Chapter 38

THIRTY-EIGHT

DOMHNALL

I grasp onto the passenger’s seat door handle with white knuckles as my Audi speeds down the highway with Quinn at the wheel. Isaak and Moira are in the backseat. The bright screen with a map on the dash between Quinn and me fucking mocks me. Sixteen minutes until arrival.

Sixteen fucking minutes.

He has a thirty-minute head start on us.

She’ll be gone before you get there, you gobshite . You’ll lose her again. Not just lose her. Now you’ve had a glimpse of what the demon’s done to her mind. He had her this whole time .

Because I was fucking stupid enough to believe he’d actually died. All I saw were autopsy pictures of the water-logged body. It clearly had the same build and distinctive tattoos on its chest. But he’d obviously manipulated someone into getting his same tattoos before killing them and tossing them in the Danube.

I’m a fucking idiot for never considering the possibility.

Seventeen minutes ago, Quinn, Caleb and I watched back on the security camera footage as she collapsed to the ground in front of the fucker when he snapped his fingers in her face. If I’d had anything left in my guts when I saw it?—

The fist not gripping the door handle comes to my mouth. Jaysus. I was so wrong, this whole time. How could I have ever believed she’d been in on it for a moment?

She was only fucking thirteen. She was a little fucking kid .

You were, too . It’s her soft voice in my head, and I slam my fist against the dashboard. I don’t deserve for her to be here in my head absolving me of anything.

But her voice keeps echoing even as I smash my fist against the dash over and over.

He was bigger. There was nothing either of us could’ve done against such evil.

“Domhn!” Moira’s scream finally breaks through, and the fact that Isaak’s physically restraining me from the seat behind me .

“Sorry,” I choke out, my throat still thick with the whisky I was busy pouring down it when Quinn stormed in the office demanding to see the security footage. It’s why she’s driving now, not me.

I can’t even show up now when Mads needs me. Just like back then. She disappeared and I tried to look for her when I could. As soon as I had the resources, I hired the best international private investigators. All they ever found was a trail of other young men like me, mostly rotting in jails, eyes devoid of life, all with the same story. A beautiful blonde American girl had tricked them into it, they said, and her father?—

As every lead was exhausted, I let myself believe the less painful story. Occam’s razor. The simplest solution tends to be the best. She was working with him, and I was just another na?ve boy horrifically played by a twisted family of con-artists. She wasn’t out there being subjected to the monster’s torture. She was a monster, too.

It was a far, far easier explanation to live with than the truth.

“I know this machine can go faster!” I shout, wrestling to get away from Isaak. Unsuccessfully.

“I’m already going eighty-five,” Quinn snaps back, eyes staying on the road, as she slams the blinker on and swiftly maneuvers around several cars. “The last thing we need is to be stopped by five-o.”

Fuck. She’s right. I glare at the map.

Twelve minutes to destination.

Slatecraft airfield. Not a major airport, but the nearest private airstrip within thirty miles of the club.

He used to say all sorts of shit while he brutalized me… Cause the worst part is… by the end I didn’t always fight. Sometimes the fight went right out of me. It made him mad when I stopped fighting. So he’d lean over and whisper in my ear, trying to get a rise out of me: You should be glad to have me as a master, dog. You’re just a little shit-eater from the mud no one will ever give a fuck about. Even before I broke you and showed you what a little bitch you really are. I fly planes. You know, those things in the sky you’d look up and wish you could get out of your little hell hole on. Well this is as close as you’re gonna get to the sky, dog.

I finally wrestle out of Isaak’s grip and slam both fists against the dashboard. I hear the bones of my right hand snap as pain explodes like a bloom of flashing light behind my eyelids.

“Fuck! Domhn!” Quinn yells again, the car swerving slightly.

“Grab him, Isaak!” Moira shouts.

The pain gives me the briefest reprieve, taking my breath away as Isaak grabs me from behind.

The next second I remember where I am and what I’ve done.

What I didn’t do .

He has her. She’s been with him this whole time. She was just a kid.

I scream, veins in my neck throbbing to get away from Isaak’s insane, iron grip around me. My eyes flash down to the map again.

Seven minutes .