42. Mason

Mason

S omething’s wrong.

I know it the moment I open my eyes.

My eyes flicker and I gaze around the room, disoriented at first because I forgot we came to Mom’s last night. Three in the morning. Reaching out for Hannah, my chest tightens. She’s not there.

And then an iciness slips through my veins.

She’s not fucking there.

Instantly, I’m wide awake, sitting up to look around the room. Nothing is moved. Her bag’s still on the floor where we left it. Fuck, her perfume still lingers in the air, like she was just here.

The bathroom is dark. Empty. I check downstairs, but she’s not there. She’s not by the pool and she’s not in the kitchen.

Something’s not fucking right.

I search the house, even going as far as to knock on Mila’s door and ask if she’s in there, but she’s not.

Slowly, a simmering poison seeps into my veins, but I settle it down because I don’t know where she could have gone yet.

I pull out my phone. No messages.

Mason: Where are you?

It’s when her phone lights up on the nightstand I fucking know she’s gone.

I check the room again, thinking maybe I missed something, but there’s nothing. Just the cold darkness where she should be.

She was right fucking there. I held her in my arms while we went to sleep. She couldn’t have slipped out in the night. I would have woken up.

I was exhausted.

“ Fuck .”

And then I spot it. A piece of paper tucked away in the bedsheets.

My hand shakes when I reach for it and when I see her elegant sprawling handwriting, it takes me a full minute to process what it even says.

This is me bleeding for you. I love you.

She’s gone.

She’s fucking gone.

“Fuck!”

I sweep the lamp from the bedside table and send it crashing into the wall beside the bed. My reflection in the mirror beside the bed seethes, overcome with violence. My fist shatters it in one hit, the tiny jagged pieces of glass raining down around my feet, but I don’t care.

It only takes a second until Logan appears at the door, his eyes glinting black in the night.

“She’s gone,” I rasp, my chest tightening to the point of pain. “She’s fucking gone.”

As if on cue, his phone buzzes in his hand and he pauses, his eyes narrowing on the screen.

“It’s three in the morning.”

He stops to listen to whoever is on the other end of the line and his expression darkens past recognition.

Logan’s eyes snap to mine.

“You’re sure?”

Dread washes over me. My control barely holding together by a thin thread.

Don’t fucking say it.

“Start tracing.” He hangs up the phone, his tone reserved. Wary. “The cartel has her.”

“Who?” My voice is calm. Quiet. Nothing like the nuclear meltdown bubbling to the surface in my veins.

Logan’s eyes go dark and he clears his throat. “Ian.”

And that’s when my self-control finally snaps.

A deep roar bubbles up my throat, ending on aguish that feels like it might rip me to shreds. Without a second’s hesitation, I grab the entire nightstand and throw it across the room until it shatters into pieces at Logan’s feet.

This is all my fucking fault.

My vision goes red and hazy, my hands clenching to hit something. To break something. Destroy someone as badly as I am.

“Mason!” Savannah gasps, but Logan wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her back from the room. She stares at me in horror, but I don’t stop. I can’t.

They fucking took her.

And she let them.

Inky blackness seeps into my veins, caustic and burning full of rage and hate. With a guttural growl, I whip the dresser to the floor and it splinters into pieces. All sense of my humanity slips away until there’s just a gaping black void full of wrath.

“Back,” Logan orders Mila, who falls back into the hallway, her eyes wide and full of tears.

I grab a vase on the dresser and throw it against the wall so it shatters. And because that does absolutely nothing for me, I grab the chaise lounge in the corner of the room and topple that over, too.

My hearing fades as if I’m underwater, the current battering me down into the dark clutches below the light where nothing but the icy cold black can reach me.

My hands grab for anything in reach and I break it, too. I don’t give a fuck what it is, if it’s there, I’m shattering it until it lays in the ruins along with my fucking sanity.

She’s gone. She’s fucking gone and it’s because of me.

When I’m done, my body aching and my breathing ragged, I look around at the destruction—my destruction—and fall to my knees.

A throat clears and another vase is thrust in front of me.

“Break this one, too,” Mom says, her soft voice absolute. “They’re ugly. I always hated them.”

When I don’t take it, she shrugs and tosses it, watching as the bits of ceramic scatter across her hardwood floor.

We sit there, on our knees, my chest heaving and her silent.

“There’s something else.”

Mom’s gaze snaps to Logan but he and I both understand how this works.

Bad shit happens in threes.

“Ian?” I grit, my teeth clenched to the point of nearly snapping my jaw.

Logan meets my gaze from where he stands, my sister's wide eyes peeking out over his shoulders.

“Dead,” he murmurs, expression tinged with something close to pride and acceptance. “She shot him with your gun.”

Pride swells in my chest, but it’s tainted by something darker.

That motherfucker betrayed me. My best fucking friend betrayed us. I trusted him with her life. My fucking soul and he desecrated her.

Fuck, I want to bleed the life from his eyes.

“I have it on good authority that they have his little sister, too. Jenna.”

Truthfully, I don’t give a fuck who else they have. They have my girl. My vision blurs at all the possible things they could do to her.

What they could have already done to her.

“They blackmailed him. If that means anything to you,” Logan offers, but he knows it doesn’t mean shit. I’ve known Jenna for years. The fact that he wouldn’t come to me, tell me what they were trying to do, fills me with an unchecked fury.

I want to rip their throats out with my teeth. Watch them drown in their own blood.

“Shut the fuck up,” I grit. I would have never done that shit to him. To anyone. I would have found a way to get Hannah back or died trying.

“This isn’t helping,” Savannah insists, but I just chuckle darkly and shake my head until the tension radiating through me feels like it’s going to break my spine in half.

“Don’t you fucking get it?” I snap and she flinches at the tone of my voice. “It’s always been her. If she dies, you better find a way to take me the fuck out, too, because I won’t stop until every last one of them is dead.”

Logan stares at me, black gaze flinting in the darkness.

“I know where she is. I just need a way in.”

I shake my head. It’s not enough. Every second wasted is another that she could be dead.

I’m going to get her back.

“I don’t give a fuck who you have to bribe, who you have to kill, what you have to fucking do. Find a way.”

Something devilish gazes back at me from Logan’s eyes. “Actually, I have a way . . . it’s just illegal. Could get us in a lot of trouble.”

“Logan—” Savannah interjects, but surprisingly, Mom cuts her off.

“She’s one of us,” Mom says, eyes stoney. “Whatever you have to do . . . do it.”

And then she leans in and lowers her voice.

“Pull yourself together,” she instructs, voice barely audible over the sound of blood rushing through my ears. She places a hand on my shoulder, her eyes firm and her gaze hard. “And fucking find her.”