Bound Wings (The Tattered Wings #1)

Chapter One

Nora

I never knew brain tissue could ooze out of someone after a gunshot.

Well, now I know.

My stomach acid climbs up to caress the base of my throat as I watch what looks like gray matter and pink tissue slide out of the head of the man in front of me.

And his eyes aren't even closed. He's looking straight at me. My heart is beating out of my chest. What have I gotten myself into?

My shoulders reach my ears in a flinch as he screams—a long, piercing scream that makes my right ear ring. Then he drops.

I want to run. My legs aren't cooperating.

Run, Nora. Run. RUN.

But the sound of my own pep talk gets washed out by the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh in my ears.

My nervous system has taken a shot, too. Because standing in the middle of a shower of blood is my boyfriend of five months.

A man who told me he was an "entrepreneur."

An entrepreneur, my ass.

My safe place, currently not a safe place at all.

The hair on the back of my neck lifts as I watch him shoot another man charging at him right in the face, and I gag as the man's face caves in and disfigures in an instant.

I can't handle any more of this. I twist away and empty the contents of my stomach onto the pavement. The sights I've seen tonight are burned into the back of my eyes forever. There is no moving on from this.

If I survive, it will absolutely be a story I tell my future grandkids over and over while they snicker behind my back about how Grandma is such a liar.

Slava looks over at me after dropping yet another man, and still, there's another one charging him from a few feet away. The stranger—who is definitely about to die very soon—aims his gun, but mid-run he misses and hits a nearby dumpster instead.

This is a shit show.

"My little butterfly. Wait for me in the car.

It won't be long," he tells me, and the eyes that were unhinged a second ago go soft, just like that.

He tosses me the keys and turns back to the man who's finally reached him.

Whatever softness lived in him a moment ago is gone completely—he does some kung-fu shit, and the man ends up on his back with what's left of his skull caved in.

D-did I hear that right?

Wait. For. Him.

I used to tease him about his subpar social skills. Turns out they're worse than I thought.

In what world does a woman wait for her six-foot-five soon-to-be ex-boyfriend—who lied to her about being an entrepreneur and turned out to be some kind of people-slasher—to finish slashing people?

Oh, hell no.

My feet finally listen to me. I stumble to the car, unlock it, and get in.

It takes me an embarrassingly long moment to figure out how to even start the goddamn thing.

What is it with luxury cars and their inability to keep anything as simple and reliable as a key?

I'd take a plain old Honda Civic over this any day of the week.

Red splatters across the passenger window, along with a few other colors I can't name because I failed biology, thank you very much.

Sayonara, fuckers.

I floor the gas, watching in the rearview mirror as Slava finishes off the last of the men, then turns to stare at the car—his car—pulling away without him. With his girlfriend inside it.

He lied to me.

He killed in front of me.

And he still expected me to be sitting there waiting, arms and legs wide open, when he was done. But I've always been a girl with excellent self-preservation instincts.

There's a twinge in my chest when I catch his expression in the mirror—something confused and wounded—but I choose myself. I keep driving until there are enough miles between us that my hands stop shaking on the wheel.

At the nearest CVS, I park the car and leave it running, lights and all—it definitely has some tracker or some shit. I dig my phone out of my pocket and pull up my sister's location.

Fudge cakes.

It's a six-hour walk from here. Taking a cab is a gamble I can't afford; I have no idea who Slava really is, or who's on his payroll, or how many of them are already looking for a girl in a bloodstained dress.

So, walking in the shadows it is.

I tie my jacket around my waist to conceal the bloodstains as much as I can and stick to the crowded streets—funny how running from one monster makes you grateful for a few hundred strangers around you—and I cross wherever I can to dodge security cameras, ducking my head and keeping my pace even. I have to be smart about this.

It feels like my lungs are being wrung out to even think the word monster next to his name. He never once raised a hand to me. If anything, he loved too hard, too much, like I was something he'd been starving for. I never once suspected this.

But I can't live in his underworld. I won't survive it. I'm not meant for blood and violence and fear.

No. My place is in the light. Even if it means walking there alone, one shaking step at a time.