Dust.
The scent of dust tickles my nose. My stomach churns, although I don’t know why. Dust has never made me sick before.
Or maybe it’s not the dust that’s making me feel sick. My eyes are closed, but the world seems to tilt around me, making me feel like I’m on a wildly rocking boat.
I swallow down the bile that creeps up my throat.
What… happened?
My arms hurt. They’re wrenched uncomfortably behind my body, bound together behind my back. Something like tape wraps tightly around the biceps of each arm, and they hang down behind me over the back of the chair I’m sitting in.
I swallow again. My throat hurts. My mind is mush.
“…think it’ll work?”
A deep voice seeps in through my muffled ears. My head is lolling, my chin practically on my chest, but I force my eyelids open.
“Are you fucking kidding? You’ve seen how obsessed they are with her. They’ll do anything.”
My eyelids refuse to stay open at first, but I blink harder, forcing away the burn that stings my eyes. The room I’m in isn’t brightly lit, but it feels like too much light anyway, like my blown-out pupils are letting too much of it in.
“So, what? We trade one of them for her? You think they’ll give themselves up like that?”
“Marcus would. In a fucking second. I think the others would too. But it doesn’t matter, really. We can use her to get to all of them.”
I peer up through my lashes, and my sluggish heart kicks hard against my chest as I realize why the second voice sounds so familiar.
It’s Carson Purcell.
The man who rented Natalie her apartments and dressed her in designer clothing is standing in front of me, his hand wrapped casually around the grip of a gun as he confers with another man—a stranger. His friend is a little taller than him, with a surly, angular face and dark hair. He’s got a gun shoved into the waistband of his pants, and as I look up at him, his gaze suddenly cuts to me.
“Hey.” He jerks his head at Carson, getting his attention.
Carson turns toward me, showing his gap-toothed smile as he does. “Ah. You’re awake.”
His voice has taken on the same falsely casual tone it held that day in my apartment building when he faced off with the guys in the hall. It sounds nothing like his tone just a few seconds ago, and I hate the put-on friendliness of it all. What the fuck did Natalie ever see in this guy?
Natalie…
A momentary flash of fear fills me as I wonder if they’ve taken her too. But then I remember the way she grabbed my arm in a tight grip, the way she pulled me determinedly across the street. She told me the firefighters had instructed her to wait over there.
But as soon as we were away from the crowd…
The sting of pain in my neck.
The blackness.
No. Natalie wasn’t fucking taken. She was part of this. She helped these men. Fuck, did they start that fire too?
My mind is churning with questions, and each one feels like a hammer beating against the inside of my skull. Everything is too fuzzy for me to think as fast or as clearly as I know I need to right now.
“What do you want?” I croak.
Carson grins. He squats down in front of me, balancing on the balls of his feet and resting his forearms on his knees. The gun hangs casually from one hand. “Your boyfriends.”
My stomach twists. Everything Marcus ever told me about Carson rushes through my mind, along with the things Theo and Ryland said. They told me he’s from new money and his family moves in the same circles as theirs. That he’s seen them as rivals for years. That he’s never liked them.
And now he’s going to try to use me against them somehow.
“Why do you hate them so much?”
It’s a stupid question, maybe. But I need to understand what the fuck is going on here. And I need more time. Time for my head to stop pounding, and for my body to stop feeling like it’s sinking under water.
Carson makes a noise in his throat. He cocks his head, sharing a glance with the dark-haired man who still stands in front of my chair, then looks back at me.
“I think the bigger question is, why don’t you hate them at all?” He narrows his eyes. “Come on, Ayla. I know what they did. How they’ve been following you. I mean, I knew Marcus was keeping tabs on you, but until recently…” He whistles. “I had no idea how fucking obsessed he was. How deep that shit goes.”
“So what?” I pull a little against my restraints, but they’re fucking tight. My ankles are taped to the legs of the chair too, so I can’t kick him in the face. I can’t run. I can’t move. “Why do you care?”
“Well, I don’t.” He shrugs. “Not about you. But I care about what they care about, because that gives me leverage over them, you understand?”
“No.”
“Yeah.” His grin widens. “I figured you wouldn’t. They really didn’t tell you shit, did they?”
“About what?” Panic is finally starting to really set in as the fogginess in my head clears more and more, and with it comes anger at the way he’s obviously enjoying toying with me.
Instead of answering my question, Carson stands up again. He reaches behind him to tuck the gun into the waistband of his pants just like his friend, and then he digs into his back pocket for something.
I flinch when his hand reappears, but all he’s holding is a photograph. I can’t see what it’s of, but the back of the photo paper looks a little wrinkled and bent, sort of like the picture I carry with me of me and my brother.
“You picked the wrong side, Ayla,” he says in a grave tone. “I know what you did for Marcus. How you saved his life. Took three fucking bullets for him. Almost died for him. But you really shouldn’t have. You really shouldn’t have trusted him.” His blue-gray eyes narrow. “Did he ever tell you what happened that night? Why someone wanted to kill him?”
“No.” My tongue feels thick. I asked Marcus that the first time I ever spoke to him, and he refused to answer. As he continued to invade my life, I learned more and more about him—but I never learned that.
“Right. Of course he wouldn’t.”
Carson presses his lips together, shifting his gaze to the photo in his hand. Then he flips it around and shows it to me, holding it right in front of my face so there’s nowhere else I can look.
A choked gasp falls from my lips.
The picture was taken at night, and parts of it are obscured slightly by shadows. But I can see what Carson is trying to show me clearly enough.
It’s a body.
A man’s body, splayed out on the ground with limbs bent at slightly odd angles. Blood pools around his torso and soaks through the front of his dark gray shirt. He looks young, teens or early twenties at most.
Vicious memories assault me in a rush as I stare at what seems like a mirror image of the way my own body must’ve looked the night I was shot. I remember the wet feeling of blood pooling around me, growing cool as it left my body and soaked between the cracks of the grimy cement. I remember not being able to feel my legs or my arms. Feeling numb.
Did my limbs splay out awkwardly like that? Like I was a doll that’d been dropped by a careless child?
Bile rushes up my throat, and I retch, dragging in gasping breaths to try to force down the vomit.
“Why the fuck… are you showing… me this?”
Carson doesn’t move the picture away from my face. “Because I know Marcus never will. He likes to pretend he doesn’t have blood on his hands—yours and this man’s. But he has both.” He leans a little closer, dropping his voice. “This man’s name was Devin Brooks, and he was killed by Marcus Constantine in cold blood the same night you saved Marcus’s life. Just hours before, in fact. That’s what you did, Ayla. You saved a murderer.”
My throat closes up. Air stops moving in and out of my lungs.
No. That’s not right.
That can’t be right.
Another barrage of memories flows through my mind—and these ones are all of Marcus. Of his fist flying over and over toward Greg’s face. Of the rage that seemed to fill his entire body in that moment, as if violence was an unalterable part of his DNA.
Of him promising me he doesn’t like to hurt people if he can help it.
That’s what he said, isn’t it?
So how could this be true?
My gaze flicks back to the picture Carson is still holding steadily in front of my face. I don’t know who the dead man is—besides his name, which means nothing to me. He has dark hair and broad shoulders, and he looks well-dressed. Well-groomed. His face has a boyish quality, but there’s a hard edge to it too, as if he saw more evil than he should have in his short time on earth. But there are no other distinguishing features, and no one else in the picture.
This could be any man, and he could’ve been killed by anyone.
Even Marcus, a voice whispers in my head. But my soul revolts at the thought. I know I don’t know Marcus well, and I know I have dozens of reasons not to trust him.
But what reason do I have to trust Carson? To believe him more than I believe Marcus? Or Theo, or even Ryland?
None of those three men have ever hurt me.
They’ve gone out of their way to take care of me. To protect me. To keep me safe.
What has Carson done?
Possibly torched my apartment building, drugged me, and abducted me. All to get at Marcus and his friends.
I lick my lips, dragging my gaze away from the picture to meet Carson’s gaze. “No. I don’t believe you.”
Disgust washes over his features, along with something else I can’t name. Annoyance? Anger? Jealousy?
“Jesus, he really did a fucking number on you, didn’t he?” he snorts.
“It doesn’t matter what she thinks.” The other man steps forward, catching Carson’s attention. He seems twitchy. Agitated. “We can still use her whether she believes us or not, right?”
“Yeah. Of course. It doesn’t make a difference what she thinks. I just thought she might like to know the truth before she gets any more attached to those fuckers. Thought she might like to know what kind of person she saved.” Carson shakes his head, his lip curling. Then he flips the picture over in his hand again and glances at it once more before shoving it back in his pocket. His demeanor changes, becoming brisk and businesslike. “First, we’ve gotta let them know we have her. Tell them where to meet us if they want her back. We’ll set up a drop point and box them in.”
“You really think they’ll come?” His friend frowns doubtfully. “It’d be so fucking stupid of them to do it. They’ll have to know it’s a trap.”
“Yeah. They might know.” Carson runs a hand through his short cropped hair, gazing down at me with a satisfied look on his face. “But it won’t fucking matter. For her, they’ll come.”
“Shit. I hope you’re right about this. We’ll be risking exposure too, trying to get the drop on them like that. It’s worth it if we can take the three of them out, but if not…”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ know how this works, Dom,” Carson snaps, holding a hand up in a sharp gesture. “They’ll come.”
The guy named Dom shrinks into himself a little, taking a step back, but the gaze he shoots toward Carson when his friend isn’t looking is tinged with anger.
Huh. Maybe these guys aren’t quite friends after all. Allies, somehow, but not friends.
Not noticing Dom’s reaction—or not caring about it if he does—Carson reaches into his other pocket and pulls out a cell phone, then taps quickly on the screen before pointing the phone’s camera at me.
“Smile, princess.”
There’s a soft click, and he grins as he peers down at the shot he got of me, tied to a chair with my arms bound behind my back. It still takes effort to hold my head up, and I can feel the remnants of whatever drugs they gave me moving slowly through my veins, making me sluggish and weak.
He taps on the screen again while Dom crosses to one wall of the large room and squats down next to a large black bag. I glance around the space quickly while they’re both distracted, trying to get some sense of where I am.
An old house, maybe? We’re in what looks like a half-basement. Small windows line the upper part of the wall opposite where Dom digs through the bag, but I can see only dim light beyond. It’s getting dark out, which means I’ve been here for several hours, at least. The room is empty, lit by two grimy bulbs in a bare fixture in the ceiling, and the smell of dust still hangs in the air, although I hardly notice it anymore.
There’s a door behind Carson, but it’s closed, so I can’t see what’s beyond it. And whatever’s behind me, I can’t see that either—at least not without craning my neck so much that I’d draw attention to myself.
Carson taps one last button on his phone and gives a satisfied nod. “There. I sent it to all of them. I’m sure they’re all together anyway, so even if they don’t all want to come, they will.” He scoffs. “They’ve got their fuckin’ brotherhood pact, after all.”
Dom looks over his shoulder at those words, shooting Carson another annoyed look.
I can’t quite figure out what the dynamic is between these two. Are they equals? Is Carson in charge? Why does Dom seem to resent him so much?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. The only questions I should be focusing on are the ones that might get me out of here. But I have no idea what those are.
Think, Ayla. Goddammit, focus.
Carson just sent my picture to all three men. When they see it, will they come for me? Will they even be able to? They’re in Colorado. How long will it take them to get back?
And what the fuck can they do even if they do come back? The way Carson makes it sound, he’s not planning on letting me go, no matter what promises he might give them. He’s only using me to lure them in.
He’s planning to use me as bait.
Nausea roils my stomach, a mixture of fear for myself and fear for the men.
If they do come to get me, they’ll be walking into a trap.
“What do you want?” I ask again, my voice harsh with desperation. I don’t understand what the fuck kind of vendetta or bad blood these men have between each other. I don’t understand any of this. The only thing I’m beginning to understand with absolute clarity is that I’ll probably die today. “Why are you doing this?”
Carson holds up a hand, the same sort of stop gesture that he made to shut Dom up. “Uh uh. Shut up. We’re done talking, princess. I tried to tell you the truth about your precious little boyfriend, and you don’t fucking want to hear it. So we’ve got nothing else to talk ab—”
A loud crash cuts him off, and I scream in shock.
The glass of one of the windows explodes inward as three silver canisters hurtle into the room, leaking a heavy white smoke.
Near the far wall, Dom leaps to his feet, already partially obscured from view by the smoke that’s quickly filling the space.
“Fuck!”
