로그인The clearing held its breath.I looked at her instead of him. The dirt on her palms and the red burning across her face. That stubborn glare still burning like she hadn’t just been slapped down in front of me for sport. She was shaking and she was furious and she was alive, and that last part was the only thing I had left to protect.James’s voice tried to crawl up my throat. Thousands of lives. Wrong hands. Don’t do this.Then Delgado’s grip tightened a fraction on her wrist, and James could go to hell.“Fine,” I hissed.The word tasted like rust.Delgado’s eyes sharpened. “Say it.”“Four.”“Six.”“One.”“Nine.”“Three.”“Seven.”“Zero.”“Eight.”“Two.”“Five.”“Four.”“One.”“Six.”“Nine.”“Zero.”“Seven.”“Three.”“Five.”“Eight.”“Two.”“One.”Twenty-one digits, torn out of me one by one, each number its own small, filthy betrayal, and I hated myself more with every syllable, especially with the way Delgado’s smile widened, hated the way his men eased their grip like the fight had
“So?” He drawled, savoring it.Then I lowered it.The second the barrel dropped, Delgado’s smile sharpened.“Kick it.”I wanted to tell him to go straight to hell, wanted to tell him exactly what he could do with his fucking demands, but I kicked the gun away across the dirt instead, watched it skitter off into the dark like it was mocking me on its way out.It hadn’t even stopped sliding before they rushed me.Hands clamped down on both arms, brutal grips digging into muscle. A body slammed into my side hard enough to knock the air out of me. Someone tore Saraphina’s fingers off the back of my jacket, wrenching her hand away like it cost them nothing.“Stay still,” I shouted at her, even as they hauled me backward, boots dragging furrows in the dirt. “Don’t fight them, just stay still!”She made a broken sound and I watched her lunge for me anyway, arm outstretched, before one of Delgado’s men shoved her back and blocked her off completely. The space between us opened up. One secon
Then the trees broke. A clearing opened up in front of a sagging, rotted-out cabin, a single light spilling across the grass like Delgado wanted me to see every ugly inch of what he’d staged — every detail of his sick little production. And there she was. Saraphina. Tied to a single tree, ropes cutting into her arms hard enough to bruise. Mouth taped, muffled sounds tearing out from behind it. Eyes blown wide and wet, streaked with tears and terror, locking onto mine the second I broke the treeline. The device strapped to her chest was impossible to miss even from the edge of the clearing — wires, a black box, a countdown staring back at me in hard red numbers, ticking down like a goddamn heartbeat. Two minutes. Two fucking minutes. I didn’t remember crossing the grass. One second I was at the tree line, the next I was in front of her, hands shaking so hard I almost couldn’t make them work. “I’ve got you,” I said, or I thought I said it. It came out wrecked, cracked down the m
NOAH⋆⭒˚.⋆ ⋆⭒˚.⋆It took me two hours and forty minutes.Two hours and forty fucking minutes of white-knuckling the wheel and eating the road while the location blinked on my phone like a trail of blood Gage could follow if he actually gave a shit. By the time I got there, my jaw ached and my hands were cramped and the clock in my head was screaming louder than the engine.The place Delgado sent me wasn’t a building.It was nowhere.A road that cut through a wall of trees, dark and tight on both sides, the kind of stretch that made your headlights look small. There was no houses or convenient little sign that said ‘hostage this way’. Just dirt, shadow, and the sick feeling that I had driven straight into a mouth and the teeth hadn’t closed yet.I pulled over hard enough that the tires spat gravel. For a second I just sat there, breathing like I’d run the whole way. Then my phone lit up.No Caller ID.I answered before the second ring.“It’s good,” he said, that same warm, rotten cal
I turned toward the mansion and climbed the steps two at a time, pushed through the front doors hard enough that they nearly slammed.The entrance hall was too bright after the dark of the driveway, all that light stinging my eyes, and I’d barely started for the stairs when I saw her.Celeste.She was awake. Wide awake, actually, standing there like she’d been carved out of the shadows near the staircase. A dark robe was tied at her waist, cinched tight, her hair loose and messy around her shoulders like she’d been running her hands through it for a while. She looked like she’d been waiting without wanting to admit she was waiting, that particular brand of bullshit composure people put on when they don’t want to look as scared as they actually are.The second she saw me, her eyes cut past my face and straight to the door I’d come through, searching for the rest of the story.“What happened?” she asked.I opened my mouth, but before I could fumble together some half-assed version of
RILEY ⋆⭒˚.⋆⋆⭒˚.⋆I still hadn’t learned how to stop listening at the wrong goddamn time.It was a curse. It always had been. I heard shit through half-closed doors, through walls thin as fucking paper, through the kind of silence people only used when they thought no one else was breathing in the hallway. I heard fragments I was never supposed to carry, secrets that weren’t mine to hold, and every single time I told myself ‘walk away, just walk the fuck away’, my feet stayed planted like they belonged to someone dumber than me. Someone with a death wish.Tonight was no different.I’d been coming back from the kitchen with a glass of water I didn’t even want, ice cubes clinking against the glass, when I heard Noah’s voice first, then James. Then another name I didn’t recognize until Noah said it again.Delgado.I stopped walking. Stood there in the dark stretch of hallway instead, glass sweating cold against my palm, and listened like the nosy little shit I’ve always been.Seraphina h







