know what it was about that one, but he made me
feel… good. He might’ve fumbled a little when I’d initially told him about what Rocco did to me, but he sure was making up
for it now.
Luca was nothing like Rocco. Nothing. And that, I think, scared me deep down, because it might not be so bad being his
wife.
But that’s the thing: Luca wasn’t the only one that made me feel good. No, it’s like I’d shut myself off for so long after that
night with Rocco, I’d had blinders on, my only goal getting from day to day. Barely scraping by.
Now? Now everything was different. Now I was alive and my heart pulled in so many different directions all at once, and I
didn’t know what to do.
“You look like the cat who swallowed that bird. Whatever the fuck that saying is,” Damian remarked, studying me from
across the table. “You and your hubby finally come to terms with the attraction between you two? Finally seal the deal?”
“Shut up,” Cade huffed.
I tossed a look Damian’s way. “Believe it or not, I didn’t have Cade call Luca and Ezekiel so I could sleep with them.”
“Isn’t that why you have a million boyfriends, along with a husband?” Damian sounded so innocent asking that particular
question. He was lucky he wasn’t beside me, otherwise I might’ve smacked him.
“I have a husband because Miguel and Rocco forced the marriage on me,” I clarified. “And I don’t have a million
boyfriends. I don’t even have one.”
The smile Damian gave me was sly and slick, and it caused a flurry of butterflies to erupt in my stomach. “Are you sure
about that, baby girl? Because as I see it, you definitely got a few. Superman here just don’t want to admit it. He don’t wanna
admit he’s dating a married woman. I, myself, am happy as long as you’re happy.”
Cade groaned and muttered, “Can you shut up already?” Maybe to drown out Damian, he turned his wide frame toward me
and asked, “What’s this about you taking my phone?”
“Obviously, mine got left at the hotel when I was kidnapped,” I said. “If you want to be able to get ahold of me without
driving all the way here, I’m going to need one of your phones. If you’d rather I take Damian’s—”
I’d never seen a man move quicker than that. He pulled out his phone and slammed it on the table in front of me. “There.
Passcode is one-two-three-four.”
“One-two-three-four? Really, Superman? You couldn’t think of anything better than that?” Damian laughed. “What kind of
phone is it? I’ll have to send the boys out tomorrow for a charger, along with anything else they didn’t grab tonight.” He
reached for the phone and studied it.
Cade rolled his eyes at Damian, and then he muttered, “Everything needs a password nowadays. And they all have to be
different, because if you’re hacked, then everything is fucked. When I can go simple, I go fucking simple.”
“Don’t listen to him,” I told Cade. “Damian’s just trying to get under your skin.”
“Is he? You know him that well already?” Cade’s suspicion at Damian’s and my relationship was only logical. In reality, I
didn’t know Damian much at all… and yet, at the same time, I think I knew him better than most.
Damian was Damian.
Damian slid the phone back over to me, doing nothing but smirking at us.
Cade groaned again. He checked the time on his phone. “I should get back to the city. I’ll work on getting another phone in
the morning before touching base with you to see where we’re at. If you need anything… call Isaac Cunningham. That’s my
father.”
I got up with Cade. “Thank you so much, Cade. For everything.” For coming here with the intent of saving me from my
captors, for returning the assassination job even though it meant worse standing with your Guild. For literally everything.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, his green eyes reflecting the light from the fixture above the dining room table.
“But—” I stopped when he took my chin between his thumb and index finger. He angled my head back, forcing me to look
up at him and once again reminding me of just how impressively tall he was. Superman indeed.
“I mean it,” he murmured. “Don’t thank me. I didn’t do any of it for your thanks, Giselle. I did it for you. Because I care
about you. Because I…”
Seconds pass, and Damian pretends to swoon. “Awe, I think Superman’s in love.”
That’s all it took for Cade to frown and pull away from me. “Fuck off, Damian.” He then stalked off, leaving the house
without another word. The moment, thanks to Damian, was ruined—although it didn’t look like Cade was ready to finish that
sentence anytime soon, regardless.
Did Cade Cunningham love me? I couldn’t help but smile as I turned back to the table and sunk into my chair once again.
Damian watched me all the while, a smirk on his face. “Well, well. Does Superman have her love in return? I can’t blame
her. He’s an impressive guy. Very tall. Very intimidating. I wouldn’t have guessed he’s your type, though.”
That remark made the bubbly feeling inside me dissipate, and I met Damian’s dark eyes as I asked, “What do you mean?”
 He shrugged. “He just seems like a very… macho guy. Alpha. I would’ve assumed your personalities wouldn’t mix, but
maybe circumstances changed things.” When I continued giving him a strange look, he chuckled. “I ain’t poking fun at you, I
promise. I’m just constantly amazed that you managed to catch so many fish in your net.”
Fish meaning guys. Damian wasn’t stupid. He knew there was more. He knew Cade and Luca weren’t the only ones. He’d
been watching me for a while, either with his own eyes or his crew’s, which meant he had to know about Ezekiel and Zander.
Oh, Zander. What was I going to do with you?
“What kind of fish are you?” I asked, trying to get my mind off Zander and what Damian accused him of doing. The old
wound in my stomach hurt, that night flaring to life in my mind.
Damian smirked at me. “Why? Want to catch another fish in that net, baby girl? Maybe you don’t need to. Maybe I’ve been
in your net all along.” The look he gave me right then made me recall just how close we’d been before Cade had busted
through that door.
Where would we be now if Cade never would’ve shown up? We were seconds from kissing—at least, I was pretty damn
sure that’s where it was going. How far would we have gotten if we would’ve been left alone?
We were alone in the house now, although we were waiting on one more man to arrive tonight. No one else around,
windows shut, curtains drawn. It was only because we were alone that I said, “What would Atlas do with a girl like me?”
“You know what they say about curiosity, baby girl. Curiosity killed the cat.”
My comeback was ready instantly: “It’s a good thing I’m no cat, then.”
Damian smirked harder at that, and he leaned onto the table across from me. The look he gave and that smirk pinned me in
place. “Atlas would eat up every inch of that body. He’d make a girl like you forget. He’d make you his in every way, baby
girl, and I don’t know if you’re ready for that yet.”
We stared at each other for a while after that, neither one of us saying a word more. The tension in the air was so thick you
could cut it with a knife, and every breath I took made my lungs shudder. Damian was intense as hell, and I had the feeling he
meant every word he said.
Now was not the time to play with fire where Damian was concerned, and yet I couldn’t seem to help myself.
Before either of us could say another word, the front door swung open and Ezekiel walked in. The man wore his priest
garb, the dark outfit snug on his muscular figure. His black-haired head whipped in our direction, and the moment he spotted
me, he let out a sigh of relief. The door swung shut, and he strolled over to us at the table, in the blink of an eye the calmest
man.
Which was a lie, nothing more than a mask Ezekiel wore when surrounded by people. I’d gotten a glimpse of the true
Ezekiel, and I knew I’d need that unholy monster on my side.
“Ah, the infamous Black Hand priest,” Damian spoke, his smirk turned toward Ezekiel, the intensity and tension of our
earlier conversation gone. He got to his feet, rubbed his jaw, and walked over to where he stood at the head of the table.
Ezekiel didn’t blink, not even as Damian leaned in close and whispered, “You’re only here for her. In fact, she’s the only
reason I haven’t killed you for what you did to my men in your church.” The voice he used was a far-cry from the one he’d used
with me. This Damian was hard and threatening, and it was easy to see how he’d risen to the top.
The man could flip a switch. It was kind of sexy, in a weird way. Don’t ask me why.
Unfazed, Ezekiel’s blue eyes shifted to Damian. “Your men? I assume you mean those Serpents, in which case I will tell
you that I only did what was necessary. They were looking for Giselle, and they flashed their irons at me. I do not take kindly to
those who point guns at me, Damian.”
Damian let out an incredulous chuckle before taking a step back. “You, priest, are something else. I can see why she took a
liking to you. It’s always good to have a psychopath on your side.” He threw a wink in my direction, and then headed toward
the door. “I’m going out for a smoke. I’ll let you two catch up.”
Only when he was gone did Ezekiel level that emotionless stare at me again—only this time, the emotionless facade
cracked, and beneath the mask I saw genuine concern. “The Black Hand met with your father and Rocco Moretti tonight. You
were stolen right out of the Moretti suite.” He was unhurried in taking the chair beside mine.
“Word travels fast in Cypress,” I remarked.
“It does when you have eyes and ears everywhere… and especially so when you’re friends with the head of the Hand.”
“As you can see, the kidnapping didn’t go quite as Miguel planned.”
A quick glimmer of amusement flashed on his handsome face, the tawny skin around his mouth quirking in a slight smile. “I
can see that, yes. Tell me what happened. Tell me why you called me here instead of alerting your father.”
“I’ll start by telling you that Miguel Santos is not my real father. Biologically speaking.”
“I assumed as much. You may have brown eyes, but you look nothing like Miguel.”
That caught me off-guard. Ezekiel suspected? The man really was observant. Well, there’s no way he knew the entire story,
so I launched into yet another rendition of the day’s events and the revelations I’d learned.
Honestly, I was getting pretty good at telling the story. Do something so often and you were bound to become a master.
Ezekiel was quiet throughout. He said not a word as he listened to me, though he did cock his head in thought a few times. It
was only when I finished completely that he said, “And you want to turn the entire thing upside-down. You want to take both
Miguel and Rocco down.”
“Yes,” I admitted, not for the first time today. Ezekiel once told me all I’d have to do was ask for his help, and he’d help
me. There was never a better time than the present. “I need your help.”
“You have it. Anything you need from me, Giselle, anything at all.” So eager to help me. Hopefully I didn’t make him regret
it.
I said, “I need you to set up a meeting for me. I want to talk to Shay Arrowwood, and I want to talk to her alone. No
boyfriends in tow. The sooner the better.” I had the feeling once the ball got rolling, it wouldn’t stop for anybody or anything.
It’d be a domino effect.
“I can do that,” Ezekiel spoke with a nod. “She’s very much like you, you know. She wanted to bring the entire Black Hand
down, blamed the members for her family’s death years ago. Everyone assumed she was dead for five whole years, and when
she came back, she had vengeance in her heart, much like you do now.”
Shay had once made the comment to me that she wouldn’t be where she was today—on the Black Hand—if her family was
still alive. It sounded as though she had no love for her family, so why did their deaths fill her with the need for revenge?
“We might be similar, but we are not the same,” I said once I’d gathered my thoughts.
“No,” Ezekiel agreed, “you are not the same. You might actually do it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean?”
“Shay failed in her quest for retribution. She fell in love and everything changed for her, but for you… I have the feeling,
Giselle, even love won’t stop you from getting your hands bloody one last time.”
My gaze fell away from him as the weight of his words hit me, and once that weight piled on, the weight of everything else
followed suit. Suddenly I felt so very exhausted, weary of it all. I could never have a break, never be done with this—not until
two men and their legacies lay in ruins beneath my feet.
For the first time all day, I realized just how bone-tired I was, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “I’m so tired,
Ezekiel.”
He got to his feet, offering me a hand. “Then let’s get you to bed, Giselle.”
I looked between his outstretched hand and his face. I… I think I was too nervous to go to bed, like I wanted to jump right
into the plan, even though that’d be impossible. It was a waiting game until all the pieces were brought into the light, until I
knew what other dirt Rocco and Miguel had on the Hand. And who knew how long it’d be before I met with Shay.
But the anxiousness over the future wasn’t the real reason I didn’t want to go to bed. The true reason was I was afraid of
what I’d see when I was alone in the dark, when I had nothing and no one beside me, grounding me, rooting me to reality. It
was easy to be angry when I had eyes on me, but when I was alone…
When I was alone, it might be too easy for me to sink back into old habits, to start hating myself and what I let others do to
me.
I didn’t want to go to bed. Sleeping, even though the world was one of night and the hour was late, did not seem appealing.
But I could only be awake for so long. Perhaps I needed to force myself.
So, after some quiet deliberation, I slipped my hand into his and let Ezekiel pull me to my feet. Together we walked through
the house, and we stopped before the bedroom door. I hesitated, but Ezekiel pulled me inside, drawing me to the bed.
He did not flick on the light, so it was dark. The only light coming in was from the hall, but it was enough to illuminate the
space, to show the wrinkled sheets and the chair resting beside the bed.
Ezekiel said nothing about it, not even as he let go of my hand to move the chair aside. He helped me crawl under the
covers, and then he pulled the sheets over me, his affectless demeanor calming instead of unsettling.
He smoothed my hair around my face, leaning over the bed, shadows dancing across his features. “Goodnight, Giselle.” He
did not bend to kiss me, nor did he linger; it wasn’t his way. He simply pulled himself off me and went for the door.
He walked out into the hall, in the process of shutting it behind him, when I called out for him, “Wait.” Ezekiel froze
instantly. “Could you… could you stay with me tonight? For a little bit, at least? You don’t have to stay till morning—”
Oh, God. What was I saying? Rambling had never sounded stupider.
Ezekiel’s answer was him stepping back inside the room and gently closing the door, blocking out the light in the hall. He
returned to the bed, his voice low as he spoke, “Of course I will stay with you, if that is what you wish. There’s no mass in the
morning, so I’m yours however long you want me.”
My heart constricted when he said it, and I scooted aside to give him room on the bed. Through the darkness, I watched as
he slipped off his shoes before climbing in. He got under the covers with me, and before I knew what I was doing, I was
leaning into him, against his chest, letting him wrap his arms around me and hold me to him.
For a minute or two, we did nothing more than breathe in unison. His warmth still managed to find me through his clothes,
seeping into me and giving me strength.
“I’m sorry about Father Charlie,” he whispered.
“Do you think he knew when he found out who my mother was? Do you think he knew I was his… his daughter?” I didn’t
know what would be worse: if he’d known straight away, that very first night he’d saved my life, or if he found out after. Or
maybe… maybe he’d never truly known.
Ezekiel breathed deep. “I believe he knew whatever he was meant to. Even though he was taken from you too soon, a part
of him still lives on inside you. You are a testament to him. To his sins, but also to his faith and his compassion.”
I sighed. “I think I get why people like your church so much. You always know the right thing to say.”
“That’s not true.”
I pulled my head off his chest, resting it on the pillow beside his. We lay so close, our noses touched. “Of course it’s true. It
is for me. You always know what to say to make me feel better.”
His hand smoothed down my hair after that, the gesture so gentle and slow I had to close my eyes and sigh. “I’m glad you
think so. I find myself at a loss for words more often than not when I’m in your presence, and lately…”
“Lately what?”
“Lately,” Ezekiel’s voice came out low and hushed, “your altar is the only one I want to worship.”
I shivered against him, even though I was beneath the covers, fully clothed, with his heat flooding into me as we cuddled
together. If that wasn’t a declaration of love, I didn’t know what was… but maybe a psychopath who dismembered people
without blinking couldn’t love.
Or maybe they could, just in their own way. After all, who was I to judge this man when I had sins of my own?
“Your altar is the only one I want to fall to my knees before,” he continued, and his body shifted beneath the sheets,
pressing against me harder in certain places. The hand that had smoothed down my hair fell to my lower back, and he held me
tightly against him. “I knew from the first moment I met you that you would be my greatest temptation, my greatest sin.”
Anything smart I could’ve said in response to that never surfaced, because Ezekiel went on, “You are my God now, Giselle.
I will do whatever it takes to make sure you’re safe. I will burn the whole city down if you want me to. Anything, everything…
you have me utterly and completely.”
I moved a hand, resting it against his chest. He’d rolled onto his side, mimicking me, our bodies so snug together beneath
the sheets he was all I could feel. The only thing I could say to that was his name, whispered in a soft breath, “Ezekiel.”
Maybe it was the darkness, or maybe it was due to what he’d just said, but something came over me right then, an invisible
force guiding me to action. I inched my face toward his on the pillow and found his mouth, pressing my lips against his. Unsure
at first, but the moment my lips brushed against his, he met my desperateness with his own.
The hand curled around my lower back lifted to my face, cupping my lower jaw as I reacquainted myself with Ezekiel’s
mouth. Confident and comforting, commanding in the way he took over once I made the first move.
For a priest, he certainly did not shy away from sinning, but you wouldn’t catch me complaining about that.
Let us sin together, then. Let us come together in a union of unholy fate. He was my priest now, and in the darkness of this
room, after the day I’d had, I wanted nothing more than to drown in him.
I was broken, but today did not break me. I’d been broken for three years, and here in Cypress I’d started to rebuild, put
myself back together. I was stronger now than I was before. I would not let my ex-father win. He would not scar me again. He
wouldn’t hurt me again. I would not let him.
Ezekiel must’ve sensed the hunger inside me, because soon after our lips collided, he rolled himself on top of me, pinning
my body down to the bed and making me moan into the kiss. He swallowed up the sound while his hands traveled along my
body, bunching up my shirt to get at the skin below.
He only tore his mouth off mine to help me out of my shirt. My bra came off next, and then those hands of his—hands I
would’ve stiffened away from not too long ago—traversed my top half, taking every part of me in. Anywhere he touched, my
skin was alight, flesh on fire from the desire.
When those hands of his cupped my chest, massaging my tits and tweaking my nipples, I shuddered against him, my lower
half grinding upon him. Even though Ezekiel was fully clothed, I could feel the growing hardness between his legs.
The slight stiffness in my midsection didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The only thing that was on my mind was the way he
made me feel.
Amazing. He made me feel amazing, like none of my worries carried any weight. Like everything would work out because
he was beside me.
Well, on top of me right now, but you get the idea.
His mouth broke off mine. His lips trailed fervent kisses along my jaw, and he stopped when he reached the crook of my
neck. “I think,” he breathed out, his voice the huskiest I’d ever heard it, “you were always meant to be mine.”
Such delicious possessiveness. It was almost enough to make me forget he was a man of the cloth, enough to make me
forget about everything else outside of this room. Right now, it was only me, Ezekiel, and the urgent need to feel him dominate
me.
“Then make me yours,” I whispered back, holding onto his sides like this was a rollercoaster and he was the only bar
keeping me on the ride. I was practically pleading with him when I repeated myself: “Make me yours.”
Ezekiel didn’t need any further begging. He stopped pressing down on me, moving so he could help me out of my pants and
panties. Every inch of me was on fire, and by the time he undid his belt to start the process of shedding his own clothes, I’d
waited enough.
“No,” I whispered as I pulled him back down on me and spread my legs for him. “I need you now.” There wasn’t time to
take off his clothes. We were sinning anyway together; might as well make it a little extra taboo. He could fuck me while still in
his priest’s garb.
Ezekiel did not argue. He went for his pants, undoing the button and zipper before pulling out his hard cock. I couldn’t see
it in the darkness, but I felt it when he pressed down on me, his tip prodding my entrance. I breathed hard, ready for it, ready
for him.
Ready for my priest to fuck me.
His hips bore down on me, and I cried out as his cock filled my core in one swift movement. I clung to him like he was my
lifeline, even as he began to rock his hips with a greedy, desperate pace.
In and out, in and out. He knew exactly how to undulate those hips to hit something right inside of me, and the moans that
came from my throat told him so. The bed swayed under us, the frame hitting the wall behind the headboard after each
particularly hard thrust of his hips.
One of his hands found my hair, fingers curling into its lengths and tugging ever so gently. His other hand worked at my left
tit, cupping it, rubbing the nipple, edging me closer and closer to an orgasm. My priest knew exactly how to touch me, how to
fuck me; he really was all mine.
Pressure built inside me, and with each passing second, that pressure grew harder and harder to ignore. Ezekiel fucked me,
toyed with my nipple, and pulled on my hair, and all the while I could feel myself inching closer to a release. It truly did not
take long at all for it to become unavoidable.
The orgasm hit me, and it hit me hard. My whole body trembled after tensing up, and the cry that left my lips was unlike any
other. My back arched as heated pleasure swept through me, taking hold of everything I was, everything I used to be, and
everything I would be. Past, present, and future. This orgasm took all of me in a chokehold and refused to let go.
Ezekiel didn’t stop. He kept going, kept fucking me. If anything, he went at me harder after that, as if hearing and feeling my
release only egged on the beast inside. Our bodies swayed in unison as his cock speared me over and over, and once I was in
control of my body again, I clung to the sides of his shirt, fingers digging into the fabric as the man of God lost himself within
me.
A low sound left Ezekiel’s chest. A sound that told me he was getting close to his own orgasm, to filling me with that seed
of his—and I wanted it. I wanted him inside me. I wanted him to erupt in me, to feel that warmth blossom in my core.
His body lurched above mine, his cock slamming into me as a deep-throated moan came from him. A dull warmth, just for a
split-second, erupted in my pussy, and I knew he’d emptied himself inside me.
Ezekiel did not go to pull himself out right away. His cock stayed buried inside me, twitching as if he needed to go more.
Hmm. I could always go for more Ezekiel.
And that was why, when he finally pulled his cock out of my core, I rolled onto my stomach and propped myself up on my
hands and knees, giving my ass. “Fuck me again,” I murmured.
He did not argue with me, not that I thought he would. He knelt behind me, positioning himself before drawing his hands
along my sides, stopping only when he reached my hips. His fingers dug into my skin the same moment he pulled my ass back,
slamming his cock into my core once more, only this time from behind.
“Oh, God,” I whispered as he fucked me from behind. This angle… let’s just say it felt different. Different but amazing.
“If there is a God here, it is you,” Ezekiel spoke through moans, his hands tightening on my sides. “And I am nothing but a
man attempting to be worthy of you.” His hips jerked after that, his cock practically filling me up to my stomach.
Not possible, I knew, but it sure felt like he was rearranging my guts.
One of his hands left my side, and I could feel his body bend somewhat so that hand could snake around my hip. His fingers
found my clit, surrounding the nub of flesh and starting to rub it.
That sent me overboard. Feeling his cock spear me while his fingers tweaked and stroked my aching clit; it was too much.
Too much, all at once. I couldn’t catch my breath. The only thing I could do was hold myself up—barely—and let Ezekiel do
whatever he wanted to me.
Fuck. It felt so good. Sensation overload. Too many competing sensations all vying for supremacy in my brain. I couldn’t
think straight. Ezekiel kept up the pace, pounding into me from the back while making my clit swell with the sudden attention.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “It’s too much.”
Ezekiel’s voice filled my ears like honey, “No, it’s not.” Like that was final, like I was wrong.
And I guess I was, because not soon after that, I came again, and this orgasm put my previous one to shame. This one made
my arms give out, so it was just my ass in the air, getting a workout from behind. My cry was muffled by the pillow under me,
my clit pulsating underneath Ezekiel’s fingertips.
Every part of my body was on cloud nine after that, and Ezekiel only stopped toying with my clit so he could once again
grab me by the hips and slam into my pussy as hard as he could. Over and over, he didn’t stop until he erupted again, filling me
with more cum.
Let’s just say the night was a long one, and neither of us got much sleep. In fact, I was pretty sure by the time we actually
went to sleep, it was an hour or two before dawn.
But, you know what? I didn’t care. Being with Ezekiel—being with him every which way, multiple times—was just what
the doctor ordered. I’d needed Cade too, but in a different way. I… I think I was starting to understand the reason why Shay had
so many boyfriends.
They were all different. They each helped in different ways. It was like each one brought something to the table that you
desperately needed, and if you settled for just one, that’d leave an emptiness inside you.
I wasn’t saying I wanted multiple boyfriends, but, well, I’d be lying to myself if I said I wanted to choose.
I was deep in a dreamless sleep, a welcoming black abyss in my head, when the sound of a door cracking open woke me
up. My eyelids peeked open to find Damian hanging between the open door and the door frame. Sunlight streamed in through
the window on the opposite side of the room, the strength of the light telling me it was well past sunrise.
Damian smirked at me. “Wakey, wakey, you little bunny rabbits. I know you’re probably tired from all of that fucking last
night, but I want to make breakfast. Had the boys run out to the grocery store to grab some food so I can make it. Who wants
bacon and eggs?” He flashed his pearly whites in my direction, and all I could do was yawn.
Ezekiel was still clothed, but I was completely naked beneath the covers. I was currently nestled against the crook of
Ezekiel’s arm. With a slight move of my head, I saw Ezekiel was awake and staring at Damian, unamused. Then again, that’s
just Ezekiel’s face when he was dealing with anyone who wasn’t me.
“So? How ‘bout it?” Damian spoke when neither of us moved a muscle. “Bacon? Eggs? Or perhaps you want some French
toast? I’m better at bacon and eggs, but if you want that, I’ll do my best—”
I yawned again. “Bacon and eggs are fine.”
Ezekiel reached under the covers, possibly to make sure his cock was neatly tucked away and his pants were zipped and
buttoned. He was slow to slip away from me and get to his feet, and he fixed his belt once he was standing.
One look at him now, undone belt aside, and you’d never know what we got up to last night.
To me, Ezekiel said, “If you want me to stay for breakfast, I can, but I would like to shower first.”
Damian stepped inside the room. “Bathroom’s across the hall, buddy.”
Ezekiel glanced at me, as if asking if I was alright, and I gave him a nod. Only after I nodded at him did he push past
Damian and go to the bathroom. A few seconds later, I heard the sound of the door shutting.
The grin Damian wore was mischievous and sly, and he shoved his hands into his pockets as he meandered to the bed. He
sat on the edge, his black eyes twinkling in the early morning light as he studied me. He couldn’t see any of me thanks to the
sheets, but the outline of my naked body was more than clear.
“I have to admit,” he told me with a devilish smirk, “I didn’t know priests could go that hard. He must be something else,
that one.”
I was slow in sitting up, though I held the sheet around my chest. Didn’t know why, though. Damian got a pretty big eyeful
of me when I’d let him watch me on top of Cade. “He does have more stamina than you’d think,” I agreed.
“A killer priest who fucks with the stamina of a stallion,” Damian spoke, “almost sounds like the start of a joke, don’t it?”
“Trust me, there’s nothing funny about Ezekiel.”
“I’m starting to get that. But, hey, if you like the guy, then I think I can find it in my heart to forgive him for killing my guys.
Maybe. Jury’s still out. Maybe if you ask me nicely to forgive him—”
I let the sheet fall away from my chest, allowing him a nice, long look of my tits. “I’m not a very nice person, Damian. I
thought you figured that out already.”
“Maybe not nice in the kind sense of the word, but you’re damn nice to look at, baby girl.”
I didn’t have to look down to know that my nipples were now two hardened points, so hard they could cut glass. I… I
didn’t quite know how to respond to him, to what he’d said, so I didn’t. I simply sat there and waited.
Damian scooted closer to me, his gaze torn between my face and my exposed chest. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip.
“You are a pretty fucking big tease, you know.”
“Am I?” I sounded far more innocent than I was. Of course I knew, but after almost kissing him yesterday, after hearing him
be so plain, so vulnerable to me as he told me he’d take care of me, that he’d get me anything I wanted, do anything I wanted…
It was impossible to not be drawn to this man. A man with secrets, a man with power—and yet, even with secrets and
power, he was nothing like Miguel Santos. That was everything to me.
Damian nodded once. “You are. One of these times, I might need a taste of you myself. You’ve gotta taste fucking
spectacular to make a priest fuck you all night like that.”
I moved my legs out from under the sheets, scooting to the edge of the bed. Right beside Damian, only I was completely
nude, with nipples so hard they practically ached. “That sounds like a you problem,” I whispered, and then I got to my feet.
My shirt from last night lay on the floor directly in front of him, so I bent over and gave him a nice view of my ass—and
probably my pussy, too. Mmm. Maybe I did like edging him, teasing him, a bit too much.
 When I straightened and turned around, I saw Damian trying to adjust his cock over his pants. I cocked my head at him,
making no moves to put the shirt on. Had to grab my bra next. “Something wrong, Damian?”
Damian surprised me by standing. He didn’t go to touch me; instead, he tugged the shirt out from my hand and let it fall to
the floor once more. His chest practically hummed with desire, and anyone with eyes could see the way his cock bulged
beneath his ripped jeans.
“You,” he breathed out, taking another step closer to me. Though I was not afraid of the man or what he’d do to me, I found
myself matching his step backward, all the way until my back hit the wall and I had nowhere else to go.
Trapped between the wall and him. Not a bad place to be.
Damian’s head bent, his forehead only an inch away from mine. His hands were balled up on the wall on either side of me,
as if he had to mentally work to keep them off me. “You’re something else,” he whispered. “Truthfully? I never planned on any
of this. Coming to Cypress, I wanted to kill you and that daddy of yours.”
“But now?” Never before had two words been more difficult to speak. Something about the position we were in, how close
we were, how we weren’t quite touching, made my insides go haywire. And, for some reason, I couldn’t shake the memory of
Damian talking to Luca last night.
Our girl. Our girl, like he already viewed me as his.
“Now everything’s changed,” he was quick to say, his face hovering an inch above mine, so close I could feel his hot breath
blooming on my face with every exhale. “I thought that was obvious, baby girl?”
The look he gave me in that moment made me shiver, and in doing so, the tips of my nipples brushed against him. Even
though it was just fabric against my nipples, I sighed out a moan. For some reason, I felt like I was on the edge of an orgasm,
just standing there.
“You’re driving me crazy, you know that?” Damian murmured. “Fucking crazy.”
“I’m… sorry.” There was a long pause between the two words, mostly because it took me forever to think of what to say. I
was driving him crazy? The same could be said of the opposite, too.
Damian smirked. “No, you’re not. You’re not sorry one bit. You’re enjoying this just as much as I am.”
I turned my head to the side, needing some fresh air that wasn’t shared between us; it’s just too damn much. Damian took
advantage of that by lowering his head even more, his mouth now directly beside my ear.
“When I watched you ride Superman, I was torn between wanting to be in Superman’s place and crawling on that bed to
bend you over and sandwich you between us while I fill that other hole of yours. And when I heard you and the unholy priest
going at it last night, it took everything in me to not come join you.”
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t seem to get my breathing under control. I didn’t think I’d ever been so turned on before. So
turned on without being touched or in the throes of passion. I felt like I could burst.
And Damian must’ve known that, because he wasn’t finished. He whispered, “Listening to you come for your priest… it
was the hottest thing I’ve ever heard, Giselle. I just imagined him pounding away at you, and you coming like a greedy little
vixen.” The hands he had on the wall were slow to slip down, no longer fists; they now rested beside my hips.
“Take right now, for instance,” he murmured, for the first time touching me by brushing his lips against my earlobe. The
action sent another shiver down my spine, an uncontrollable bodily reaction to his nearness and what he was saying. “I can tell
you want more, and it makes me wonder… how wet are you between those legs?”
I sucked in a hard breath, closing my eyes.
“The girl who used to hate touching… getting wet from nothing but looks and words.” Even though my eyes were closed, I
could hear the smirk in his voice. “I know you are. I don’t have to reach between those legs to feel it. I know you’re wet.”
My thighs squeezed together as he spoke. The man was probably right. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I
was ridiculously wanting right now. Damian talking so much was torture.
“And I bet you want me to check you,” he whispered. “To put my hand between those legs and feel your slick for myself—
and I want to, baby girl, fuck, how I want to. But if I do, I won’t be able to stop myself from picking you up, carrying you to the
bed, and fucking you for hours like your priest did last night.”
I opened my eyes, slow to turn my head back to Damian and meet his dark-eyed stare. “Now who’s teasing who?”
He smirked harder at that. “Tit for tat. If you want to come right now, you’re going to have to do it on your own.” When I
said nothing, when I didn’t move an inch, he chuckled softly and said, “Looks like you can dish it, but you can’t take the heat
yourself. So worked up with nowhere to go—unless you hop in the shower with your priest. I’m sure he’d gladly fuck your
brains out some more.”
I had no idea what point Damian was trying to make, but if he thought he could get me all worked up like that and walk
away, he was wrong. He thought I wasn’t ready to have Atlas? Maybe Atlas wasn’t ready for me.
I lifted a hand and set it on his chest, just below his golden chain, and instantly I heard him inhale. “I’m not the only one
worked up,” I whispered, drawing my hand down his chest and over his stomach, stopping right above the bulge in his jeans. “I
might be wet, but I bet you’re dripping, too.”
My finger hooked around the waistband of his jeans, and I tugged it once, jerking his lower half closer to me, close enough
that I could now feel that bulge against my lower stomach. “So don’t act like Mister High and Mighty when you’re not. Right
now, you want the same thing as me. I think you just want to see who breaks first.”
The breath Damian let out right then told me I was exactly right. With my finger still hooked on his pants, he pressed his
midsection on me harder, pinning me to the wall and grinding on me once.
“Maybe,” he admitted, “I’m a sucker for the anticipation. Maybe I want to wait until all our business is done and then
devour you as dessert.”
“Fine. Then I guess, until then, you’ll never know how wet I am.” I pulled my finger out of the waistband of his jeans and
pushed him away from me. The man only took a step back, still smirking that blasted smirk. “I guess I’ll go hop in the shower.”
I gave Damian a smile and a flick of my hair before strutting out of the bedroom and going straight across the hall to the
bathroom, where I heard the water running. I didn’t need any eyes on the back of my head to know Damian had followed me, a
few paces behind.
My hand was seconds from curling around the knob when I felt Damian’s warmth on my shoulder. Before I knew what he
was doing, he’d turned me around and pushed my back against the bathroom door, the lust in his black eyes clear.
“Fine,” Damian whispered as the same hand pushed my thighs open, “just a quick dip, and then you can go to your priest
and have him fuck you—as long as you tell him who got you so worked up in the first place.”
Our stares were locked when his palm rubbed against my clit. A breathy moan escaped me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off
him, not even when he pushed a finger inside my core.
“Goddamn it, you’re fucking wetter than I thought you’d be,” Damian spoke, though it sounded as if he was having trouble.
“You’re making me lose willpower here, baby girl, because now that I know how wet you are, I want to dip my cock in you
and feel this tight cunt wrapped around me.”
Fuck. I wanted that, too. In that moment, there was nothing I wanted more. If you would’ve asked me last week if I would
be simping for Damian’s dick, I would’ve thought you were crazy. Then again, there were a lot of things last week me would
never have been able to anticipate.
“You best get in that bathroom now,” he said, starting to pull his finger out of me. “Go fuck that priest—” He stopped when
I grabbed his hand and held it in place, when I pushed that finger back in my core.
I held my hand over his, holding it steady while my body began to move. I ground my swollen clit against his palm, rocking
slowly along his finger at the same time. All the while, I never broke eye contact with him. I couldn’t look away.
“Fuck me,” Damian whispered, shuddering as if I was riding his cock and not his hand.
I leaned my head back on the door as I increased my pace. With his finger in me and his palm against my clit—not to
mention how turned on I was—it was practically effortless on my part to get myself to come.
Damian watched as I pleasured myself on his hand, not saying a word more as I kept chasing that orgasm. My clit throbbed,
and within seconds, all the desire, all the anticipation, the heat and bliss that had been bottled up inside exploded.
I moaned out my pleasure, my body racked with trembling as the orgasm swept through me. I kept riding his hand, kept
grinding on it, all throughout the high that came with it. I saw stars, the damned orgasm was so strong, and when it was over, I
was completely out of breath, my legs goo.
Damian’s eyelids had fallen. He stared at me through a haze of cracking willpower. I let go of his hand once I was certain
I’d remain steady on my feet, and he breathed hard even though he hadn’t done anything.
For once, he wasn’t smirking. He looked utterly serious as he pulled himself away from me, putting two feet of space
between us. “You’re something else, that’s for sure.” I watched as he brought the finger that had been inside me to his nose, and
he breathed me in deeply. “A shame I have to wash my hands before making breakfast, because you smell fucking fantastic,
baby girl.”
He let his gaze eat me up one final time, and then he walked away, a slight limp in his step, like walking with that hard-on
was one of the most difficult things ever.
I watched him go, my mind abuzz. Oh, Damian. To think when I’d first met him, I didn’t trust him. How things had changed.
I tore my eyes away from the now-empty hallway and slipped into the bathroom. Might as well get that shower in while
Damian’s busy cooking breakfast.
 Chapter Six – Zander
I drove straight to Miguel’s home after he texted me. Yeah, the asshole texted me to tell me that Giselle was missing and
assumed either dead or, at the very least, tortured. He gave me no details beyond that, nothing to describe how he knew or even
how she’d been kidnapped. I’d tried to call her after I found out, but the call went straight to voicemail.
And then I called Luca, figuring he’d know something about it. Luca didn’t answer either, which I supposed meant
something was indeed going on, and whatever it was didn’t sit right with me.
So, fuck it. I didn’t care what Miguel was doing. After he’d tasked me with killing Giselle, I didn’t trust him not to have
had a hand in this. If Miguel didn’t have any idea what was going on, I’d be shocked.
I barged into the Santos residence the moment I arrived, and I stormed through the house until I found Miguel… in the
dining room, at the head of the table, having lunch with his very young, very pregnant fiancé, Gianna Melendez.
Gianna gasped when she saw me, dropping her salad fork into the bowl as she whipped her dark eyes in Miguel’s
direction. Miguel, on the other hand, only glared at me.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “You can’t just text me that Giselle is missing and offer up no other details—”
Miguel laced his hands together before leaning his mouth against them. His pitch-black eyes stared daggers at me, and he
curtly spoke, “Gianna, leave us.” Firm and terse, he was not a man to be argued with, least of all by the doe-eyed woman who
was his fiancé. I couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d forced her into this.
Because, surely, Miguel Santos was an unlovable, unlikeable bastard that no woman in her right mind would ever want to
marry, let alone have the baby of.
Gianna hesitated, though I could not say for what, but after a few moments, she got up, held onto her round belly, and
walked away, giving Miguel and I some privacy. I did not know whether she was the type of woman who would eavesdrop, or
if she would let it be. Either way, I didn’t give a shit.
Once she was gone, and Miguel and I were alone in the dining room, Miguel gave me a tight-lipped smile. I’d seen that
smile before, so I knew what it was: a warning. A warning that I tread too much here.
“Well, well, well,” Miguel spoke as he leaned back in his chair. “Aren’t you all up in arms over Giselle. How interesting.”
A thoughtful sound left him, and he got up and wandered over to the cabinet on the far side of the room, a boudoir full of
alcohol. He retrieved one glass—one, just for himself—and went to choose his poison.
I did not move. I watched, my nostrils flaring. My stance was one of an animal ready to attack—but I knew that’d be a
mistake. Even if, say, I managed to kill Miguel here, that would only put a target on my back, and if Giselle was still alive out
there, I wouldn’t be able to help her, to save her.
No. For now, unfortunately, I had to hold back from hurting Miguel like I so desperately wanted to.
Miguel ended up pouring himself a glass of whiskey, his specialty, and he slowly turned around to meet my glare across the
room. That’s when I noticed the slight smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“You know,” he paused as he took a small sip, “I always suspected you were in love with her, but I gave you the benefit of
the doubt, Zander. I let you come into my home, I took you under my wing when you came forward about Benny turning traitor. I
thought, now this boy is an up-and-comer. This boy shows promise. Maybe if I never have a son, I could train him to take my
place.”
Miguel’s expression hardened, and his finger tapped the glass. “But you fell for the wrong girl. Out of everyone you
could’ve had, you decided to go for the one that was off-limits to you. Not smart, Zander. Not smart at all.”
I ground my teeth. I had a few select things to say to him, but I knew he wasn’t done with this little speech. Miguel did not
like being interrupted. If I had any hope of finding out what really happened, I had to play nice.
For now.
“I gave you one job. One fucking job to prove yourself to me. Everything could’ve been different if you wouldn’t have
missed the mark—” His legs brought him toward me, and he now stood less than two feet in front of me, matching my glare
with his own. “—but that’s the thing, isn’t it? You didn’t miss. You hit exactly where you meant to.”
He was talking about Giselle, how he’d wanted me to kill her. I’d made countless apologies to Giselle about that night, but
she didn’t know it was me. She didn’t know I was the man under the hood. I would not, however, make any apologies to
Miguel for doing what I did.
“You chose not to kill her that night, so I suppose, when you get down to it, all of this is because of you.” Miguel chuckled
at that, a dark, menacing sound that was akin to nails on a chalkboard. He stepped closer and set a hand on my shoulder,
squeezing it a notch or two above uncomfortable. “I suppose I should thank you, then, because now Rocco and I have a more
public reason to work together.”
I shook him off me and glared harder, which only made him laugh as he stepped back and sipped his drink. “What did you
do, Miguel?”
“What did I do? Oh, Zander, that’s a long laundry list that we don’t have time for right now.” The way he spoke, he sounded
proud of it. “I suggest you leave while I’m still feeling generous. If you overstay your welcome, I might not let you leave with
your life.”
It was stupid of me, but before leaving, I said, “There’s a line even you shouldn’t cross, but I think you crossed it. If I find
out you had anything to do with this, I will put a bullet in your head. That’s a fucking promise, boss.”
A muscle on Miguel’s face twitched. He did not like being threatened, and he surely had some comeback ready—or
perhaps a bullet to put in my head in return—but I didn’t stick around. I turned and stormed away, leaving the house, feeling the
need to cool down but knowing I wouldn’t be able to until I had Giselle in my arms.
And I might never have her in my arms again. She might be dead, which would make all of this a waste.
I headed to my car. I went home. I tried calling Luca, but the asshole wouldn’t answer. All the while, I tried to think about
what Miguel and Rocco were hoping to achieve by uniting. They both wanted on the Hand, obviously, but Miguel was not a
man who played nice. If he was teaming up with Rocco, it was for his own gain, not for a mutual one.
You know, talking to Miguel, hearing him talk so off-handedly about Giselle… it sounded like he didn’t even love her. Like
he had already disowned her. The guy had wanted me to kill her, so it shouldn’t surprise me, but it did. I, for one, could not
imagine acting so calm if my daughter was out there, missing, and I sure as shit would never tell one of my men to kill her.
I’d been right, though. Miguel had known I had feelings for her, and he’d tested my loyalty. From the night I’d failed to kill
her, my position at his side had been withdrawn. I’d failed the test, and now I was out.
I was out, and soon enough I’d be dead. Miguel wouldn’t let me go. Not after I failed him, and definitely not after I
threatened him. He probably assumed I was of no threat to him while Giselle was missing, so he’d focus on getting on the Hand
first, and then, once he had that in the bag, he’d tie loose ends.
Me. Rocco. Anyone else who might’ve already served the extent of their purpose.
Fuck. I couldn’t believe I’d trusted him. As a man, as a boss, as someone I respected and even admired. How fucking
stupid was I to ever want to be like Miguel Santos?
I knew two things.
The first was, clearly, Miguel had something to do with Giselle’s disappearance. What I did not know was if she was alive
or dead. Miguel clearly wanted to use her death to his advantage in this Black Hand thing, so he had no reason to keep her
alive. Missing, dead; it was all the same.
The second thing I knew was that I couldn’t stay here. Not in my apartment downtown. Miguel knew where I was staying.
He could easily send his men here to kill me. I had to get out of here, ASAP, but who the hell did I trust? Who could I go to that
wouldn’t run straight to Miguel?
Who would help me find Giselle? One way or another, I had to know.
An idea came to me as I paced the length of my apartment. I had nothing important to pack up; I’d left everything when we
came to Cypress, mostly because I didn’t have much. No family, no sentimental personal belongings. Someone with a loving
family did not end up working for men like Miguel Santos. Only homeless, hopeless kids who needed somewhere to belong
did. Men who had no other choice.
Unfortunately, I had to wait until nightfall, and then some. I passed the time holding onto my gun, just in case. I’d be damned
if I let Miguel best me now, when so much was up in the air. No. I’d fight tooth and nail to find Giselle—and if she was dead,
I’d fight tooth and nail to wreak bloody vengeance on Miguel Santos.
Once it was late enough, I slipped out of my apartment. No one was waiting for me in the hall, no goons hiding in secret,
waiting to put some lead in me. I made it to my car, and then I drove deeper downtown.
Cypress was a different beast at night. The skies were dark, but the streets were bright with neon lights, the nightlife in this
city one that rivaled Vegas. Driving through the busy streets, seeing how packed the sidewalks were with people going on with
their lives, totally ignorant that the girl I loved might be dead, reminded me of that night I’d gone everywhere with Giselle.
The night we’d visited all the happening places here. The clubs, both of the dancing variety and the sexual kind. That
guided tour of the Playground felt like years ago.
Goddamn it. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time, to be there with her. If I knew everything I knew now, I would’ve
made different choices. I would’ve told her a long time ago how much I cared about her, and I’d take out both Miguel and
Rocco for her.
One gave her away, and the other greedily took her.
It shouldn’t surprise me now that Miguel and Rocco were involved; they had to be. All this time, it’s like they wanted
Giselle to suffer. I had no idea why. Sure, Miguel had a pregnant fiancé, but three years ago, Giselle was it. His only daughter.
How could he hand her off like she was nothing?
I had to force myself to stop thinking about it; it was only making me furious. I had to focus.
The club that was my destination came into view after a while, and I managed to find a parking spot in the tiny lot in front
of it. I got out and headed straight for the glass doors, where a big bouncer stood, looking intimidating as he checked the I.D.s
of everyone who wanted in.
When he saw me, he held up a hand and said, “No one goes in without an I.D. check.” His voice sounded impossibly low,
almost mechanical. I could easily see how he frightened most people.
 “Are the twins here? I need to speak with them. It’s important.” This club was the Jameson twins’ favorite club in Cypress;
at least one of them frequented it damn near nightly. With any luck, at least one of them would be here.
Right now, those blasted twins were my only hope.
The bouncer pulled out his phone and made a call. He muttered something under his breath, something I couldn’t hear
thanks to the music emanating from inside the club. He must’ve been told to let me pass, because before he ended the call, he
stepped aside and let me in, no I.D. required.
I walked inside the club, greeted with flashing lights and pounding music on the speakers. I passed the bar and headed
straight for the metal stairs that went up to a balcony overlooking the dance floor.
Another bouncer stood at the base of the metal stairs, and the moment he saw me approach, he stepped aside and threw his
thumb over his shoulder, wordlessly telling me to go on up.
I headed up the stairs, and once I emerged onto the platform, I saw one of the twins sitting at the farthest booth, talking to
Nixon Hawke. From what I knew about the twins, I assumed I was looking at Jett Jameson.
No one else was on the balcony, all the other booths empty. Jett must’ve told the bouncer it was off-limits for everyone
else, playing the king of the club.
He had a glass of something before him, and it looked as though Nixon had a bottle of beer. Both of their gazes turned
toward me as I approached, though Nixon got up and wandered off, leaving me alone with the lone Jameson twin.
“Jett.” I had to speak loudly to be heard over the music. “Or is it Dex?”
“First one,” he spoke with a smirk. “Excuse Nix, he’s not one for… people in general.”
I hated small talk, but other people liked it. Plus, it might be considered rude to jump into asking for a favor. “I’m surprised
you two are here without Shay.”
Jett leaned back on the booth, lifting both his arms onto the black leather cushion. “She’s with Slade tonight. I don’t know
what you’ve heard, but we’re not with her all the time. The last thing Jett Jameson would ever be is clingy—”
“I’m sure,” I said dryly.
“So, what brings you here, Zander?” Jett made a big show of glancing behind me, noting the emptiness all around. “All by
your lonesome, too?”
“Have you heard?”
His fingers tapped the cushion of the booth. “That depends on what you’re asking. Look, I’ll save us both some trouble: if
this is about Giselle, no, I don’t know where she is. Miguel and Rocco just had a meeting with the Black Hand last night, and
—”
I leaned forward. “There was a meeting?”
Jett chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it, if you’d stop interrupting me, bro. Anyways, the Black Hand meeting was…
interesting, from what Shay tells me. Interesting and stressful, hence why my boy and I are here. Apparently, Giselle’s sudden
disappearance wasn’t the only thing Miguel and Rocco wanted to talk about. Miguel stumbled upon some information that, if
true, would mean there’s another spot on the Hand—and it’d also mean my brother Dex isn’t the true Jameson heir.” Jett’s eyes
narrowed. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“I’m not a part of Miguel’s plan,” I told him. “Not anymore. I don’t care who’s whoever’s father. The only thing I care
about is finding Giselle and making sure she’s safe.”
He was quiet for a moment, though he watched me with interest, perhaps to see if I was lying or putting on a show for him.
We truly hadn’t spoken much in the past, so I didn’t know whether or not he’d believe me.
I needed him to, though.
“Yeah, well,” Jett paused as he reached for his drink, gulping the rest of it down, “that part of the story doesn’t matter
anymore. Now I understand why I’m more like Nix than Dex; one might be my twin, but they’re both my brothers.” He set the
glass down hard. “The Palmers want a paternity test. Shay knew. Nix knew. Everyone knew.”
I could hear what he wasn’t saying: everyone knew except for him.
Was that what this was? Him and Nix went out to pretend things were normal, like what they did before all this shit went
down?
“But back to why you’re here, in front of me,” Jett said. “No, I don’t know where Giselle is. I haven’t heard anything. The
entire Black Hand will be on the lookout, so if they find anything, hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
The words left me before I could think better of them: “It was Miguel.”
That caused Jett to cock his head and blink at me. “What now?”
“It was Miguel. Trust me on this. Miguel and Rocco are conspiring to get on the Hand, and they’re not above using
blackmail to do it.”
“Okay, sure, but what does Giselle have to do with that?”
I wanted to trust Jett. I did. But there were parts of the story that weren’t mine to tell. What Miguel and Rocco did to
Giselle three years ago, for instance, not to mention the fact that Miguel had wanted me to kill her not so long ago.
“Having Giselle gone unites them. I don’t know Rocco that well, but I do know Miguel, so I can honestly say he will stop at
nothing until he’s on the Hand, and once he’s on it, he will bide his time and plan in secret. He’s not the kind of man who can
share power like that. He wants it all for himself.”
Jett didn’t address that. He instead asked, “Why are you here, Zander?”
I let out a sigh, though I did not break eye contact while doing so. “I need a place to stay. Miguel knows where I’m staying,
and I don’t trust him not to send men after me. I… may have threatened him earlier.”
That got Jett to laugh. Like, really laugh. A hearty, genuine laugh that only served to make me angrier. “You threatened him?
Ain’t he your boss? That’s funny, man. Real funny. What makes you think I’ll help you out?”
“I know how Miguel works. I know how he thinks. I can tell you, or anyone else on the Hand, whatever you want to know
about him. I just need a place to stay… and your help in finding Giselle.”
Jett ran a hand through his hair. “How do I know that whatever you tell us won’t be lies fed to you from the big man
himself? How can I trust anything you say, Zander, when you work for—or used to work for—the man who thinks he can
blackmail his way onto the Hand?”
“Because I love Giselle, and I will do anything it takes to find her.”
Jett stared at me after that for a long while. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, whether I’d done right by telling him the
truth, but it didn’t matter. I was out of options. I had no one else to turn to. Luca wasn’t answering my calls. I didn’t know if I
could trust Cade or any of the other would-be heirs. That left the current heirs of the Black Hand. I hoped I’d said enough to
convince him to help me.
“Tell you what,” Jett finally spoke, breaking his silence, “I’ll make a few calls, see what I can do. Why don’t you go down
to the bar and have a drink, eh? Loosen up a bit.”
How the fuck could I loosen up while Giselle was out there, in God knew whose clutches, surviving God knew what, while
I was here, twiddling my fucking thumbs? Or she could be dead, and we could be on track to finding her body.
God, please let her be alive. Please.
But I didn’t say any of that. I only gave him a nod and got up. I left the balcony and headed down the stairs. I wandered to
the bar, standing next to a hunched over guy staring hard at the mirrored wall behind the more expensive alcohols near the
bartender.
Nixon Hawke. Or should I say, Nixon Jameson, since that’s who he was.
Though Nixon hadn’t been upstairs with us, though he had no idea what Jett and I had talked about, he somehow knew. He
leaned toward me and said, “You’ll find her.” Just three words, that’s it. Kind of creepy, especially since he didn’t even look at
me before saying it.
The strangest thing was, he sounded so sure of it. Or maybe that was just the music’s loudness overshadowing everything
else. The truth was, he had no idea if I’d find her, or what state she’d be in, alive or dead. No one knew, and that’s why I felt
like I was losing my mind with the stress and the anxiety that came with the unknown.
I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to be in this stupid club any longer, so I said, “Tell Jett I’ll be waiting outside.” And
then I pushed away from the bar and did just that, leaving the club and its loud, sweaty air behind.
I pulled out my phone as I headed to my car, my eyes on my surroundings all the while. I called Luca again, and big
shocker, he didn’t answer. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was purposefully ignoring my calls, why he wouldn’t answer the
goddamned phone.
This time, when it went to voicemail, I decided to leave a message. Screw it. I’d already walked away from Miguel
knowing he’d come after me sooner or later, so might as well.
“Luca, it’s Zander. Listen, I don’t know what you know, but in case you’re unaware, your father and Miguel are working
together. They had something to do with Giselle’s disappearance, I know it. I just can’t prove it yet. I’m going to find her, with
your help or without it, so just… if you hear anything, call me back.”
I ended the call and sighed, turning to rest my ass on the hood of my car as I angled my head up to the sky.
A world of night, the stars twinkling in the cloudless sky a reminder of how small we were, how insignificant our problems
were in the grand scheme of things. Giselle was a star, and I was just an ant in comparison. It’s why I had to find her, one way
or another. She’d been used her whole life, but she deserved the whole fucking universe.
I’d give it to her, even if it was the last thing I ever did. I’d give her the whole fucking universe… or I’d burn this city to the
ground in her memory.
Only time would tell which one it would be.
 Chapter Seven – Giselle
To say I was restless in this house would be the year’s biggest understatement. There was only so much I could do by myself; I
mainly focused on working out—although that was tough without any equipment. I had to do everything on my own, old school
style, but as the days passed, I could feel my body’s muscles becoming stronger, firmer, regaining the strength they used to have
before everything went to shit. Damian brought me some hand weights, which helped a lot.
The days that passed felt like years. The only face I saw on a consistent basis was Damian’s, and that brought its own set of
problems with it, such as my growing feelings for him.
I wasn’t Shay Arrowwood. I couldn’t keep collecting men whenever I felt like it. There was… there was nothing worthy
that would forever fix their attentions and their hearts on me.
But that was alright, because really, if I managed to take Miguel and Rocco down, what kind of life would I live afterward?
What would I do? Maybe it would be better if I crashed and burned with my demons.
I was about to get in the shower after a workout session when Damian knocked on the bathroom door and said, “Your boy’s
here to see you, and it looks like he brought some presents.”
My boy. It’s what he called Luca. Cade was Superman, Luca was my boy, and Ezekiel was the priest.
So instead of hopping in the shower, I threw my clothes back on and ventured out, well aware my hair was a greasy mess. I
found Luca talking to Damian in the kitchen, a backpack resting on the counter near them.
It’s the first time I’d seen Luca since he’d initially come to visit, and I couldn’t fight the smile that grew on my face when he
turned those dark eyes to me.
It struck me then that I no longer saw Rocco Moretti when I looked at him. I just saw Luca.
“I can’t stay for long, but I brought you a few things.” Luca grinned as he patted the backpack near him. “I’ll call you later,
though, okay?” He’d been calling me every single day to talk to me. Obviously only when he was away from his father and his
father’s men.
After I’d commandeered Cade’s phone from him, those daily calls had helped keep me sane. Cade called when he could,
too. Both had their eyes and ears peeled in Cypress while I was waiting to meet with Shay.
Shay was taking her good old time to meet with me, but from what I’d heard, she had a lot to deal with. Rocco and Miguel
had gone to the Hand not only to announce what happened to me, but also to get the ball rolling with Nixon’s true parentage.
Luca kept me in the loop where that was concerned. It was one big mess.
“What’d you bring me?” I smiled at Luca as I grabbed the bag and tugged it away from him. I stood a foot away from him,
well aware Damian’s eyes were on me from across the small island as my fingers worked to unzip the bag.
“Oh, you know, nothing much. Just a few things I thought you might like to have here.” Luca rubbed his clean-shaven jaw.
“Things my father wouldn’t miss in the suite.”
The first thing my hand grabbed onto inside the bag was long and cold. Metal. My breath caught in my throat as I pulled it
out, and my eyes fell to the gilded steel the moment it was in the light.
The gun Damian had given me.
“Ah, good, it ain’t lost,” Damian mused with a half-smirk on his face.
I carefully set the gun down, digging in the bag for the next thing, and once my fingers curled around the fabric, I knew
exactly what it was. What they were, I should say, because there was more than one.
I pulled out my black gloves, and when I saw them, my hands tightened around them.
Luca was quiet as he said, “I didn’t know if you wanted them or not. I know you used to wear gloves all the time, because
of… everything, so I thought maybe they’d make you feel better.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. If you don’t want them, I can take
them back.”
“No,” I whispered. “I’ll keep them. Thank you, Luca.” These gloves were not the white ones I wore while around Miguel
or in public, while I was his reluctant heir. These were my black gloves, the gloves I’d worn at night, while trying to free
myself of the shackles that had been placed on me.
They were a symbol of what I’d become, and even though I did not need them anymore, it was still good to have them as a
reminder of how far I’d come.
There was still one more thing in the bag, and a heavy thing at that. I grabbed hold of it and pulled it out, finding a T-shirt
was wrapped around it to protect it. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew what it was, and my heart constricted as I unwrapped
the shirt to reveal the thick, gaudy golden cross that belonged to Father Charlie.
To my real father.
My eyes prickled. I did not cry because of what Miguel did to me, but I’d cry because of this. Because of what was stolen
from me, from my true father. Miguel had pointed me in the direction of his church after that night three years ago, assuming I’d
tell Father Charlie who I was and possibly what happened to me. He’d wanted him to know, to break him while seeing me long
for death.
And then he waited for Father Charlie to love me, and only then did he send those Greenbacks to kill him.
 It wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t fair at all. None of this was right, and it hurt me so much.
“I…” I picked up the cross and held it against my chest. The golden chain came with it. “I need a minute.” I hurriedly gave
the guys my back as I rushed to my bedroom, shutting myself inside it while fighting those tears.
I leaned my back against the door, my eyes on the golden cross in my hand. My fingers ran along its edge, the gold far too
yellow for my taste, but it was real. It was real, from Rome.
Father Charlie… my dad—I just couldn’t force myself to call him that, not yet, not until Miguel was out of the picture—had
told me he’d gotten it in Rome. He’d done some soul-searching there, hoping to get closer to God in an attempt to find the
answers he sought.
What question had he asked his God? I couldn’t help but wonder if, perhaps, he’d gone to Rome after his affair with my
mother… after she’d died. Perhaps he’d asked his God why it all had to turn out the way it had.
I pushed away from the door, shuffling over to the bed, where I sat down and sighed. The extra water in my eyes did not
form tears; there wasn’t enough. The water stayed in my eyes, only serving to make my vision blur.
If only things had been different. If only I’d known while he was still alive that he was my real father…
This cross used to remind me of the one good man I’d met in my life, the reason I was still alive. It used to remind me of
hope and warmth and kindness.
But now? Now it was yet another reminder of everything Miguel Santos had taken from me. My mother. My innocence. My
will to live. My father. Anything and everything he could’ve stolen from me, he did. I’d been a pawn to him my entire life,
living a lie I knew nothing of, and when I finally knew the full truth, I was helpless.
And there was nothing worse in the world than being truly helpless. Miguel knew that, and that’s why he did what he did
before handing me over to the Serpents. One last fuck you to me.
I closed my eyes, willing the would-be tears to dissipate. I would not cry. I’d cried enough to last an entire lifetime. I
would not let any more tears escape my eyes, not now, not while Miguel still breathed.
Once I was certain I had everything under control, my hand curled around the golden cross so tightly my entire arm
trembled. My skin dug into the gilded metal, and I sat there for a few minutes alone, willing myself to be strong.
I had to be strong. There was no other choice here.
A knock emanated from the door, along with a voice, “It’s Luca.”
Even though I wasn’t crying, I still swiped a finger beneath both eyes just to be sure before inviting him in. “You can come
in.” I straightened out when I saw Luca’s head pop in through the door crack, and when he saw me sitting on the bed, he came
to join me.
He sat directly beside me, though his leg did not touch mine. He studied me with intensity. “Are you all right, Giselle?”
The old me would’ve said yes, because that’s what a good girl would say, what a good daughter would do. Pretend. Lie.
Do whatever it took to make everyone around you believe in the lie.
But here and now, after everything… there was only one answer I could give: “No.” Although certain things had been
ingrained in my head from birth thanks to a man who was not my father, I was too exhausted to bother with lying.
Besides, it was Luca, one of the few who knew everything.
Almost everything, I should say. No one knew about Zander and the very real possibility he was the one who shot me that
night, no one other than Damian. Soon enough I’d confront Zander about it, but one thing at a time. I wanted to meet with Shay
first.
“Is there anything I can do?” Luca offered, sounding more hopeful than he should.
“More than you already have?”
“I haven’t done anything.”
His reply made me look at him, study the way he watched me, notice how the corners of his eyes creased just a little, note
how his eyebrows had drawn together ever so slightly in concentration. Luca was one hundred and ten percent focused on me,
like the rest of the world didn’t exist… and that was enough.
“You have,” I told him through a whisper. “By bringing me this. By talking to me every day. You didn’t have to come, Luca,
when Cade called, but you did. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think any girl would be lucky to have you as a husband.”
That got him to look away and mutter sadly, “But not you.”
“It’s… it’s complicated. Even if this marriage wasn’t pushed on us, it still wouldn’t have ever been my choice. Even though
Miguel isn’t my real father, I didn’t know that. I was raised knowing he’d pick out my husband and I’d have no say in it. I’d
have to shut up and do as I was told, pop out babies, and do whatever else was expected of me as a wife. Because of that, I
can’t say I ever wanted a husband.”
Luca was silent for a while, but then he sighed and turned his face toward me, a calm but dejected look on his handsome
face. “I get it, I do. I just… I wish everything was different, Giselle. Everything.”
“Me, too,” I agreed. I got up and set the cross on my nightstand, giving Luca my back. I stared hard at the cross. “You
deserve a wife who can give you everything. A wife who’s happy to be with you, a wife that doesn’t know what it’s like to…”
I swallowed hard, stopping myself from bringing up the night I was forced to spend with his father. “That’s not me. That’ll
never be me.”
My back to him, I heard Luca get off the bed, and I assumed he’d heard enough, that he left the room, but seconds later I
was proven wrong when I heard his voice directly behind me: “For the record, all I care about is making you happy. I’d never
force you to… to do anything you didn’t want to do.”
“I know.” And I did know it. Luca wasn’t like his father at all. That’s what made him so great.
“That’s why I’m going to look into what needs to be done to end it.”
My heart did something funny in my chest, and I slowly turned around to face him, finding he stood less than six inches
away, his head angled down at me, the emotion in those dark eyes pure and desperate.
All I could say was, “What?”
“We probably won’t be able to do anything until the smoke clears, but I’ll work on getting everything set up in secret. I’ll
do whatever I can for you. I told you that before and I meant it. If that means getting a divorce, then… then that’s what we’ll do.
You’ll have me at your side whether you’re my wife or not, Giselle.”
The breath that left me was an uneven, ragged one, and I found myself needing to touch him, so I brought a hand to his cheek
and ran my fingertips down along his jaw. “Oh, Luca. I think I’m starting to like you.” His face was warm under my hand,
smoother than I thought it’d be.
The right side of his mouth quirked up in a boyish grin. “Only starting to?”
I chuckled softly as I dropped my hand to my side. “I am a tough nut to crack, so don’t feel too bad.”
“Cade cracked you, and Damian seems to be in mid-crack—not to mention that priest—so I’m feeling like my odds are
pretty damn good.” He flashed me a pearly set of teeth.
“Comparing yourself to the others is probably not a good idea,” I warned him, fighting the smile that threatened to spread
on my face in return. “They have a pretty big head start on you.”
He made a psh sound. “Damian doesn’t.”
“No, but he did buy me that gun—and I really like that gun.”
“Ah, so I could buy my way in?”
I found myself leaning towards him, brushing my front against his chest as I murmured, “You don’t need to. I think you
already started to crack me.”
“Maybe I should kiss you just to be sure?”
I would’ve rolled my eyes at his lack of smoothness in this situation if I wasn’t feeling the need to kiss him myself. So
instead of rolling my eyes, I let my eyelids flutter shut as I whispered, “Maybe you should.”
Luca’s hands found my hips the same moment his lips came down on mine. He kissed me like he had something to prove, a
truth he wanted to confess. The firm, eager kiss backed up his words and reaffirmed what I already knew.
Any girl really would be fortunate to have him as a husband. He’d make a good one. A great husband, a fantastic father…
he would rise above the shadows of Rocco and Miguel and put them to shame.
But it couldn’t be me. If, by some miracle, by some sudden twist of fate, I survived this whole thing, I did not want to be
shackled to somebody’s side, even if it was Luca.
The kiss was over just like that, and as Luca pulled himself away, my eyelids fluttered open. I watched as he took a step
back, a silly little grin on his face. He didn’t want to pull away; the only thing that boy wanted to do was keep kissing me—
perhaps go farther than that.
But, alas, he sighed and told me, “I should get back. I’ll call you later, okay?”
I didn’t want him to go. I wanted him here, but at the same time I knew he had to keep up appearances, so I held back all the
things I really wanted to say and settled for, “Of course.” The last thing I saw before Luca ducked out of the room was his
smile.
Oh, that dimpled smile could do things to a girl if she wasn’t careful. It really was too bad I was trying to turn over a new
leaf, otherwise I would’ve been tempted to dive right in.

Shay came the day after that. She didn’t know she was meeting me, of course, so I’d have a lot of explaining to do once she
arrived and we sat across from each other. Shay was on the Hand, and added onto that was the fact that I’d flirted with one of
her boyfriends and she’d found out. I probably wasn’t the person she wanted to see.
And yet she would.
I hoped I could trust her. I hoped she wouldn’t turn right around and go tattle on me. During our meeting, I had to tell her the
whole truth. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Mostly the last two, because there wasn’t much good about any of this.
Things were fucked. I’d known that for a while, but being here, stuck in this freaking house, made it all the more real, the
only thing I could think about. I had some hope that, together with the guys, I’d take down Miguel and his empire, but when I
was alone dark, pessimistic ideas crept around in my head.
There was a lot riding on this meeting with Shay, so I had to do it right. I’d put all of my cards down on the table, show her
my hand, and pray to whatever divine deity would listen that Shay would side with me.
 I was sitting at the dining room table when Damian poked his head through the front door, gave me a half smirk, and said,
“You got a guest here, baby girl. Shall I send her in?” Acting like he was my assistant or something, like I was the boss and we
were in an office together.
Right.
All I could do was nod. I’d told him I wanted privacy with Shay, and that meant no one else could be in the house while we
were talking. All the curtains were drawn, blocking out the light from the outside. No one would be able to see in; it would be
just Shay Arrowwood and me.
My view of Damian disappeared, and seconds later, Shay strolled in. Her dark eyes surveyed the empty area once before
landing on me in the dining room to the right. Her lips, painted in a dark red color—the same color her shirt was, actually—
thinned when she spotted me, though she didn’t say anything as she came over and took the chair across from me.
Shay was around my age, maybe a few years older. She’d lost so much, like me, and had vengeance in her heart, again like
me, but we were not the same.
She stared at me for a few moments, sizing me up and letting the tension in the air grow thick with uncertainty. “Well, well.
I can honestly say I’m surprised to see you here. You been here the whole time?”
My mind flashed back to that warehouse, that cold metal room with a blood-stained concrete floor… the room where
Miguel told me the ugly truth before trying to break me one last time.
It was not a memory I wanted to relive, especially in front of Shay, so I did my best to push it down when I answered her,
“Yes. Mostly. Before I tell you why I wanted to meet, I need your word that you won’t inform Miguel or Rocco about where I
am.”
Shay wore an unimpressed look. “And why shouldn’t I? You’ve been MIA for a while, Giselle, so let me inform you what
your dear daddy and Rocco did: they forced a meeting with the Black Hand under the guise of you being kidnapped. What that
meeting really was about was Nix and Atticus being his real father.”
“Which I warned you of. I told you Miguel was going to play dirty, didn’t I?”
She leaned back in her chair, her black-painted nails picking at a random spot on the table between us. “You did,” she
admitted. “But I didn’t think the Palmers would side with them and demand a paternity test. Big shocker: it came back a match,
which means Nix is now Atticus’s true heir, and Dex and Jett are runners-up.”
Fucking politics. I really didn’t give a shit about Black Hand politics or the feeling of betrayal Shay felt over the Palmers
siding with Miguel and Rocco, but I had to be somewhat delicate about this, lest Shay throw up her hands and walk away.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “That sort of brings me to why I’m here, and why I wanted to meet with you.”
“This some kind of game for you and daddy, hmm? You going to tell me how much you hate your father and want to take him
down, come at me from the side while dear old daddy comes at Atticus and the others from a different angle?”
“I do hate him,” I whispered, “but this isn’t about helping Miguel get on the Hand. I told you I don’t want him on the Hand.
If you select him to take Piper’s place, you’ll regret it.”
Shay frowned at me. Her dark brown hair framed her face in angles, and yet even with the unflattering haircut, she was
gorgeous. I could see why she’d amassed so many boyfriends during her quest for revenge.
“There are two spots open on the Hand now, and Rocco and Miguel are aiming for them,” I went on when it became clear
Shay wasn’t going to respond. “Before we get into the reason why you’re here, I should tell you how I got here, first.”
“The kidnapping was staged,” she put it together, or so she thought.
I nodded once. “It was, but not how you’re thinking. Before we moved to Cypress, I frequented a church. The last time I
went to that church, I found its priest dead and some gang members ransacking the place. I killed them. Those gang members
belonged to the Greenback Serpents—only, I recently found out, they were bought out by Miguel. He wanted that priest dead
because he was my real father.”
That finally got Shay’s full attention. “You aren’t a real Santos.”
“No, although technically, right now, I guess I’d be considered a Moretti. Speaking of, do you want to know why my father
married me off to Luca?” I didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Because three years ago, he sold me for a night to Rocco
Moretti, and Rocco sure got his time’s worth.”
Something changed on Shay’s face, a shade of empathy, perhaps? Either way, I didn’t tell her so she’d pity me.
“You see, Miguel knew, even back then, I wasn’t his daughter. I wanted to die after that night. I tried to throw myself off a
bridge, actually. The only reason I’m still here is because of that priest… my real father. It was always Miguel. Always. He’s
the reason I was shot that night. He’s the reason I’m here now—he thought he’d hand me over to the Serpents, that they’d want
revenge for their fallen comrades… but he couldn’t have known they wouldn’t kill me. Miguel had no idea the Serpents would
want their pound of flesh from him and not me.”
I sighed. “I was always a pawn to him. Always. Even in my disappearance and assumed death. It’s why you can’t tell him
I’m here, Shay.”
Shay was quiet for a while, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Wouldn’t you coming back to Cypress throw
off his plans, though? Why isn’t that what you want?”
 “I don’t want to just throw him off. I want to destroy him. His plan on getting on the Hand, his empire, everything that
makes Miguel Santos the self-made king he is. I want to annihilate him. You can understand that need for revenge, can’t you?”
That got the harsh look on her face to soften somewhat, and she let out a slow breath. “I do. I understand that need more
than anyone else in this city. I lost myself to it. I let it consume me, fuel me, until it was all I thought about. If someone
would’ve offered to help me get my revenge back then, I wouldn’t have trusted them—but I’d have thought about it.” She
waited a moment before adding, “That’s what you want from me, right? You want my help.”
“I do. I want your help, if you’ll give it. Miguel is not someone you’d want on the Hand. He’s not someone you could ever
trust to watch your back. Believe me when I say, he won’t stop at the Hand. He won’t stop until he’s on top of it all.”
Shay’s lips puckered into a thoughtful pout. “Say I agree to help you… say I agree to go along with whatever you say, and I
help make sure you get your revenge on Miguel. What’s in it for you?”
That… wasn’t what I thought she’d ask. What’s in it for her to help out—now, that was a question I’d been preparing
myself for. Not what was in it for me.
“Because revenge can’t be all of it,” Shay spoke. “Revenge only gets you so far. Me? If you would’ve asked me before, I
would’ve told you nothing. Nothing was in it for me except cold, bloody revenge—but there needs to be more. There has to be.
Revenge might fuel your hatred, but life needs to be about more than hatred.”
When I didn’t say a word, Shay asked, “Let me put it this way: what will you do once Miguel is gone?”
“I—I don’t… I don’t know.” I decided to answer truthfully, “I honestly don’t know if it’ll work, and if it does I don’t know
if I’ll live through it. I spent years wishing I was dead, so it’s hard for me to imagine a future at all.”
Shay gave me a tiny twitch of a smile. “I get it. I was the same way. I didn’t care whether I lived or died, as long as I took
down the Hand. I didn’t think I’d—” She looked down at her hands, leaning forward onto the table, the smile on her face
deepening. “—find myself catching feelings for the ones I wanted to destroy. I’m glad I did, though. I don’t know where I’d be
without them.”
I didn’t say anything after that, mostly because I was too busy thinking about the men that had somehow wormed their way
inside me. Cade, Luca, Ezekiel… even Damian, somehow. And that said nothing about Zander.
I didn’t know what was between us. I didn’t know how long anything could last, but God, it’d be nice to find out.
So, yeah, maybe I wasn’t okay with dying after all.
“All right,” Shay spoke, causing me to snap back to reality, “say I agree to help. Say I want to take Miguel down with you.
How do we do it? What’s the plan to sabotage him?”
“Not just him. Rocco Moretti needs to go down, too.”
“That we can agree on. Any asshole who’d agree to take a girl for the night deserves nothing but pain and suffering in my
eyes. But it’s not my pain and suffering we’re talking about—it’s yours, so what do you want to do, Giselle?”
Just like that, Shay was going to help me? For some reason, I had it in my head that I’d have to spend hours convincing her,
especially since our past meet-ups weren’t always on the best of terms.
“Frankly, my idea… I don’t think it’s one you’re going to like,” I spoke slowly.
Shay narrowed her eyes at me. “Hit me with it, then. Let me be the judge.”
“You need to put off deciding who will take Piper’s place on the Hand—and the newly vacated position from Nixon,” I
told her. “In private, anyway. The best time to strike will be when Rocco and Miguel think they’ve already won.”
The look on Shay’s face told me she already suspected what I meant, and yet she still asked, “What are you saying,
exactly?”
“I’m saying put a pin in the real competition and tell Miguel and Rocco that they’re the newest members.” As much as I
never wanted Miguel to know what it felt like to be chosen to be on the Hand, at the same time, giving him what he wanted
would be the only way.
Give it to him before yanking it out from under him. Let him know triumph only so his defeat was that much sweeter.
“We will need to turn the Palmers against him,” Shay said. “They seem to be pretty close to Miguel. They’ll be all too
happy to invite him onto the Hand, but I’ll need evidence that he’s as bad as you say to make them see the truth. They won’t take
your word for it.”
“I have a few others on the case, watching, listening. Miguel is planning something else with Rocco, I just don’t know what
yet.” I set my arms on the table, staring hard at Shay across from me. “If there are any other secrets the Black Hand is trying to
hide… I wouldn’t trust them to stay hidden.”
Something changed on Shay’s face. It was like a switch got flipped inside her. Her back straightened, and her jaw locked.
She got this far-off look I couldn’t read—and that’s when I knew: there was something else.
Something big.
Shay got up. “I need to go.” She didn’t say a single word more as she left the dining room, heading to the front vestibule of
the house. Within twenty seconds, she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her as I was left to wonder just what kind of
secret could make her act like that.
The Black Hand wasn’t supposed to have secrets, not from each other. They were supposed to be equals, have each other’s
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drawers, their contents thrown on the floor, and all the evidence of a
hurried search met their eyes.
They passed from the little sitting-room to the bedroom, and here
again the visitors had left traces of their investigations.
“Hullo!” Jimmy stopped and picked up a soft felt hat. He looked
inside; the dull lining bore the name of an Egyptian hatter.
“Connor’s!” he said.
“Ah!” said Angel softly, “so Connor takes a hand, does he?”
One of the detectives who had followed them in grasped Angel’s
arm.
“Look, sir!” he whispered.
Half-hidden by the heavy hangings of the window, a man crouched in
the shadow.
“Come out of that!” cried Angel.
Then something in the man’s attitude arrested his speech. He
slipped forward and pulled back the curtain.
“Connor!” he cried.
Connor it was indeed, stone dead, with a bullet hole in the center of
his forehead.
 CHAPTER XIV
OPENING THE SAFE

The four men stood in silence before the body. Jimmy bent and
touched the hand.
“Dead!” he said.
Angel made no reply, but switched on every light in the room. Then
he passed his hands rapidly through the dead man’s pockets; the
things he found he passed to one of the other detectives, who laid
them on the table.
“A chisel, a jemmy, a center-bit, lamp, pistol,” enumerated Angel. “It
is not difficult to understand why Connor came here; but who killed
him?”
He made a close inspection of the apartment. The windows were
intact and fastened, there were no signs of a struggle. In the sitting-
room there were muddy footmarks, which might have been made by
Connor or his murderer. In the center of the room was a small table.
During Angel’s frequent absences from his lodgings he was in the
habit of locking his two rooms against his servants, who did their
cleaning under his eye. In consequence, the polished surface of the
little table was covered with a fine layer of dust, save in one place
where there was a curious circular clearing about eight inches in
diameter. Angel examined this with scrupulous care, gingerly pulling
the table to where the light would fall on it with greater brilliance. The
little circle from whence the dust had disappeared interested him
more than anything else in the room.
“You will see that this is not touched,” he said to one of the men; and
then to the other, “You had better go round to Vine Street and report
this—stay, I will go myself.”
As Jimmy and he stepped briskly in the direction of the historic police
station, Angel expressed himself tersely.
“Connor came on his own to burgle; he was surprised by a third
party, who, thinking Connor was myself, shot him.”
“That is how I read it,” said Jimmy. “But why did Connor come?”
“I have been expecting Connor,” said Angel quietly. “He was not the
sort of man to be cowed by the fear of arrest. He had got it into his
head that I had got the secret of the safe, and he came to find out.”
Inside the station the inspector on duty saluted him.
“We have one of your men inside,” he said pleasantly, referring to the
Frenchman; then, noticing the grave faces of the two, he added, “Is
anything wrong, sir?”
Briefly enough the detective gave an account of what had happened
in Jermyn Street. He added his instructions concerning the table,
and left as the inspector was summoning the divisional surgeon.
“I wonder where we could find Spedding?” asked Angel.
“I wonder where Spedding will find us?” added Jimmy grimly.
Angel looked round in surprise.
“Losing your nerve?” he asked rudely.
“No,” said the cool young man by his side slowly; “but somehow life
seems more precious than it was a week ago.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Angel. “You’re in love.”
“Perhaps I am,” admitted Jimmy in a surprised tone, as if the idea
had never occurred to him before.
Angel looked at his watch.
“Ten o’clock,” he said; “time for all good people to be in bed. Being
myself of a vicious disposition, and, moreover, desirous of washing
the taste of tragedy out of my mouth, I suggest we walk steadily to a
place of refreshment.”
“Angel,” said Jimmy, “I cannot help thinking that you like to hear
yourself talk.”
“I love it,” said Angel frankly.

In a little underground bar in Leicester Square they sat at a table

listening to a little string band worry through the overture to
Lohengrin.
The crowded room suited their moods. Jimmy, in his preoccupation,
found the noise, the babble of voices in many tongues, and the wail
of the struggling orchestra, soothing after the exciting events of the
past few hours. To Angel the human element in the crowd formed
relaxation. The loud-speaking men with their flashy jewelry, the
painted women with their automatic smiles, the sprinkling of keen-
faced sharps he recognized, they formed part of the pageant of life—
the life—as Angel saw it.
They sat sipping their wine until there came a man who, glancing
carelessly round the room, made an imperceptible sign to Angel, and
then, as if having satisfied himself that the man he was looking for
was not present, left the room again.
Angel and his companion followed.
“Well?” asked Angel.
“Spedding goes to the safe to-night,” said the stranger.
“Good,” said Angel.
“The guard at the safe is permanently withdrawn by Spedding’s
order.”
“That I know,” said Angel. “It was withdrawn the very night the
‘Borough Lot’ came. On whose behalf is Spedding acting?”
“On behalf of Connor, who I understand is one of the legatees.”
Angel whistled.
“Whew! Jimmy, this is to be the Grand Finale.”
He appeared deep in thought for a moment.
“It will be necessary for Miss Kent to be present,” he said after a
while.
From a neighboring district messenger office he got on by the
telephone to a garage, and within half an hour they were ringing the
bell at Kathleen’s modest little house.
The girl rose to greet them as they entered. All sign of the last night’s
fatigue had vanished.
“Yes,” she replied, “I have slept the greater part of the day.”
Angel observed that she studiously kept her eyes from Jimmy, and
that that worthy was preternaturally interested in a large seascape
that hung over the fireplace.
“This is the last occasion we shall be troubling you at so late an
hour,” said Angel, “but I am afraid we shall want you with us to-
night.”
“I will do whatever you wish,” she answered simply. “You have been,
both of you, most kind.”
She flashed a glance at Jimmy, and saw for the first time the surgical
dressing on his head.
“You—you are not hurt?” she cried in alarm, then checked herself.
“Not at all,” said Jimmy loudly, “nothing, I assure you.”
He was in an unusual panic, and wished he had not come.
“He tripped over a hearthrug and fell against a marble mantelpiece,”
lied Angel elaborately. “The marble has been in the possession of
my family for centuries, and is now badly, and I fear irretrievably,
damaged.”
Jimmy smiled, and his smile was infectious.
“A gross libel, Miss Kent,” he said, recovering his nerve. “As a matter
of fact——”
“As a matter of fact,” interrupted Angel impressively, “Jimmy was
walking in his sleep——”
“Be serious, Mr. Angel,” implored the girl, who was now very
concerned as she saw the extent of Jimmy’s injury, and noticed the
dark shadows under his eyes. “Was it Spedding?”
“It was,” said Angel promptly. “A little attempt which proved a failure.”
Jimmy saw the concern in the girl’s eyes, and, manlike, it cheered
him.
“It is hardly worth talking about,” he said hastily, “and I think we
ought not to delay our departure a second.”
“I will not keep you a moment longer than I can help,” she said, and
left the room to dress herself for the journey.
“Jimmy,” said Angel, as soon as she had gone, “cross my hand with
silver, pretty gentleman, and I will tell your fortune.”
“Don’t talk rot,” replied Jimmy.
“I can see a bright future, a dark lady with big gray eyes, who——”
“For Heaven’s sake, shut up!” growled Jimmy, very red; “she’s
coming.”
They reached the Safe Deposit when the bells of the city were
chiming the half-hour after eleven.
“Shall we go in?” asked Jimmy.
“Better not,” advised Angel. “If Spedding knows we have a key it
might spoil the whole show.”
So the car slowly patrolled the narrow length of Lombard Street, an
object of professional interest to the half-dozen plain-clothes
policemen who were on duty there.
They had three-quarters of an hour to wait, for midnight had rung out
from the belfries long before a big car came gliding into the
thoroughfare from its western end. It stopped with a jerk before the
Safe Deposit, and a top-hatted figure alighted. As he did so, Angel’s
car drew up behind, and the three got down.
Spedding, professionally attired in a frock-coat and silk hat, stood
with one foot on the steps of the building and his hand upon the key
he had fitted.
He evinced no surprise when he saw Angel, and bowed slightly to
the girl. Then he opened the door and stepped inside, and Angel and
his party followed. He lit the vestibule, opened the inner door, and
walked into the darkened hall.
Again came the click of switches, and every light in the great hall
blazed.
The girl shivered a little as she looked up at the safe, dominating and
sinister, a monument of ruin, a materialization of the dead regrets of
a thousand bygone gamblers. Solitary, alone, aloof it rose, distinct
from the magnificent building in which it stood—a granite mass set in
fine gold. Old Reale had possessed a good eye for contrasts, and
had truly foreseen how well would the surrounding beauty of the
noble hall emphasize the grim reality of the ugly pedestal.
Spedding closed the door behind them, and surveyed the party with
a triumphant smile.
“I am afraid,” he said in his smoothest tones, “you have come too
late.”
“I am afraid we have,” agreed Angel, and the lawyer looked at him
suspiciously.
“I wrote you a letter,” he said. “Did you get it?”
“I have not been home since this afternoon,” said Angel, and he
heard the lawyer’s little sigh of relief.
“I am sorry,” Spedding went on, “that I have to disappoint you all; but
as you know, by the terms of the will the fortunate person who
discovers the word which opens the safe must notify me, claiming
the right to apply the word on the combination lock.”
“That is so,” said Angel.
“I have received such a notification from one of the legatees—Mr.
Connor,” the lawyer went on, and drew from his pocket a paper, “and
I have his written authority to open the safe on his behalf.”
He handed the paper to Angel, who examined it and handed it back.
“It was signed to-day,” was all that he said.
“At two o’clock this afternoon,” said the lawyer. “I now——”
“Before you go any further, Mr. Spedding,” said Angel, “I might
remind you that there is a lady present, and that you have your hat
on.”
“A thousand pardons,” said the lawyer with a sarcastic smile, and
removed his hat. Angel reached out his hand for it, and mechanically
the lawyer relinquished it.
Angel looked at the crown. The nap was rubbed the wrong way, and
was covered with fine dust.
“If you desire to valet me,” said the lawyer, “I have no objection.”
Angel made no reply, but placed the hat carefully on the mosaic floor
of the hall.
“If,” said the lawyer, “before I open the safe, there is any question
you would like to ask, or any legitimate objection you would wish to
raise, I shall be happy to consider it.”
“I have nothing to say,” said Angel.
“Or you?” addressing Jimmy.
“Nothing,” was the laconic answer.
“Or Miss Kent perhaps——?”
Kathleen looked him straight in the face as she answered coldly—
“I am prepared to abide by the action of my friends.”
“There is nothing left for me to do,” said the lawyer after the slightest
pause, “but to carry out Mr. Connor’s instructions.”
He walked to the foot of the steel stairway and mounted. He stopped
for breath half-way up. He was on a little landing, and facing him was
the polished block of granite that marked where the ashes of old
Reale reposed.
 Pulvis
Cinis
et
Nihil
said the inscription. “‘Dust, cinders and nothing,’” muttered the
lawyer, “an apt rebuke to one seeking the shadows of vanity.”
They watched him climb till he reached the broad platform that
fronted the safe door. Then they saw him pull a paper from his
pocket and examine it. He looked at it carefully, then twisted the dials
cautiously till one by one the desired letters came opposite the
pointer. Then he twisted the huge handle of the safe. He twisted and
pulled, but the steel door did not move. They saw him stoop and
examine the dial again, and again he seized the handle with the
same result. A dozen times he went through the same process, and
a dozen times the unyielding door resisted his efforts. Then he came
clattering down the steps, and almost reeled across the floor of the
hall to the little group. His eyes burnt with an unearthly light, his face
was pallid, and the perspiration lay thick upon his forehead.
“The word!” he gasped. “It’s the wrong word.”
Angel did not answer him.
“I have tested it a dozen times,” cried the lawyer, almost beside
himself, “and it has failed.”
“Shall I try?” asked Angel.
“No, no!” the man hissed. “By Heaven, no! I will try again. One of the
letters is wrong; there are two meanings to some of the symbols.”
He turned and remounted the stairs.
“The man is suffering,” said Jimmy in an undertone.
“Let him suffer,” said Angel, a hard look in his eyes. “He will suffer
more before he atones for his villainy. Look, he’s up again. Let the
men in, Jimmy, he will find the word this time—and take Miss Kent
away as soon as the trouble starts.”
The girl saw the sudden mask of hardness that had come over
Angel’s face, saw him slip off his overcoat, and heard the creaking of
boots in the hall outside. The pleasant, flippant man of the world was
gone, and the remorseless police officer, inscrutable as doom, had
taken his place. It was a new Angel she saw, and she drew closer to
Jimmy.
An exultant shout from the man at the safe made her raise her eyes.
With a flutter at her heart, she saw the ponderous steel door swing
slowly open.
Then from the man came a cry that was like the snarl of some wild
beast.
“Empty!” he roared.
He stood stunned and dumb; then he flung himself into the great
steel room, and they heard his voice reverberating hollowly. Again he
came to the platform holding in his hand a white envelope. Blindly he
blundered down the stairs again, and they could hear his heavy
breathing.
“Empty!” His grating voice rose to a scream. “Nothing but this!” He
held the envelope out, then tore it open.
It contained only a few words—
“Received on behalf of Miss Kathleen Kent the contents of
this safe.
“(Signed) James Cavendish Stannard, Bart.
Christopher Angel.”
Dazed and bewildered, the lawyer read the paper, then looked from
one to the other.
“So it was you,” he said.
Angel nodded curtly.
“You!” said Spedding again.
“Yes.”
“You have robbed the safe—you—a police officer.”
“Yes,” said Angel, not removing his eyes from the man. He motioned
to Jimmy, and Jimmy, with a whispered word to the girl, led her to the
door. Behind him, as he returned to Angel’s side, came six plain-
clothes officers.
“So you think you’ve got me, do you?” breathed Spedding.
“I don’t think,” said Angel, “I know.”
“If you know so much, do you know how near to death you are?”
“That also I know,” said Angel’s even voice. “I’m all the more certain
of my danger since I have seen your hat.”
The lawyer did not speak.
“I mean,” Angel went on calmly, “since I saw the hat that you put
down on a dusty table in my chambers—when you murdered
Connor.”
“Oh, you found him, did you—I wondered,” said Spedding without
emotion. Then he heard a faint metallic click, and leapt back with his
hand in his pocket.
But Jimmy’s pistol covered him.
He paused irresolutely for one moment; then six men flung
themselves upon him, and he went to the ground fighting.
Handcuffed, he rose, his nonchalant self, with the full measure of his
failure apparent. He was once again the suave, smooth man of old.
Indeed, he laughed as he faced Angel.
“A good end,” he said. “You are a much smarter man than I thought
you were. What is the charge?”
“Murder,” said Angel.
“You will find a difficulty in proving it,” Spedding answered coolly,
“and as it is customary at this stage of the proceedings for the
accused to make a conventional statement, I formally declare that I
have not seen Connor for two days.”
Closely guarded, he walked to the door. He passed Kathleen
standing in the vestibule, and she shrank on one side, which amused
him. He clambered into the car that had brought him, followed by the
policemen, and hummed a little tune.
He leaned over to say a final word to Angel.
“You think I am indecently cheerful,” he said, “but I feel as a man
wearied with folly, who has the knowledge that before him lies the
sound sleep that will bring forgetfulness.”
Then, as the car was moving off, he spoke again—
“Of course I killed Connor—it was inevitable.”
And then the car carried him away.
Angel locked the door of the deposit, and handed the key to
Kathleen.
“I will ask Jimmy to take you home,” he said.
“What do you think of him?” said Jimmy.
“Spedding? Oh, he’s acted as I thought he would. He represents the
very worst type of criminal in the world; you cannot condemn, any
more than you can explain, such men as that. They are in a class by
themselves—Nature’s perversities. There is a side to Spedding that
is particularly pleasant.”
He saw the two off, then walked slowly to the City Police Station.
The inspector on duty nodded to him as he entered.
“We have put him in a special cell,” he said.
“Has he been well searched?”
“Yes, sir. The usual kit, and a revolver loaded in five chambers.”
“Let me see it,” said Angel.
He took the pistol under the gaslight. One chamber contained an
empty shell, and the barrel was foul. That will hang him without his
confession, he thought.
“He asked for a pencil and paper,” said the inspector, “but he surely
does not expect bail.”
Angel shook his head.
“No, I should imagine he wants to write to me.”
A door burst open, and a bareheaded jailer rushed in.
“There’s something wrong in No. 4,” he said, and Angel followed the
inspector as he ran down the narrow corridor, studded with iron
doors on either side.
The inspector took one glance through the spy-hole.
“Open the door!” he said quickly.
With a jangle and rattle of bolts, the door was opened. Spedding lay
on his back, with a faint smile on his lips; his eyes were closed, and
Angel, thrusting his hand into the breast of the stricken man, felt no
beat of the heart.
“Run for a doctor!” said the inspector.
“It’s no use,” said Angel quietly, “the man’s dead.”
On the rough bed lay a piece of paper. It was addressed in the
lawyer’s bold hand to Angel Esquire.
The detective picked it up and read it.
“Excellent Angel,” the letter ran, “the time has come when I must
prove for myself the vexed question of immortality. I would say that I
bear you no ill will, nor your companion, nor the charming Miss Kent.
I would have killed you all, or either, of course, but happily my
intentions have not coincided with my opportunities. For some time
past I have foreseen the possibility of my present act, and have worn
on every suit one button, which, colored to resemble its fellows, is in
reality a skilfully molded pellet of cyanide. Farewell.”
Angel looked down at the dead man at his feet. The top cloth-
covered button on the right breast had been torn away.
 CHAPTER XV
THE SOLUTION

If you can understand that all the extraordinary events of the

previous chapters occurred without the knowledge of Fleet Street,
that eminent journalists went about their business day by day without
being any the wiser, that eager news editors were diligently
searching the files of the provincial press for news items, with the
mystery of the safe at their very door, and that reporters all over
London were wasting their time over wretched little motor-bus
accidents and gas explosions, you will all the easier appreciate the
journalistic explosion that followed the double inquest on Spedding
and his victim.
It is outside the province of this story to instruct the reader in what is
so much technical detail, but it may be said in passing that no less
than twelve reporters, three sub-editors, two “crime experts,” and
one publisher were summarily and incontinently discharged from
their various newspapers in connection with the “Safe Story.” The
Megaphone alone lost five men, but then the Megaphone invariably
discharges more than any other paper, because it has got a
reputation to sustain. Flaring contents bills, heavy black headlines,
and column upon column of solid type, told the story of Reale’s
millions, and the villainous lawyer, and the remarkable verse, and the
“Borough Lot.” There were portraits of Angel and portraits of Jimmy
and portraits of Kathleen (sketched in court and accordingly
repulsive), and plans of the lawyer’s house at Clapham and sketches
of the Safe Deposit.
So for the three days that the coroner’s inquiry lasted London, and
Fleet Street more especially, reveled in the story of the old croupier’s
remarkable will and its tragic consequences. The Crown solicitors
very tactfully skimmed over Jimmy’s adventurous past, were brief in
their examination of Kathleen; but Angel’s interrogation lasted the
greater part of five hours, for upon him devolved the task of telling
the story in full.
It must be confessed that Angel’s evidence was a remarkably
successful effort to justify all that Scotland Yard had done. There
were certain irregularities to be glossed over, topics to be avoided—
why, for instance, official action was not taken when it was seen that
Spedding contemplated a felony. Most worthily did Angel hold the
fort for officialdom that day, and when he vacated the box he left
behind him the impression that Scotland Yard was all foreseeing, all
wise, and had added yet another to its list of successful cases.
The newspaper excitement lasted exactly four days. On the fourth
day, speaking at the Annual Congress of the British Association, Sir
William Farran, that great physician, in the course of an illuminating
address on “The first causes of disease,” announced as his firm
conviction that all the ills that flesh is heir to arise primarily from the
wearing of boots, and the excitement that followed the appearance in
Cheapside of a converted Lord Mayor with bare feet will long be
remembered in the history of British journalism. It was enough, at
any rate, to blot out the memory of the Reale case, for immediately
following the vision of a stout and respected member of the
Haberdasher Company in full robes and chain of office entering the
Mansion House insufficiently clad there arose that memorable
newspaper discussion “Boots and Crime,” which threatened at one
time to shake established society to its very foundations.
“Bill is a brick,” wrote Angel to Jimmy. “I suggested to him that he
might make a sensational statement about microbes, but he said that
the Lancet had worked bugs to death, and offered the ‘no boots’
alternative.”
It was a fortnight after the inquiry that Jimmy drove to Streatham to
carry out his promise to explain to Kathleen the solution of the
cryptogram.
It was his last visit to her, that much he had decided. His rejection of
her offer to equally share old Reale’s fortune left but one course
open to him, and that he elected to take.
She expected him, and he found her sitting before a cozy fire idly
turning the leaves of a book.
Jimmy stood for a moment in an embarrassed silence. It was the first
time he had been alone with her, save the night he drove with her to
Streatham, and he was a little at a loss for an opening.
He began conventionally enough speaking about the weather, and
not to be outdone in commonplace, she ordered tea.
“And now, Miss Kent,” he said, “I have got to explain to you the
solution of old Reale’s cryptogram.”
He took a sheet of paper from his pocket covered with hieroglyphics.
“Where old Reale got his idea of the cryptogram from was, of course,
Egypt. He lived there long enough to be fairly well acquainted with
the picture letters that abound in that country, and we were fools not
to jump at the solution at first. I don’t mean you,” he added hastily. “I
mean Angel and I and Connor, and all the people who were
associated with him.”
The girl was looking at the sheet, and smiled quietly at the faux pas.
“How he came into touch with the ‘professor——’”
“What has happened to that poor old man?” she asked.
“Angel has got him into some kind of institute,” replied Jimmy. “He’s
a fairly common type of cranky old gentleman. ‘A science potterer,’
Angel calls him, and that is about the description. He’s the sort of
man that haunts the Admiralty with plans for unsinkable battleships,
a ‘minus genius’—that’s Angel’s description too—who, with an
academic knowledge and a good memory, produced a reasonably
clever little book, that five hundred other schoolmasters might just as
easily have written. How the professor came into Reale’s life we
shall never know. Probably he came across the book and discovered
the author, and trusting to his madness, made a confidant of him. Do
you remember,” Jimmy went on, “that you said the figures reminded
you of the Bible? Well, you are right. Almost every teacher’s Bible, I
find, has a plate showing how the alphabet came into existence.”
He indicated with his finger as he spoke.
“Here is the Egyptian hieroglyphic. Here is a ‘hand’ that means ‘D,’
and here is the queer little Hieratic wiggle that means the same
thing, and you see how the Phœnician letter is very little different to
the hieroglyphic, and the Greek ‘delta’ has become a triangle, and
locally it has become the ‘D’ we know.” He sketched rapidly.

“All this is horribly learned,” he said, “and has got nothing to do with
the solution. But old Reale went through the strange birds, beasts
and things till he found six letters, S P R I N G, which were to form
the word that would open the safe.”
“It is very interesting,” she said, a little bewildered.
“The night you were taken away,” said Jimmy, “we found the word
and cleared out the safe in case of accidents. It was a very risky
proceeding on our part, because we had no authority from you to act
on your behalf.”
“You did right,” she said. She felt it was a feeble rejoinder, but she
could think of nothing better.
“And that is all,” he ended abruptly, and looked at the clock.
“You must have some tea before you go,” she said hurriedly.
They heard the weird shriek of a motor-horn outside, and Jimmy
smiled.
“That is Angel’s newest discovery,” he said, not knowing whether to
bless or curse his energetic friend for spoiling the tête-à-tête.
“Oh!” said the girl, a little blankly he thought.
“Angel is always experimenting with new noises,” said Jimmy, “and
some fellow has introduced him to a motor-siren which is claimed to
possess an almost human voice.”
The bell tinkled, and a few seconds after Angel was ushered into the
room.
“I have only come for a few minutes,” he said cheerfully. “I wanted to
see Jimmy before he sailed, and as I have been called out of town
unexpectedly——”
“Before he sails?” she repeated slowly. “Are you going away?”
“Oh, yes, he’s going away,” said Angel, avoiding Jimmy’s scowling
eyes. “I thought he would have told you.”
“I——” began Jimmy.
“He’s going into the French Congo to shoot elephants,” Angel rattled
on; “though what the poor elephants have done to him I have yet to
discover.”
“But this is sudden?”
She was busy with the tea-things, and had her back toward them, so
Jimmy did not see her hand tremble.
“You’re spilling the milk,” said the interfering Angel. “Shall I help
you?”
“No, thank you,” she replied tartly.
“This tea is delicious,” said Angel, unabashed, as he took his cup.
He had come to perform a duty, and he was going through with it.
“You won’t get afternoon tea on the Sangar River, Jimmy. I know
because I have been there, and I wouldn’t go again, not even if they
made me governor of the province.”
“Why?” she asked, with a futile attempt to appear indifferent.
“Please take no notice of Angel, Miss Kent,” implored Jimmy, and
added malevolently, “Angel is a big game shot, you know, and he is
anxious to impress you with the extent and dangers of his travels.”
“That is so,” agreed Angel contentedly, “but all the same, Miss Kent,
I must stand by what I said in regard to the ‘Frongo.’ It’s a deadly
country, full of fever. I’ve known chaps to complain of a headache at
four o’clock and be dead by ten, and Jimmy knows it too.”
“You are very depressing to-day, Mr. Angel,” said the girl. She felt
unaccountably shaky, and tried to tell herself that it was because she
had not recovered from the effects of her recent exciting
experiences.
“I was with a party once on the Sangar River,” Angel said, cocking a
reflective eye at the ceiling. “We were looking for elephants, too, a
terribly dangerous business. I’ve known a bull elephant charge a
hunter and——”
“Angel!” stormed Jimmy, “will you be kind enough to reserve your
reminiscences for another occasion?”
Angel rose and put down his teacup sadly.
“Ah, well!” he sighed lugubriously, “after all, life is a burden, and one
might as well die in the French Congo—a particularly lonely place to
die in, I admit—as anywhere else. Good-by, Jimmy.” He held out his
hand mournfully.
“Don’t be a goat!” entreated Jimmy. “I will let you know from time to
time how I am; you can send your letters via Sierra Leone.”
“The White Man’s Grave!” murmured Angel audibly.
“And I’ll let you know in plenty of time when I return.”
“When!” said Angel significantly. He shook hands limply, and with the
air of a man taking an eternal farewell. Then he left the room, and
they could hear the eerie whine of his patent siren growing fainter
and fainter.
“Confound that chap!” said Jimmy. “With his glum face and
extravagant gloom he——”
“Why did you not tell me you were going?” she asked him quietly.
She stood with a neat foot on the fender and her head a little bent.
“I had come to tell you,” said Jimmy.
“Why are you going?”
Jimmy cleared his throat.
“Because I need the change,” he said almost brusquely.
“Are you tired—of your friends?” she asked, not lifting her eyes.
“I have so few friends,” said Jimmy bitterly. “People here who are
worth knowing know me.”
“What do they know?” she asked, and looked at him.
“They know my life,” he said doggedly, “from the day I was sent
down from Oxford to the day I succeeded to my uncle’s title and
estates. They know I have been all over the world picking up strange
acquaintances. They know I was one of the”—he hesitated for a
word—“gang that robbed Rahbat Pasha’s bank; that I held a big
share in Reale’s ventures—a share he robbed me of, but let that
pass; that my life has been consistently employed in evading the
law.”
“For whose benefit?” she asked.
“God knows,” he said wearily, “not for mine. I have never felt the
need of money, my uncle saw to that. I should never have seen
Reale again but for a desire to get justice. If you think I have robbed
for gain, you are mistaken. I have robbed for the game’s sake, for
the excitement of it, for the constant fight of wits against men as
keen as myself. Men like Angel made me a thief.”
“And now——?” she asked.
“And now,” he said, straightening himself up, “I am done with the old
life. I am sick and sorry—and finished.”
“And is this African trip part of your scheme of penitence?” she
asked. “Or are you going away because you want to forget——”
Her voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and her eyes were looking
into the fire.
“What?” he asked huskily.
“To forget—me,” she breathed.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “that is what I want to forget.”
“Why?” she said, not looking at him.
“Because—oh, because I love you too much, dear, to want to drag
you down to my level. I love you more than I thought it possible to