by Angel Payne
And all I have to sacrifice for that is my goddamned dignity.
“Says the guy who dressed matchy-matchy with his woman today?”
I’m saved from my neurotic grumble by a firm knock at the apartment door.
After messaging Neeta that I’ll be right back, I jump up and hurry across the living room, checking my watch as I go. An hour has flown by, meaning the two hours I’ve promised Emma are closer at hand. She’s obviously aware of that too, meaning her time with Angie must’ve been fun but brief. Thank fuck.
“Hey. Welcome back.” I throw the deadbolt free and twist the knob but take just one extra second to lower my sweats until I’m nearly showing butt crack goodness again. “I thought you checked for your key when you were…”
My voice trails off.
Correction. My choke ushers it into silence.
As I blink at who’s really standing in the hallway, a subtle smirk spreads across his broad mouth. A mouth still marred from the trio of damn fine punches I landed to it three nights and five thousand miles ago.
“Hey, dickwad.”
Outwardly, Tyce is still the epitome of trendy cool and male model chic, but just as blatant as his black tailored ensemble, his ten-thousand-dollar smart watch, and the entire salon full of product atop his black waves, there’s a strange glint in his cobalt eyes, reminding me of the darkest parts of the forest when we went to camp as kids. A darkness none of us ever wanted to be lost in.
It’s almost enough to sway me. Almost the visceral detail that pushes me over into believing he’s friend not foe and that the cryptic connection he forged to Emma back in LA was worth a trusting step back now, really believing he’s representing Alpha Three in some strange way.
But the thing is…he’s here.
Here.
At a location nobody else is supposed to know about. A location, Angelique assured me, that even the Consortium never learned about.
Have they now?
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
He blinks for a couple of seconds, looking like I’ve actually decked him again, before unleashing the old Tyce snark as he leans against the doorframe. “Well, you see, it’s cookie season, and if my troop sells just fifty more boxes of the caramel chocolate ones, we’ll get to take a trip to the zoo. And oh yeah, ice cream afterward.”
“Are you kidding me?” I’m planted to the spot, unable to move forward or backward. I’m furious, but I’m cognizant enough to realize it’s anger because of fear. A lot of fear. And right now, not even for myself. If Tyce has been putting us all on, perhaps even acting in collusion with Dad, then the Consortium’s in on this shit and we’ve been made. I’ll be dead inside ten minutes—which doesn’t stress me out as thoroughly as fast-forwarding my mind to Emma’s eventual arrival and realizing she’ll be next on the asshole’s list.
But if I can get to my phone still lying on the dining nook table next to my laptop…
Yes.
There’s still hope—slim but better than standing here with my dick in my hand—of notifying her to stay away. To get her ass into a car and over to the airport, where Sawyer will be arriving in a few hours.
My thoughts clear because of the strategy, and I jerk my head at Tyce. “Get your ass in here.”
I wait, letting him stroll—stroll—past me into the living room. “I know this is kind of crazy.”
“Yeah. Fifty boxes? Don’t those caramel things move the fastest?” I keep it to a drawl, matching his for sarcasm, though the tone is deceptive. There’s nothing relaxed or mirthful about me right now. I rake him over with a watchful gaze, checking in all the normal places for all the normal things. Bulge of a gun, outline of a boot sheath, even the line of a wire…but my Spidey senses are completely fried. Though his clothes fit his form like a well-made glove, they’re completely black and very thick. About as close to leathers as cotton-blend shit can get.
“Usually they do.” Weirdly, Tyce’s steps have stiffened since he entered. Eventually, he comes to a complete stop, his back still facing me. “But this might be giving some of my customers second thoughts.”
I have only a second to process how his voice has gotten weird, along with his stance. No longer is his wisecrack delivered with his worldly whisky murmur. It’s dry and labored, like a corn husk put to vocal cords…
The same way one entire side of his face looks as he turns back around toward me.
“Holy fuck!” But even his marred features aren’t the instigation behind my stupefied gasp. That honor goes to the fact that even the smooth side of his visage isn’t his. There’s something familiar about the male model perfection there, but I can’t even stop for that dig right now. I can’t comprehend or care about anything at the moment except for one glaring, horrifying fact.
My brother is gone.
“Reece. It’s all right.”
Only…he’s not.
The voice is still there. Tyce’s voice. Kind of. Buried beneath the three-packs-a-day rasp is the buttery assurance of the man I know.
The brother…I trust.
“Reece.”
“I…I don’t understand.” I have to clench my teeth to stay the heat behind my eyes. Jesus, if this is freaky for me, I can only imagine what he’s going through.
Hold the fuck up.
I can imagine what he’s going through.
“Holy. Shit.” I pace across to him, hating how I lean over as I go as if I’m approaching a damn rabid dog. “This is what they did to you…isn’t it?” I reach out, cupping his shoulder, shaking as hard as he does at the contact. “You’re not doing this for Alpha Three, are you, Tyce? You…you are Alpha Three.”
The stranger-brother in my grip shudders again. The motion takes over him, rushing down to his feet and then back up again, consuming both sides of his face in a terrible grimace. A stare of pure pain, loneliness, anger, and bitterness.
“Jesus,” I choke. “Tyce.”
We fall against each other, clutching hard and holding on, struggling to comprehend the enormity that a horror now binds us thicker than blood—a nightmare that isn’t even over.
Perhaps it’s barely begun.
And because of that, my mind all but detonates with a tumble of new questions. When was he taken? How was he taken? Are his abilities the same as mine? How did he escape the Consortium? And most pressing, how the hell did he know about this place?
I’m on the brink of demanding his response to that one when a key rattles in the apartment’s door, accompanied by the music of two women joined in laughter. Sure enough, before I can think of what to say or even how to hide Tyce, Emma bursts in with Angelique at her side—though they both stop cold as soon as their gazes land on Tyce.
There are a thousand questions in Emma’s eyes.
There are a thousand tears in Angelique’s.
Only then do I realize that the most bizarre twist of the day hasn’t even happened yet. That comes as soon as Angelique finally finds her voice and stammers out one word in a querulous question.
“Dario?”
Part 9
Chapter One
Emma
Some sights in life are truly unforgettable.
And while I hope I live a long, long life after this point, I’m pretty certain this moment will be one of the few I still recall when I’m a half-loony ninety-year-old telling people about the craziest moments of my existence.
Because this is crazy, right?
Point one: I’m walking into the Paris hideout I’ve been sharing with my sort-of-fugitive superhero fiancé, arm-in arm with his ex-girlfriend, the woman I’d once written off as the bitch nemesis of my existence.
Point two: discovering that the hideout isn’t as covert after all—because now there’s a stranger in here—who doesn’t seem to be a stranger at all, if everything I’m reading and feeling from Reece’s posture and demeanor are accurate.
Point three: the former bitch on high? She’s now launching herself at the stranger-who-isn’t, ra
ining sobs and kisses on him with such frantic passion, I wonder who hardwired the guy’s pheromones into her central nervous system.
One glance at Reece, who’s looking more flummoxed than fugitive, and I see I’m not alone in my massive clump of dazed. Thank God for him—and his brilliant mind that’s never too far from my wavelength.
“Dario. Dario. Dario.”
As Angelique croons it nonstop, Reece and I exchange new gapes of what the hell? Why is the woman calling this stranger the name of her supposedly dead lover, though interjecting her cries with mewls so plaintive, I wonder whether to go looking for cat treats or condoms.
I peer even harder at Reece, grateful for the strength and sanity that are mainstays on the face of my superhero hunk. Clearly, he has a few more pieces of this puzzle than me—but only a few. And now maybe a few less, as his jaw drops and his eyes bulge.
“Dario.” He stresses the name with different awe than Angelique. “Of course. The photo…back in LA…that’s where I’ve seen you bef—” Unbelievably, his features expand with more astonishment. “Wait. What? Tyce, what the fuck?”
“Tyce?” Now I dive into the astonishment. “Baby, what the hell are you— Whoa.” I choke it out as the stranger brings his head back up—now with Tyce Richards’s features in place. Talk about a dog paddle into the deep end of shocked.
“Mon Dieu.” Angelique’s cry is garbled, as if pushed out through bomb fallout—probably the most apt comparison for what this guy has just kaboomed on us. Less than a week ago, I was squaring off against Tyce Richards in the ladies’ room at the Griffith Observatory. Everything in front of me now fits the paradigm of that chiseled stud. The “Richards plateaus” of his shoulders. The deceptively lean arms. The hewn torso tapering into his fit waist. The long runner’s legs. Tyce had crowded all of that iconic glory right into my personal space but then insisted he hadn’t come to assault me—and had proven good on that promise, though he’d brought a fun parlor trick that made me scream for my life anyhow.
For a couple of insane seconds, he hadn’t been Tyce anymore.
Now it’s happening again.
His face…changes. Becomes a mess of mottled flesh on one side, a scowling prince on the other—a prince who isn’t Tyce, at least on the outside. Neither was a real reason for me to scream at first, but together like that? So suddenly like that? And where the hell has Tyce gone?
Before I can even contemplate the answer, Tyce returns as if we all have just fallen into a fugue state and hallucinated the half ogre.
Oh, my God.
I get it now. Holy shit, do I get it.
The ogre is real. And somehow, he’s Tyce. Or…Tyce is him. If this is even Tyce…
But if it is Tyce, then where the hell is Dario?
And how am I even taking these questions seriously?
But I am. Holy shit, I really am. Another look at Reece yields the confirmation, albeit in a darker and fiercer way, that he’s still on the same holy-crap-I’m-really-thinking-this bandwagon.
Tyce—or whoever the hell this is—sets Angelique back by a step, though he’s clearly reluctant about it. He underlines his contrition by pressing a lingering kiss to her lips. “Mi amore,” he murmurs, accenting the words like he’s just stepped off the plane from an Italian island. “It is me, Angelique. Please, my love. No more tears. You’re tearing me apart.”
While Angelique dutifully nods and sniffs—slamming me with another tidal wave of surreal shock—Reece starts tipping the scales at the other end of the reaction scale. “So what the hell have you done with my brother?”
“I’m right here too, Cheesy Reecy.”
After eight months of being with Reece Richards nearly every day, I’ve never watched him pale this much or this fast. “Shit,” he sputters. “It is you.”
Tyce slides out a lopsided smirk. “Now that we’ve got that cleared up…”
And this time, the three of us get front-row seats for the Tyce Face Flip show—resulting in three jaws hitting the floorboards in unison. “Oh, my God.” I finally get the chance to unload it aloud—though I’m still having trouble reconciling what I see to what I believe. No, I really haven’t leapt out of The Matrix or jumped off Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. I’m truly looking on as Tyce’s striking handsomeness fades from the center out, as if curtains are being opened on a museum’s rare new painting. The portrait revealed beneath is that bizarre double visage again: on one side, the features so classic they could grace a Roman coin, but on the other, a mottled collection of flesh that looks like an artist globbed pigment onto a canvas and then decided to do some finger painting.
As the transformation completes, Angelique follows my soft exclamation with a soul-wracked moan. “Dario.” She closes the gap back to him, lifting her palms to the sides of his face. “My love. My love.”
He spreads his hands up, meshing his fingers between hers. “Mio Angelina. Look at you. Still so beautiful.” He dashes his head down again. “But now I’m nothing but a monster.”
“You are alive.” She rages the words, giving way to more sobs while yanking up his face again. “You survived, Dario. You have brought the sun back to my existence, the breath back to my lungs. You have just given me the best gift of my life. Do you think I care what paper it’s wrapped in?”
A massive lump clogs my throat as he strokes her cheek with a shaking thumb, now soaked with her coursing tears. I pull in a rickety breath. Another. It’s no use. The heat behind my gaze goes to liquid as well. Reece gathers me close, his embrace engulfing and comforting. While I use his Henley as my handkerchief, I can feel the stiffness still dominating his stance, the tension in every breath he takes. Though he strokes my back in motions meant to soothe and protect, his fingers are as rigid as the pylons of all the bridges across the river outside. It comes as no surprise when he clears his throat with an equally strained sound.
“Tyce,” he grates. “What the hell is going on? And before you begin, are we going to need alcohol?”
I nestle my forehead between his pecs, kissing the spot over his heart. “I think that’s a question of when, not if, baby.”
“Wine and ale are in the refrigerator,” Angelique supplies. “A bottle of decent Pinot Gris and some Duvel Citra.”
The normal side of Tyce’s face bursts into a delighted grin. “Duvel Citra? Seriously?” He directs it to Angelique like a kid with the Willie Wonka golden ticket.
“But of course.” Her fairylike laugh is stopped short by his fierce, appreciative kiss. Again, I observe their exchange like a dumbstruck voyeur, unable to help myself. Angelique is a brand-new person to me right now. A woman transformed by love. But my most astonishing realization? If Tyce had returned to her looking like Homer Simpson, she’d still be this overjoyed. And yeah, that means a new conundrum. It’s damn hard to keep thinking of her simply as the temptress who guided Reece to his ruin. Like him, maybe she really was a cog wooed to the Consortium’s machine by promises of heaven, only to be rewarded by tragedy.
I refocus on the couple as they end their kiss with a giddy smack. “You’ve really kept it stocked?” Tyce murmurs to Angelique.
Her eyes brim once more. “Always.”
He grasps her by the back of her neck. “Because you never gave up.”
“Never.”
Just as her tearful whisper is going to make me lose my emotional shit again, Reece comes to everyone’s rescue by swooping in, clapping his brother on the back, and booming, “I think those ales are screaming our names louder by the second, asshole.”
While looping one arm around Angelique’s waist, Tyce swings a hard punch at Reece’s arm. “Who you calling asshole, asshole?”
Reece cocks his head, sending a chunk of thick strands into his eyes. “Call me anything you want as long as it’s not Easy Reecey.”
“Well, hell,” I grumble. “Because inquiring minds do want to know…”
Reece glowers toward the kitchen. “No, they don’t.”
Tyce tosses me a
wink from his good side. “Catch me later, Emma. I owe you for that scare in the bathroom at Griffith.”
Reece groans and rolls his eyes before leading the way into the kitchen with the stride of a king leading his courtiers to the war room. I gladly follow, sneaking in a gawk at his ass in those sweats while trying to wrap my mind around the bizarre turn of the last fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes.
Have I really just come from being in the cute café down the street with Angelique, sharing laughs over croissants and coffee and thinking designer dog sweaters would be the craziest sight of my day? Do I really have to rethink what I shared with Angie back then—that my fiancé’s electric blood would go down as the most bizarre sight of my life?
“Merci,” I murmur to Angelique as she sets a glass filled with liquid the shade of pale lemons in front of me. Before she can pull away, I grab her hand for a quick squeeze and eagerly accept her returning pressure. A lot of people would call our truce complete lunacy, but after everything that’s happened over the last hour, especially watching the woman fall to her knees in thanks for her beloved’s return from the dead, I’d be seriously tempted to give all of them a nice view of both my middle fingers.
After entwining his fingers with Angelique’s once more, Tyce sets his jaw, straightens his shoulders, and draws in a formidable breath. He sets his determined gaze back to Reece. “Where do you want me to start?”
For a second, my man becomes a visible chunk of discomfort. No eight-point-five on the expectations Richter scale. After everything Trixie Richards disclosed to me about the dynamic—or lack of one—that her sons have, Tyce’s sudden openness is a logical stunner for Reece. I’m not surprised that Reece gets over it with the focus worthy of the lightning in his blood, by propping his elbows on the table and lasering Tyce with his stare. “In this case, I think the brutal beginning is best,” he states before riffing off of Tyce and also hauling in two full lungs of air. “Yes or no—you were Alpha Three? And are you still?”
