“You’re doing a great job.”
I risked a glance at him so I could spot the sarcasm. I couldn’t.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Consider us even,” I said. “We keep saving each other’s lives in one way or another.”
“Wow,” he said.
I risked another glance. “What?”
“I expected a rebuff to the thank you.”
“Consider me a changed woman,” I muttered as we bounced over a pothole. “One who is actually becoming tired of this crazy shitshow I call a career.”
* * *
We made it another half a block when a figure sprinted out into the road, hands up, staggering to a halt at the same time I slammed the brakes.
Theo and I flipped forward, the seatbelts too tight on both our necks to allow for enough breath to curse. When the ricochet stopped and the back of my skull slammed into the headrest, I opened my eyes, praying I didn’t hit the person.
A man who was still standing in front of our vehicle.
And it wasn’t his hands he was holding up.
It was a gun.
“Trace,” Theo mumbled. He blinked hard, rubbing at the back of his head and grimacing when he pulled back his hand and spotted the blood.
How many head wounds had he sustained today? The pessimistic part of me reasoned it didn’t matter, since there was now a gun pointed at it.
Trace mouthed through the grit and ash lining his face, “Get out of the car.”
His voice was muffled, barely heard through the cooling engine and my now heavy breaths. I didn’t want to get out. Actually, I did, but I wanted out of this entirely. Gone with the wind. No more crime family nipping at my heels.
“Get,” Trace mouthed a second time, “Out.”
The windshield cracked with a gunshot and I screamed, covering my head and grabbing for Theo at the same time.
“I mean it!” Trace yelled, much clearer now. “Get out or I won’t miss next time!”
“Come on,” Theo said. He squeezed my hand, where my fingers were latched around his biceps, then moved to unclip his seatbelt. “He’s not bluffing.”
“We can’t—”
“We have to, Scarlet.”
“I can run him over.”
“Not before he lets loose another shot.”
“We can at least try—”
“Whether it goes wide or not, the chances of him hitting one of us are high. I’m not risking you anymore. Let’s go.”
“Get out of the fucking car!”
Trace rounded to my side, his face a mask of dirt and devil, the pink of his flesh only seen through carved out age-lines, the grime making him seem decades older. Perhaps, in his poisoned soul, he was.
He jiggled the locked door handle, and when that didn’t work, slammed a palm against the window. I couldn’t help it—I cried out and jerked back.
Trace raised the pistol and aimed for my face.
“I’m coming!” I yelled with raised hands. Slowly, I lowered one to press the unlock button.
Trace didn’t wait for me to open the door myself. I was yanked out by the arm, my legs tangling, and I landed shoulder-first onto the road.
Self-defense kicked in and I shielded my face while lashing out with my legs. A lot of movement meant less chance of an accurate shot. During these years without the Saxon brothers in my life, I’d learned plenty about bullet trajectories and the odds of having one embedded in your body.
An unearthly roar followed, and the sound of shoes crushing loose stones, before Trace’s shadow no longer loomed over me, bright sun taking its place before Theo eclipsed it with the span of his form.
Panting, Theo towered over his brother.
How much energy could Theo have left? I raised myself to my forearms, swiping tangled hair out of my face, and for the second time in my life, felt a different kind of fear.
It wasn’t a fight or flight response, or even the surge of adrenaline. It was an anchor, sinking at the center of my gut, its chains wrapped around my heart. With each second ticking by, the chain grew heavier, heavier still, until my heart followed the anchor to the depths of despair.
This had only happened once before. The last time I was with Theo, the final seconds when he confronted Trace and denied his family calling. When he stood in front of a gun and told his brother to shoot him.
It’s not fear you’re feeling, Letty. It’s love.
Love.
Gasping, gulping, I pulled myself to stand, one hand out as if I could stop Theo from taking it any further through psychic command.
Losing someone you knew was bad enough. Watching a person you loved die before your eyes, that was a different anchor entirely.
And I felt those chain links straining with effort.
“Theo, let’s go,” I said, and staggered toward him. I was weaker than I anticipated, but no matter. Once we got back into the car, metal and mechanics could be strong for me. “He’s out cold.”
“No he’s not,” Theo said through his teeth.
Before this moment, even with the new cuts, the fresh blood, I was able to spot the man beneath. No…
Now I couldn’t find the man I’d come to understand again.
Theo reared and kicked his brother in the stomach. Trace spasmed, grunts spewing forth with saliva and blood.
“You goddamned bastard.” Theo’s voice ground against his vocal cords. “You escape this city, and still I can’t escape you. I leave you alone, yet you and Father won’t allow me to live my life. You manipulate, you mutilate, you kill, and still that’s not enough. What will be enough, brother?” Theo laid out another kick. “When I’m dead? When it’s me at your feet? Let me tell you this, you will never have me under your heel, do you understand?”
Trace mumbled incoherently, raised the gun he somehow still had in his hand, but Theo swatted it away with the toe of his shoe like it was nothing but a spatula Trace was attempting to fight with.
Then stood on his brother’s throat, pressed just enough to elicit a choking cough.
“Hear this, brother. I have you under my heel, but no matter how far you push me, how many people I love you threaten, I will never kill you. I swear, on a Saxon oath, that I will never turn my back on my family. When you call, I come. When Father beckons, I do as bid. But not because you control me. Oh, no.” Theo bent down further. “But because I’m patient. I’ve waited for this day. Your greatest punishment, Father’s greatest fear, is to lose this kingdom. And he will.” Theo pushed off Trace’s throat, and Trace rolled to the side, sputtering. “You will. And I get to witness it all.”
“You’ll always be a Saxon,” Trace coughed, cutting Theo a glance sideways. “You’re here because you love it. The violence. The cruelty.”
Theo lifted his lips. “You touch Scarlet again, you look at her again, so much as ask her directions, I’ll have no trouble taking one of your limbs.” Theo spat at the ground beside Trace’s face. “I should’ve taken at least one of your fingers last time.”
“Nice scar, brother,” Trace said through the blood bubbling on his lips. “Where’d you get it?”
That earned him another kick to the gut.
“Where’s Drea?” I asked Trace’s shuddering form. I stepped up beside Theo.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Trace ground out. “She got to you. I’ve forgotten to ask her how, considering the only person getting close to the zipper on your pants has been my brother.”
I wasn’t proud of it, the instant weakness as soon as I laid eyes on Drea, shrunken and beaten in a chair much too big for her body.
“You did that to her,” I said. “I’m not ashamed I felt something for a frail woman beaten half to death.”
“She wanted it.”
“The poor girl wanted you,” I said. “That I can forgive her for, considering she’s not the only one drawn in by the Saxon lure. It’s the betrayal I can’t fathom. The idea that she ran to you as soon as she realized who Theo and I were.”
“I learned from my father.” Trace smiled weakly. “Always have people in the right places, and there will always be a right time.”
“Where is she?” I asked again.
Theo moved deftly, readying for another round.
“She’s safe,” Trace said, eyeing his brother. For once, the flicker of pain I noticed flash through his features wasn’t due to physical violence. “Butcher, however, is not.”
“That’s who the bullet was for,” I surmised.
“I had to give her time to run,” Trace murmured, so quietly I didn’t think Theo caught it.
“You are one fucked up individual,” I seethed. “To maim a girl you care about so badly.”
At last, Trace met my stare. “She’s no substitute for you.”
Theo rumbled with a growl.
“Let’s leave,” I said. I grabbed Theo’s elbow, tried to pull the tree-trunk that was my ex-boyfriend. “Trace is useless to us. We don’t know where your father is. We’ve got to get out of here before the police find us, before Gordon—”
“Hands off my son, dear.”
“Fuck,” I whispered, a visceral sound in my throat.
Theo didn’t flinch.
“Who are you right now?” I asked him quietly before I backed away, knowing without having to look that Gordon would be holding another bigger, badder weapon on us. A semi-automatic. An automatic handgun. One of those guns that shoots bullets that shatter on impact and eviscerate organs. All of the above.
“Don’t become them, please.” I was staring at him, but Theo wasn’t paying any attention. His focus was on his brother, but he wasn’t seeing him. It was a beast hovering over its prey. A dragon circling its kill.
It was not Theo Saxon.
Or was it? My hands clenched at my sides as I retreated. Was this the new man, the person Theo had been trying to hide from me since boarding the Hatari, pretending to be a prince in the darkness, when really, he was a demon in sunlight?
He was only showing me what had always been there, if I’d only thought to see clearly.
“Turn around. There’s a good girl,” Gordon said behind me.
Closing my eyes with a sigh, I did.
“Well, you came out of that house a lot better than me,” Gordon said.
Although I didn’t want to, I blinked Gordon into focus.
His face was red, burned, a few flakes of skin marring his cheeks, his hair askew, his suit ripped and dirtied. Gordon favored his right side, using his left hand to aim the gun instead of his dominant one.
“I had a head start,” I replied.
Gordon inclined his head. It was like watching a vulture size up the nearby wounded to estimate who would die first. “I’ll admit, the mini-bomb was unexpected.”
“How did you get here?” I asked. Stalling. Come back, Theo. Turn on that humanity switch. Come back to me.
“Oh, my dear, think that one through.” Gordon chuckled, coughed, then winced. His left arm came closer into his torso, and instinctual maneuver to protect and soothe.
“We have more than one way out of that basement,” Trace supplied from the ground. “Several, actually.”
“Get up,” Theo said, and when Trace didn’t, Theo hooked him under one arm and hurled him into a stand, then tossed him over, stumbling, to their father.
“You have him just like you wanted him,” Theo said to Gordon. My heart broke over how deadened his gaze had become. “It’s over. The FBI is around the corner. Give up, Father.”
“You’re involved in this crime, too,” Gordon said, then eyed his middle son carefully. “But you know that.”
“I’m ready to accept the consequences.” Unexpectedly, Theo’s shoulders sagged. “I’m so damned tired.”
“No,” I said, automatically moving toward him.
“Stay right there, sweetheart,” Gordon said.
“Go,” Theo said to me. “You can go. This isn’t your world anymore.”
“If she leaves,” Gordon said, “I’ll shoot you, Theodore.”
“Then do it already.”
“No,” I said with emotion this time.
“Or what? You’ll jump in front of him again? That’s so two years ago, dear. Just stay where you are.”
“Run, Scarlet,” Theo said.
My gaze bounced back and forth between the two of them, unsteady on my feet.
“It’s near impossible to shoot a running target with that gun,” Theo said to me. “So go. Now.”
I shook my head, vision brimming.
“Now,” he barked.
Gordon laughed, followed by Trace’s hollow chuckle.
A chill spiraled down my back, as if a ghost appeared in shadow behind me and ran a misted finger along my spine.
If you go, he will lose his life. He will not be arrested. Theo will die by his father first.
“I … I can’t,” I said to him, the very pain of him dying in front of me lacing through my voice.
“Scarlet.” Realization leeched through his expression, dried blood going stark against his pale skin. “Don’t do this. Don’t be stupid.”
“Do you remember when you told me you weren’t a hero?” I said to him, then stepped forward, grabbing his hand. “I don’t claim to be, either, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running away from you, Theo.”
“Good God,” Trace scoffed, speaking through the blood in his mouth, one hand resting on his father’s shoulder to balance his weight.
Gordon narrowed his eyes at me.
“You have no idea, do you, girl?” he asked.
At my pained expression, he continued. “The necklace. What have you made of it?”
Kai came into my head, but I clamped down at the thought. He couldn’t have—wouldn’t have—betrayed me. There had to be another reason, another cruel twist to this fate causing what was meant to be a safety net become a weapon—
I stared at Gordon with newfound clarity.
“You,” I said.
“Indeed.” To Gordon’s credit, he did not roll his eyes at my deduction. “It wasn’t easy, mind you, but it is crucial to find moles where you most need them.”
Moments, locations, people, blew through my mind with the force of a stack of playing cards slipping through a dealer’s hand.
“Rada?” I said the name as a question, a breath of air, while processing the possibility.
“You were correct, dear boy, she is a smart one,” Gordon said to Theo. “It took Tracey at least an hour to figure that one out.”
“But how…?” I asked Theo, Gordon, Trace, myself. “I never took the necklace off…”
“Oh, but you did,” Tony said, the sound of his voice like a snake slithering through a dried out pond.
I stared at the ground as I thought, fingers tight around Theo’s. Gordon was right … there was one time I unclasped the necklace, one moment, in Rada’s bathroom, when Theo and I were in the shower…
“By the way, Rada wants her pistol back,” Gordon said.
“She replaced the necklace?” I looked up at Gordon. “It was a dupe?”
Gordon didn’t bother to answer in the affirmative. “The effect of that replacement was always meant for you, Theodore being collateral damage if needed, but you were meant to have used it much sooner. Granted, it’s a small device, meant only to kill the person wearing it—but in Theodore’s attempt to save you, he threw it near a barrel of bourbon. Or maybe that was deliberate, an attempt to kill a brother and a father in one throw. But, my dear boy Theodore, Trace and I survived, so maybe you should turn your attention to Scarlet, and why she was wearing the original necklace in the first place.”
“I never trusted Rada farther than I could speak to her,” Theo said, then turned to me. He didn’t acknowledge Gordon’s accusation. “But I can’t plan for what I don’t know about. Why were you wearing that necklace?”
Gordon stared at us, a sneer escaping.
“Don’t,” I said to Gordon, but I knew it was useless.
Theo
kept his attention on me. “Don’t what?”
“She doesn’t want me to tell you,” Gordon said, smiling. “But I admit, I can’t resist.”
“Whatever he says,” I started, “it means more than what he’s making it out to be—”
“Scarlet was going to give you up to the cops, my son,” Gordon said.
I clutched Theo’s arm. “It’s not that clear cut—”
But Theo’s expression was clouding over, confusion, hurt, abject betrayal. If his eyes were ice before, they were frostbitten when he collected his thoughts enough to regard me with nothing but heavily banked rage.
“Scarlet made a deal with the FBI. Two years ago, with Peter Chenko. Remember him?” Gordon continued.
“Shut up,” I said, then louder, “Just shut up! You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know what Chenko said to you in that hospital room,” Gordon cut in. “I’m the one who told him what to say.”
“Theo.” I spun to what was important. “I didn’t have a choice. Any chance I had to spare you, I chose it. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t make a deal with the goal of betraying you—” my voice broke.
“Nothing you do is spontaneous,” Gordon said darkly. “No action you take is your choice. The minute you stepped into my son’s life, you’ve been mine. And you are merely a doll on strings I can discard.”
“So you admit it, then?” I asked, turning my rage on him. “You admit to wanting to punish me for interfering with your racketeering, your drug trade, for getting your son—the true heir—to fall in love with me? You wanted me out of the way—”
“Long ago,” Gordon spat. “I wanted you dead long ago, but with my eldest disappearing and you making yourself so well-known in my circles, I couldn’t just off you like you deserved. And so I cultivated, I waited patiently, and despite having that necklace blow up in front of me instead of just you and my son, here we are.” He pointed his gun at me. “The devil’s on my side.”
“That’s your weakness,” I said softly.
Gordon squinted while Trace stilled beside him, looking past me. “Father…”
But Gordon wasn’t budging. “What did you just say?”
WIN THE GAME Page 23
