This is a long ass chapter. 😩 Damn! Cole will be missed.
JAYCE BECKETTThree years. Three long, brutal years, and yet the ache never left. It didn’t matter how many reports I filed, how many criminals I chased, or how many nights I spent hunched over paperwork. The hollow inside me remained. The kids kept me busy enough to forget—at least for a while. Chocolate tried everything she could: urging me to go to the gay bar downtown, swiping through dating apps, flashing that mischievous grin as she told me to live a little, laughing whenever I scoffed. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want anyone elseNot even a fleeting distraction. Not even a replacement for the emptiness. My chest tightened every time someone glanced at me with expectation or curiosity. My heart wasn’t available, hadn’t been since the day I lost him. Since the day I lost them both.I was just thirty, and already I felt like my best years were behind meThe office was quiet tonight. Case files were scattered across my desk like the remains of fights I hadn’t won. The fluorescent li
JAYCE BECKETT I sat by the window, forehead pressed against the cold glass, staring at a world that hadn’t stopped for me. Cars honked. People laughed. Somewhere down the street, a child shrieked with joy, chasing after a balloon. Life kept moving. But mine had ended two days ago.My chest ached, but the pain in my heart was worse. Renato’s pale, bloodied face haunted me, and Emily’s voice echoed in my mind, sharp and broken. Two ghosts. Two lives ripped from me. Two weights I could never shake.Everything had spiraled after that night. I was arrested, questioned, processed—while the world I knew crumbled around me. Then the worst news came: Emily. My sister. Dead. I felt the ground give way beneath me. My hands clutched my head as a storm of grief, guilt, and disbelief tore through me. I had survived when they hadn’t. I had failed them both... especially my sister.I failed her.And Renato—seeing him fall, helpless to stop it—was a memory that refused to fade. The cold night air,
JAYCE BECKETT He froze. Chest heaving. Blood dripping from his hands, splattering the dirt. Then suddenly, he was at my side. His grip was frantic, almost brutal, tearing at the ropes that cut into my wrists. His fingers trembled, slick with sweat and blood, fumbling with knots until they snapped free. “I’m sorry, baby,” he stuttered, voice breaking, uneven, a jagged mess of guilt and desperation. He clawed at the binds on my ankles next, yanking hard. “I shouldn’t have... fuck me... I shouldn’t have let you see that. Forgive me, baby. Please don’t hate me.” Hate him? My heart was tearing itself open inside my chest, bleeding out for him. “Renato, please... not now.” My voice cracked, like a broken glass. I forced myself to push down the image of what I’d just witnessed, his violence, his madness. Not here. Not now. Survival first. “We need to move. We need to get the fuck out of here.” The ropes fell away. My body was free. But freedom meant nothing with sirens wailing in the dis
JAYCE BECKETT Relief hit me first. It was the kind of relief that burned hot in my chest, almost dizzying. Renato was here. I had been tied, humiliated, hurt, but the second my eyes landed on him at the doorway, something inside me loosened. He came for me. He always came for me.But relief twisted into something else the moment Cole moved.The bastard’s hand was fast, too fast. I felt his fingers in my hair, yanking me back with a vicious snap of my neck, and then the cold bite of steel pressed against my throat. My breath caught. The blade sat so close to my skin that I could already imagine it slicing me open if I should do as much as swallow or blink.“Not a step closer, Marino,” Cole hissed, dragging my head back until my eyes watered.Renato froze at the door, one hand behind his back, his jaw locked so tight I could see the vein in his neck pulse.Cole’s breath was hot against my ear as he pressed the knife firmer, enough to make me swallow carefully. “Why is he here?” he whi
JAYCE BECKETT The ropes bit into my wrists. They had been there so long that the skin burned and pulsed every time I shifted, but shifting did nothing. The ropes were too sharp, rough, tight, already leaving marks I’d feel tomorrow—if only there was a tomorrow for me. And if there should be a tomorrow for me, I wasn’t going anywhere. I would still be here. With this sick bastard. The chair beneath me creaked whenever I tried to fight, but it was no use. I was strapped down like some goddamn animal, reduced to nothing but breathing and waiting. Cole knelt between my thighs, head bent, hands pressing into the bloody mess of my leg. He had already dug the bullet out, already made me grit my teeth so hard I tasted iron, and now he was trying to stop the bleeding. Cole wasn’t saying a word, only concentrating, frowning like he cared, like he was a doctor and not a psychopath who had dragged me into this hell. Every press of his hand sent fire shooting up my thigh. I couldn’t hold bac
RENATO MARINO I stopped the car in front of Sasha building, and for a moment I just sat there gripping the wheel like it could anchor me to the world. Mikhail was in the backseat, hands tied behind him, mouth gagged, blindfold pulled tight across his face. He groaned through the cloth, pathetic sounds that only made me press the brake harder under my foot.I should’ve been somewhere else. With Jayce. I should have gone to him.My chest tightened at the thought of him. I knew he had gone. I could feel it the way a man feels a storm coming in his bones. Jayce never listened. He was too stubborn, too reckless. He thought he could take on that bastard on his own. And the very thought that he might’ve walked straight into Yuri’s trap clawed at my throat until I couldn’t breathe.History repeating itself. I am going to lose Jayce just like I lost Aspen.I am going to lose to that damn bastard again. Yuri is going to take another lover from me.The name hit me like a knife every time. Asp