Chapter 30

30

Nick

Isearched the perimeter of the mansion, all the way to the back, where I finally found Blue, lying in a pool of blood. He didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. The wounds at his skull oozed blood around his head.

So many bullet wounds. As if he refused to fall.

My knees gave out, and I dropped to his side, lifted his head into my lap. “No, no, no. Blue, c’mon. No, buddy. C’mon.”

His closed eyes didn’t flinch. His head lolled with every shake of him, every attempt to wake him. Nothing.

I bent over him, listened for a heartbeat, confirming what I already suspected.

Silence.

Lifting him higher into my lap, I stroked his face, his expression as peaceful as if he slept in my arms, and an old memory struck.

Jay sits in a strip of sunlight that shone onto the floor through the window. The tiny puppy is stretched across his small legs. “Daddy? Can I name him?”

I reach out to stroke the puppy’s ear. “Whatcha got, little man?”

“Blue.”

“Blue, huh? How’d you come up with that one?”

Tipping his head, Jay toys with the puppy’s tail, not even that disturbing the sleeping dog. “His eyes are blue.”

I smile. “All puppies’ eyes are blue when they’re first born.”

He looks thoughtful for a moment but shrugs. “I just like Blue.”

“Blue it is.”

“He’s my best friend in the whole world.” Jay plants a kiss on top of the pup’s head. “I love him.”

I pat my son’s head, my smile fading to something more serious. “He’ll protect you from the bad guys while I’m at work.”

“But he’s just a puppy.” Jay frowns. “How can he protect me?”

“Well, he can’t right now. But some day, he’s going to be the best guard dog on the block.”

He nods, holding Blue’s tiny paws in his. “Because he loves us, too.”

“That’s right.”

While the memory broke, I paced back and forth, stroking my skull. “Fuck!” Tears welled in my eyes, and I stopped moving, pinched the bridge of my nose to keep them from surfacing. “Fuck!” I kicked an empty flowerpot, sending it crashing into the brick wall of the house.

Once again, I fell to my knees beside him and lifted his head, rocking him as I stroked his ear. “You did good, Blue. You’re a good dog.” I sniffed and cleared my throat, desperate to hold back the agony itching to escape, and buried my face at his ear. “Do me a favor, huh?” Arms tight around his neck, I squeezed my eyes shut, my voice faltering. “Watch out for them for me.”

Just like that, the last thread slipped through my hands. If not for Blue, I could’ve easily swallowed a bullet a while back. I owed him my life. He’d followed me out of the burning house the night of the attack, keeping at my heels as I stumbled along. It’d been his bark that caught Lauren’s attention, as he stayed at my side.

Sliding my hands beneath his body, I lifted him into my arms, carried him inside the house, and set him down in his bed. I’d bury him the next day.

In the meantime, I had to get rid of the bodies.

* * *

It was nearly midnight when I returned to the mansion. I’d driven the truck just a few blocks over and set it on fire with all of the men inside. No one would find them there. No one would give a shit about them.

I entered my bedroom, found Aubree sleeping, curled in my blankets, her body twitching. Staring down at her bruised face, I stroked a finger across her cheek, and she startled awake, backing herself against the headboard.

I turned to leave, but she struck out, gripping tight to my wrist. “Wait! Please, stay. Please.”

I hadn’t meant to wake her, but I did as she asked, taking a seat beside her on the bed.

Her eyebrows lifted, in a worried expression. “Blue … did he—?”

I shook my head, and she ran her hand through her hair, tears shimmering in her eyes.

She cupped her face in her hands, curling her fingers into fists as she sniffled. “It was my fault. He was just trying to protect me.”

“He was doing his job. It’s not your fault.”

“What have I done?” Pulling her legs to her chest, she wrapped her arms around them and buried her face in her knees. “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m so sorry.”

“No reason to be sorry.” I caught a glimpse of the bruise on her face, and mentally put the focus back on her. Blue was dead. Apologies wouldn’t change that fact, and she didn’t need to torment herself over it. “You okay? That bruise looks pretty bad.”

She ignored my question. “I shouldn’t have … I’m so sorry.” Her eyes shifted back and forth, lip quivering, and I sensed another round of sobbing would follow.

Reaching out, I hesitated a moment before placing a hand over hers. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now.”

“It’s not okay. It was selfish. I was selfish to run from you. And now Blue … because of me …”

“Stop beating yourself up. Blue didn’t do it for you, okay? He did it because that’s what he was trained to do. I trained him to guard you. It’s my fault.”

The gold of her eyes dulled, and her refusal to look at me told me shame plagued her mind. “I just … can’t stop seeing their faces.” She shook her head, eyes wet with tears. “And … I tried to fight them off, but …”

“They were three men with guns, Aubree. Anybody would’ve been afraid.”

“Except you.” Her eyes shot to mine, staring so intently I almost had to look away. “You seemed … different tonight. Almost like you snapped. I was scared … at first.” Her gaze lowered to my bare chest, forcing me to shift on the bed. Running her hands through her hair, knees still pulled tight to her chest, she closed her eyes and drew in two long breaths. The tightness of her jaw and the painful-looking knit of her brows softened. When she opened her eyes again, they remained directed on my chest. “Dylan Thomas.”

The name, completely out of context, caught me off guard. “What?”

“The quote on your chest. A poem from Dylan Thomas. My mother had a large book of poems that I must’ve read a thousand times as a child. I remember that one.” Her eyes tracked back and forth to each side of my chest. “The tattoos … what do they mean?”

Two sets of sound waves inked on each pectoral were the beginning and end of my son’s first newborn cry. I’d uploaded the recording into a computer sound wave generator and had it made into a tattoo design. Over my heart, were two stars, one outlined with my wife’s initials, one with my son’s. Both carried the date of October 30, 2012—the date of their death. Below the stars was Thomas’s quote:

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I’d had it tattooed when Jay was first born. Three months premature, he’d spent the first sixty-two days in the NICU, fighting for his life. As a result, I called him Jay Louis, after the famous boxer, Joe Louis—my little champ.

The very thought incited a sharp sting in my eyes and nose with the threat of tears. How could a child, who’d fought so hard to live early on, be taken away so young?

“The stars … they were … something I used to tell my son. When he was young, he’d asked me what happened to my wife’s father, who’d passed away when Jay was three.” The memory filled my head, no less vivid than if I still sat at the edge of my son’s bed, talking with him before he fell asleep:

“Where’s papa?”

“Well, he’s no longer here. He’s up in the sky, looking down on us.” Jay’s small chin peeks over the spaceship blanket as I tuck him in tight.

“How? Does he live in space?”

The question makes me smile, and I run my fingers through his soft, downy hair. “The stars in the sky are the souls of the people we love. They shine so bright, not even the night can hide them. And when we’re lost, they guide us.”

“Will you be a star someday, Daddy?”

“Someday. When you see one shooting across the sky?” A sweep of my hand over him illustrates the visual. “That’ll be me, saying hello. I’ll watch over you on the darkest nights. And just before the sun rises, when it’s time for me to sleep, I’ll whisper in your ear, see you in the night.”

A tear slips down his cheek, and he tucks his face in the pillow as though hiding himself.

“Hey, why the tears, buddy?”

“I don’t want you to die. I don’t ever want you or mommy to die.” He sniffles. “I’m going to pray every night that you don’t ever become a star.”

His comment brings a contradiction of laughter and sadness at the thought of ever leaving him alone someday. I wipe his cheek and kiss his head, letting him pull me in for a tight hug, when he wraps his arms around my neck. “Everyone becomes a star eventually, Jay. But no matter what happens, or where I am, part of me will always be here,”—I rest my hand against his heart—“with you.”

“How?”

“Your heart was made from mine.”

He glances down at his chest and then to mine. “Am I in your heart, too, Daddy?”

“Always.”

“Nick … what happened to your wife?”

Aubree’s question ripped me from the memory, and I could feel the beating against my chest—the punching on the outside from someone trying to get past the armor and steel that caged me in.

I’d only been asked the question once before, by a therapist, and I never returned after. Alec never asked. Lauren never asked. I’d never talked about the murder to anyone. I couldn’t. That was a box best kept locked and stored away. I had no idea what unleashing those memories into the open might do to me. Like Pandora’s Box, it contained my greatest pain in the world and my deepest, most intense love. My firstborn son would always hold a prominent place in my heart, and his mother, my first love, was the only woman in my life who had the power to destroy me. Losing the two of them took me to depths of pain I couldn’t even remember, places so dark I feared them myself. I drowned myself in memories of their voices, their touch, the feel of them in my arms. And when those sensations had begun to fade, I replaced that soul-crushing misery and despair with anger. Anger so venomous and lethal, I’d become more beast than man. I dreamed of blood on my hands and tortuous screaming, not from my wife and son, but my victims—the men who hurt my family. I wanted a pound of flesh for every year that I’d miss watching my son grow up.

Opening that box was dangerous. Talking about them, without the protective coating of wrath to keep my insides insulated from the pain, could’ve left me blacking out and waking up to bloodstained sheets, and Aubree’s lifeless eyes staring back at me. It was bad enough that she knew anything at all about my family, that she had some curiosity to explore and tease out when I might’ve let my guard down.

Shaking my head, I braced to leave, and felt a cold grip on my wrist.

“Please don’t leave. I won’t push.”

My body relaxed and settled beside her once more.

Feather light, her fingers drifted across my neck, presumably tracing the scorpion tattoo. “Will you stay with me tonight?

I nodded. “I’ll be right here. Get some sleep.”

* * *

The screams. I can’t get them out of my head. Blackness keeps me from seeing, from feeling. I could be alive. Or dead. This would be my hell if I were dead. Those screams rattling my bones, pushing me over the edge. Hurt. Kill. What made me a good man has turned me into a killer. Love. My muscles tighten as the screams intensify, and through the dark, I feel around, searching for the source.

Lena! Jay! Their names echo and fade beneath the undercurrent. I have to find them. I know what comes after this. I know the pain that will follow if I don’t find them. Frantically, I pat around the walls, the floor. The dark room seems to shrink, squeezing me into this box where the screams become louder.

A cold, sticky substance glides beneath my fingertips as I crawl along the surface—up, down, I have no sense of direction. I rub my fingers together, and somehow, the biting tang of copper hits the back of my throat, as the smell penetrates my nose. Whose blood?

The screams drone on, kicking up my heartbeat, driving me mad with the desire to find the source. They need me. The desperation in the voice tells me they need me to find them. Help them. Save them.

A warm but stiff body hits the palm of my hand, and I explore the surface, anxious, searching. “It’s all right, I’m here,” I whisper to her.

The screaming subsides. A sharp blow knocks my jaw, kicking my head to the side. A hand grips my wrist, and on instinct, I draw back a fist.

A light flips on.

Movement in my periphery snaps my attention to the left. A streak bleeds into the darkness, swinging like a pendulum, back and forth, back and forth. I focus on it, concentrating.

Aubree’s wide eyes stared up at me, her hand off to the side, waving back and forth, back and forth. Beneath me? A sweep of the room showed the light of the nightstand flipped on. I’d straddled her body, pinning her down. Her arm was drawn back beside her head, frantically vying for my attention, the other gripping my wrist at her throat. My arm was drawn back, too, as if the two of us were frozen in a standoff.

Fuck. Scrambling backward from her body, I fell to the floor and backed myself to the wall. “I’m sorry.” I cradled my face in my hands and rubbed my skull back and forth. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Aubree.” With both hands planted at either side of my head, I rocked, wishing I could crawl out of my own skin to get away from myself. What the fuck was I doing? What would I have done? Hit her?

I could’ve hurt her! The agony of that thought left a caustic burn in my gut.

Warm hands across my skin set my muscles flinching, and my palms flattened against the floor, my spine pressed into the wall, as her sad eyes searched mine while she gently stroked my arm.

I shook my head— please don’t ask why—but then she took my hand and kissed my knuckles.

“I’m sorry.” Drawing my hand to her chest, she held it tight to her. “Please don’t go.”

Sorry?What the fuck was she sorry about?

She bowed her head, and I caught a glistening stream of tears down her cheek. “I woke from a nightmare. I thought … I thought you were one of them. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

My brows came together. “Your nightmare?”

Wiping the tears from her cheek, she nodded. “You tried to calm me down. And I … I hit you. I’m sorry.” She sniffed, lifting her gaze. “I didn’t mean to hit you, Nick.”

Quiet followed as I attempted to process what the hell just happened.

Her eyes flitted to the side. “You called me Lena.”

Jesus Christ. Drawing in long, easy breaths, I slowed the apeshit pounding of my heart. “I thought she … you were hurt. I heard screams and … blood.” My gaze fell to my hands, and I opened them, studying the marks where I’d tightened my fists so hard, my nails had gouged the shit out of my palms. Puffing my cheeks, I blew a sharp breath and double-blinked. “What was the waving about?”

“A trick I learned. Helps break nightmares.” Her eyes shied away, then flicked back to mine. “Who’s Lena, Nick?”

What’s your wife’s name? Do you remember? What’s your name?The therapist’s voice rolls through my head.

A sting hit the back of my neck, and I suddenly realized I’d scratched the hell out of it.

Aubree’s gaze fell from mine, a faint blush to her cheeks, as if she was embarrassed for having asked. Perhaps she thought it was another woman. A girlfriend.

“My wife. Lena was my wife.” I couldn’t explain why or how the next few words flew from my mouth. “She and my son were … murdered.” I waited for the fury, the blackness to crash over and send me into rage. My stomach tightened as a tingle moved through my body and heat warmed my muscles.

It dissipated.

Along with it vanished the urge to thrash Aubree’s body against a wall. To pummel her with my fists for trying to pummel my shield. All I felt was sadness. Like saying the words aloud meant, somewhere inside, I’d accepted that they were gone. I didn’t. I refused, because with acceptance came contentment, and I would never dishonor them with such a passive state of mind.

“How?” she asked.

How? Telling her how might have given me a renewed dose of anger that I needed. It could also be dangerous for Aubree. God help her if she tried to convince me that my anger was irrational and unwarranted.

Could I trust her? Or, more importantly, could I trust myself?

An upward glance faced me with softened eyes that spoke of pain and understanding. They told me she knew something about holding back those demons and the uncertainty of trusting someone with those haunting secrets.

“It’s okay if you can’t, Nick.”

Like she could read my goddamn mind! I cleared my throat, the maddening rub of my thumb back and forth over my trigger finger pulling my attention away from her sad, golden eyes. I’d stolen the woman’s dark secret when I lifted her dress, discovered a very vulnerable piece of her.

I’d given her nothing in return.

Alarms blared inside my head, warning me not to peel back the armor I’d spent years casting and molding to protect the weak, soft bones beneath my skin. Bones so frail they could snap. I don’t owe her! A dark corner of my brain battled. I didn’t owe her a damn thing.

Tamping that inner voice down, I clamped my eyes shut, my mind searching for silence, preparing myself to peel back the scab of my most painful wound.

“I, uh … I had a meeting.” I didn’t recognize my own voice as I spoke, as if I’d climbed out of my skin and let the empty shell tell its story, while I watched from a safe distance. “With a game publisher who wanted to buy my design. Things were going well, so when he invited me to meet up with him for drinks, I did.” Every muscle in my body yearned to twitch and fidget, a series of alarms, warning me not to go any further. Yet, I did. “My wife, Lena, had to pick up our son from daycare and it kind of forced her to rush. I normally picked him up. She, um, called me later in the night. Jay had forgotten his rabbit.” Rubbing the back of my neck, I cleared my throat, as my muscles bunched and tension wound inside my gut. “He always slept with it, and wouldn’t go to sleep, so Lena ended up staying up late with him. I swung by the daycare to pick it up after my meeting.”

Eyes screwed tight, fingers digging into my palms, I swallowed back the unsaid confession—that if I hadn’t been so selfish, so self-absorbed, so desperate to succeed and make a better life, I would’ve been the one to pick Jay up. I’d have held my son one more time, felt the weight of him in my arms. Lena would’ve been at work, like every other night. Our fate might’ve been different.

“I’m guessing maybe they saw the lights on in the house, or something. There were six of them.” Ire pounded through my muscles, winding the tightly coiled ball of anxiety inside my gut, as I thought of all those men having their way with my wife, all at once. I stretched my fingers, uncurling my fists to keep from striking out at the wall—or worse, at Aubree. “All members of the Seven Mile Crew. When I … arrived home, I noticed the door was unlocked. Wasn’t like Lena. She never left the doors unlocked. Had OCD with that and checking burners. I heard noises coming from upstairs. Kinda muffled.”

Rolling my head against my shoulders didn’t lesson the tight pull in my neck and shoulders, and my fingers continued to stretch, my eyes twitching in one last- ditch effort to make me abort the story. To back away before shit got painful. The ball of rage burned inside my stomach, so fucking hot, my hands trembled. Poison. It pulsed through my body, leaving a black sludge in its wake that I yearned to cut out of me. I rubbed my forearm, licked my parched lips.

With tears in her eyes, Aubree stared back at me. “They hurt her, didn’t they?”

My lip twisted as my nostrils flared, coils winding tight, so tight in my stomach. “Yeah. Two … two of the men were raping her at the same time. The others held her down and … watched.” Dryness climbed my throat, as I remembered the sounds of skin smacking, the laughter over her agonizing cries. “I fought them off of her. Killed one of them. Sliced the ear off another.” I smiled at that, the pain I was able to inflict. The pain I’d inflicted again just days before when I’d sliced off his other ear before killing the cocksucker. “All I had was a fallen knife I’d grabbed from the floor.” My hand trembled as my thumb traced the inner lines of my palm. An ache throbbed inside my heart as a sharp pain struck my skull, and I tipped my head, pressing two fingers into the scar. “We never kept a gun in the house because of Jay. It’s why we got Blue.”

Her lips parted as she exhaled a breath, and the tear trapped inside her eye finally fell down her cheek.

At her silence, I kept going. I didn’t know why. Maybe I did trust Aubree. Maybe a part of me needed to share everything with her because only she could understand what it felt like to have a life destroyed by that bastard fuck, Culling. it almost felt like I was purging the poison without cutting into myself. I still yearned for the pain, but Aubree’s sad eyes, her silence and attention as I told my story, somehow kept me grounded. “They got the upper hand, knocked me out cold with the butt of a gun. I woke up hours later.” Rubbing my hand across my forehead, I rocked to hold back the tears welling in my eyes. “They were still raping her. Torturing her.” I pounded my fist into my head, then knuckled my temples, but still, tears fell. I couldn’t keep them in, not at the thought of my helpless wife and the pain she’d suffered. Pain I couldn’t stop. “My beautiful Lena.”

Keep it together. Lock it in. A new surge of anger swelled inside of me, choking back the tears. “I snuck up on them, beat the one guy’s face, and he shot me in the leg. My son woke up from the gunshot. He was …” Fuck. Fuck. I widened my eyes and sucked in a breath as I battled a frown and more tears.

Why was I doing it to myself? Why was I telling her everything?

I slapped my palms to the floor, preparing to get up, to find my knife and cut the shit out of me, but a visual of Jay collapsing to the floor with the sound of a gun had me collapsing into myself. “He was murdered in front of me.”

My throat tugged, and my elbow slammed into the wall behind me, crashing through the brittle drywall. I raised trembling hands to either side of my head, desperate for breath, but my lungs locked up and mouth open to a silent scream that I finally let go.

A string of curses bounced off the walls. I wanted to punch someone. Something. My entire body shook with rage.

My son. My beautiful boy, who’d fought to come into the world, had been violently ripped out of it.

“Sometimes … I still feel him in my arms, you know? Swaddled up. Safe. Protected.” My voice cracked, and I dug my fingers into the wound above my ear that’d forever mock me. “I failed him. Failed to protect him, like I said I always would.”

The bellows of pain that burst from my chest reverberated inside my skull.

When they quieted, the only sound that remained was the steady thud of blood beating inside my ears. Deep breaths blew back at my face as I sat with my head tucked between my knees. Sitting there, with my chest ripped open, heart exposed for the first time in years, it occurred to me how torn apart I was inside, hemorrhaging with pain. Pain that needed release. What else could explain the sudden dull ache that felt like wounds sealing themselves?

I’d never told anyone what’d happened. Not even Alec.

“Michael … did this to you, didn’t he? His men murdered your family?” Aubree’s soft voice broke through the white noise inside my skull.

“I awoke to hear one of them take a call. He told the others that Culling had given the order to get rid of us. Burn it down.” I lifted my head and dragged my face against my bicep to wipe the tears. “So they did. They burned it all. Including my wife and son.”

“Ah, God! Why?” Agony carries on Lena’s voice, overpowering the constant high-pitched ringing inside my head.

The taste of metal coats my tongue and smoke stings my nose— so much smoke, it fills my lungs, as though a fire burns somewhere inside the house. I lift my head from the blood pooled beneath me. Mine? I don’t know. I can’t remember anything. So many blackouts dot the nightmare still playing out before my eyes.

The room is painted in blood, and I zero in on a long trail that leads to the hallway, where my wife has somehow crawled toward our son and curled her body around his, clutching him tightly. Her leg flinches, and that’s all it takes for me to push up onto my elbows and drag myself toward the two of them. I can’t even keep my head upright and there’s that fucking ringing in my ear that won’t go away, but I claw at the blood stained wood to reach them. I have no other choice.

Except for the surrounding pool of blood, they seem peaceful. As though sleeping curled into one another. Motionless. Tears have streamed down Lena’s cheek, the glisten reflecting the light in the room, as she buried her face in our son’s hair in a permanent kiss.

My heart bellows inside my chest, but as I lay beside them, the fear disappears. I’m not afraid to burn alive together, because I’ll never survive this.

With my head resting on my son’s back, I concentrate through the ringing for a heartbeat. Any sign that he might still be alive. Angry tears fill my eyes as his body remains still, so still, beneath me. My body trembles with the fury trapped deep inside my bones, fury I want to unleash on the world, on those rotten cocksuckers.

With an unsteady, heavy hand, I stroke his back and catch the wetness that slides between my finger and the fuzz of his pajamas. Lifting my hand reveals a thick coating of blood dripping down my fingertips. A sob rips through my chest, and I close my hand to a fist, wanting to pound the walls, the floor where his blood lies pooled, the faces of the men who did this to him. Every fucking one of them.

Across from me, Lena’s eyes almost seem to shift with the tears flooding them, but they’re vacant. Unfocused. She looks like she’s trapped inside a nightmare and can’t break free.

I watch the last spark of life slip from her eyes. The beautiful brightness I’ve loved for so long fading into a dull permanence of emptiness. Like a home once filled with mirth and childhood suddenly abandoned and left to decay.

I drag my hand across our son and clutch her wrist, and when she doesn’t so much as flinch, a howl of sorrow crushes my chest.

Closing my eyes, I kiss my son on the cheek, squeeze Lena’s hand in mine, and wait for the flames to pull me into eternal sleep alongside them.

Laughter—evil, wicked laughter—echoes from somewhere below. It reaches me in the blackness, over my sobs and the ringing in my ears. It pokes holes behind my eyelids and scrapes along my spine like a knife chipping at my bones.

My eyes flip open. They’re still inside the house. From across the room, I eye the fallen knife.

An urgency pulls at my muscles, and before my mind catches up, I’m already halfway across the floor, pulling myself along toward it. I don’t know how many there are, but I’ll die trying to take as many as I can with me. The knife fumbles in my hand that feels too heavy, too big for my wrists. I drop it and pick it up again. Bracing my palm on the wall beside me, I push while drawing my weakened legs to a stand, stumbling across the floor towards the door.

The room is blurry, out of focus. The ringing intensifies. I’m on autopilot, sliding across the walls to the staircase.

Over crackles and pops, the mumbling of voices precedes the echo of laughter.

I know now. I heard her voice. She stayed with our son and brought me to life for one reason—to avenge them.

“I’m haunted by fire.” As the memory faded away, I stared off, watching the beams of moonlight through the window cut across the darkness of the room. “Couldn’t watch a flame without feeling the scorching heat on my face and tasting the blood on my tongue, without the smell of burning flesh suffocating my lungs.”

Tears fell down Aubree’s cheeks. Lifting up onto her knees, she shot straight for my chest without saying a word and wrapped her arms around my neck.

Part of me wanted to throw her across the room. To push her away. To claw at her skin that touched mine. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her and dragged her into my body. I took in the feel of her warmth, the pulse of her breath at my neck, the tremble in her muscles that coincided with my own, like two bolts of electricity joining in one powerful surge.

My muscles tightened around her, as though I could squeeze the very life right out of her, as the shadowed side of my brain grasped an urge to snap her into the thousand tiny broken fragments that made up my insides. Forcing those thoughts away, I merely held her. Gently. Quietly. Selfishly. Burying my face in her hair filled my senses with her sweet, clean scent, until, at last, I calmed. Through long easy breaths, the tension in my muscles softened. The rage slipped back into its dark corner of my mind.

I finally breathed.

Aubree pulled away, and immediately my body cried out for her, craved the warmth once more. I wanted to grab her and take her to my bed, stealing every ounce of heat inside her body for my own—but I didn’t.

“I’m your retribution,” she said, in a solemn voice.

“Yes.”

“Are you planning to kill me for revenge?”

“No.” It was the truth. I couldn’t kill such an angel of mercy. She’d given me the power to control the one thing that made me lose control.

Her head tipped to the side. “Then, why are you keeping me?”

I stared down at the smeared blood that’d dried over the palm of my hand. “Because I can’t let you go yet.”

I couldn’t even say why, and thankfully she didn’t ask. An urgency tugged at me to keep her, like a voice inside my head, telling me that the woman needed my help, whether she’d asked for it or not. That to let her go would ruin everything.

The same inner voice that uttered two words to change everything.

Save her.