Chapter 31

“What are you going to do to us?” Susan says as the masked man handcuffs her hands behind her back. The other man stands on the other side of the room, his gun at his side.

The floor is wet from whatever happened in here before the screaming stopped. Now, it’s silent, except for Susan’s crying. “Talk to me!”

I subtly test the cuffs. They’ve only cuffed my hands. I’m leaning against the wall, making myself seem much weaker than I actually feel. The man with the gun has a mocking glint in his eyes. The other man leaves the room.

I test the cuffs again, feeling the metal strain against my wrists, but it would be too obvious if I put anyrealeffort in. These are high-grade cuffs. Thick, but I feel the strain. The primal impulse to get back to my woman gives me extra strength.

“Don’t do that,” I snap when Susan starts staring at the ground, the slickness, the evidence of what happened here before. Her crying gets worse. “Close your eyes, Susan. Go somewhere else.”

A minute or so later, the door whines open. Another masked man walks in. “Take a smoke, A—”

“Don’t use my name,” the man with the gun snaps.

“Ah, yeah. My bad. Take a smoke, man. The next one’s a little lady all on her lonesome.”

“Think she’ll do it?”

“Who knows? If not, it’s a quickbang-bang-bangfor all three.” He mimes, firing a gun.

“Amen to that. Easy work.”

They bump knuckles, and then the gunman leaves the room. The other man takes a pistol from his hip, glancing at us.He shakes his head almost sadly, passing the gun from one hand to the other. I watch him carefully, still pretending to lean against the wall, behaving like I’m broken. My body is covered in bruises from the rubber bullets. My face is cut up from what they made Susan do.

But I’m ready. The trick now is waiting for a moment and using it to complete efficiency. Being as cold and brutal as I have to be so I can return to my woman. That’s the only thing that matters now. Focus. Breathe.

“Here you are, miss,” a voice says outside the cell. “Just what you were looking for. The answer, eh? Ha!”

The door whines open. Susan gasps from beside me. “A-A…”

She’s about to say Amelia’s name, but then Lena steps forward, raising her voice. She’s using the affectations of a trust fund kid. It somehow sells her plain clothes and her unwashed hair. She seems like some crazy aristocratic lady. “Shut thefuckup, bitch,” she screams. “You don’t speak to me.”

Somebody closes the door from the outside. What is this man thinking? He’s alone in here with me. He thinks I’m that busted up.

Amelia takes a few steps toward us. I can see through the perf’rmance she’s putting on. I can see the pain deep in her eyes as she looks at me and her mom. Somehow, she made it here. She’s so damn impressive. I love her. I almost say it. Instead, I cringe away like she’s the big bad wolfess.

“You know the rules,” the man says. “If you don’t do them, I do you. Simple.”

Amelia turns to him. I almost lose it when she gives him a wide-eyed, seductive look. She bites her lip just like she does when I’m claiming her. It nearly pushes me right to the edge. No other man deserves that look. Never, but I know what she’s doing.

“Are you always this bossy?” Her chest is rising and falling in a hypnotic way. She’s not wearing a bra.

Fuck, the man’s looking at her nipples. His mask shifts. Is the freak licking his lips? “When I have to be,” he grunts. “All right, then. Let’s get on with it.” He raises the gun to Lena’s head.

Susan gasps. “Amelia!”

The man looks at Susan and looks back to Amelia. “Wait, you twoknoweach other?”

“Don’t you touch her,” Susan screams wildly.

The man laughs coldly, swings the gun around, and aims it at Susan. He’s about to say something else, something mocking. His eyes get a sadistic glint, but Amelia does something extremely reckless and brave. She jumps at the man and grabs his wrist, wrenching on him, then brings her mouth down and bites down on his forearm so hard he screams.

“Bitch!” He spins on her as the gun drops to the floor.

I spring from the wall. This is going to hurt. I don’t give a damn. With my hands behind my back, I throw my bulk against the man. I hit him with my body, my chest crashing into his face, sending him smashing against the wall. His head flies backward, and his skull cracks. I’ve been doing this long enough to know he’s dead before he hits the floor.

“Michael,” Amelia screams. The door to the cell swings open.

“What the—”

Time slows as I watch my woman raise the gun. The man in the doorway raises his. Amelia pulls the trigger. The recoil knocks the weapon out of her hand, but she’s done her work. She’s hit the man right in his face. He collapses against the wall. She stares in horror at what she’s done, gasping.

“No time for that,” I roar, kneeling beside her. “The keys, Amelia. The cuffs. They’re coming. Now.”

She looks up, spaced out momentarily, then crawls across the cell. I move with her, holding my hands in place. I can hear men at the end of the hallway. They’re approaching cautiously. Their footsteps are impossibly loud to me. The adrenaline, the fact they’ll execute my woman if they get in here…

Amelia fumbles with the keys and turns the lock. It clicks open just as the first man enters the cell with an assault rifle raised. I swing my hand around, the one with the cuff still attached, and pick up the gun. He shoots and misses. Fuck. That was lucky. I smoke him in the head, then grab his rifle, not thinking. I’m just in the moment.

The other man is on the other side of the door. I hear him. No, the other side of thewall. Stepping back, I raise the rifle and fire into the wall, starting low. I hear him grunt. It must knuckle his knees. I tear the wall apart, grab the pistol, and peek around the door. He’s moaning, staring up at me. He would’ve killed the future mother of my children and my mother-in-law. He would’ve stolen the future from us. I put a bullet in his head. Turning to the women, I find Amelia holding onto Susan, clinging tightly.

“I’m securing this location. You’ve got a new story now. You met Diego at the fair. They fought, just like before. Then, the men who killed Diego brought you here. You don’t know what it is. You know nothing about it. If you mentionthe answer, they might find out.”

Amelia kisses her mom on the cheek, then stands. She’s trembling all over. She gently touches my shoulder, bruised by a rubber bullet. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be watching,” I tell her.

“What about…” She gestures at the bodies, but she won’t look at them. I hope she doesn’t. I hope she never has to have those gruesome sights scarring her mind.

“You don’t know anything. There was a gunfight. You’ll both be in our cell when they arrive.” I almost laugh grimly, but it’d throw off civilians. Our cellsounds so strange.

“Okay? When you’re home, I’ll come to you.”

Amelia grabs my hand when I turn away. She’s probably too flooded with adrenaline to think about the fact her mom is right there, staring at us. She doesn’t know what her mother and I discussed. “Michael—”

I lean down and kiss her. I can’t stop myself. I know it’s wrong, but that’s the story of me and Amelia. Wrong, but right. Yes, but no. Now and forever. She returns the kiss and holds my hand tighter. Susan is purposefully looking at the wall. Lena swallows and glances at her mother.

I press the gun into Amelia’s hand. “Wait here.”

The basement is bigger than I would’ve guessed in the dark, with several cells along it. I won’t free the prisoners. The police can do that. They’ll bring medical assistance, too. I open the slots in the cell, shining my flashlight into each one. No dead people or people who look close to dead. Just hollow-eyed prisoners. I probably look just like them.

Once it’s all clear, I lead Amelia and Susan to the cell. It breaks my heart, closing my woman into the darkness, but it’s the only way.

“I love you,” she whispers as I close the door. Or, at least, I think she did. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or her mom. I’m about to leave when Amelia yells for me. My blood runs cold. Is there a guard in there I somehow missed?

“Michael,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I left a message on my neighbor’s machine explaining everything and telling her to call the cops if she didn’t hear from me.”

Good precaution. “Give me her address,” I say. I’ll have to pick the lock and erase the message. Even if her alarm goes off, I’ll still have enough time to do it, but only once I know the cops are here.

Amelia gives me the address. I walk down the corridor and up the stairs. The doors are opened from where the other guards must’ve come running when they heard shooting.

Looking around, I see a payphone, jog to it, and dial 911. Then I hide in a nearby alleyway, waiting as the SWAT van pulls up. After, I disappear into the night.

I need to find another pay phone, call in a favor, and catch a ride. Get home and figure out how to end this crap so I begin my life with Amelia.