Chapter 1
Chapter One
Gideon
The city lights zoomed past the window as we careened down the freeway, Henry’s hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were white.
I struggled to process what led to this moment, my mind a blur. All I could see was the image that had flashed across the television screen mere minutes ago.
James Turner’s car speeding recklessly through the streets of Santa Monica.
The crunching impact as he slammed into another SUV.
The twisted metal wreckage that had become of the car.
Henry’s hesitant voice telling me the car he hit belonged to Imogene.
“Breathe, Gideon.” Henry broke through my thoughts, his eyes sharp with worry as he glanced my way. “It’ll be okay.”
“Okay?” I scoffed bitterly.
My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded far away. Like all of this was a horrible dream.
How I wished that were true.
“Imogene is hurt because of me, Henry. I don’t even know if…”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, my biggest fear clawing its way through me from the inside out.
For the first time since this nightmare began, my carefully constructed facade had begun to crumble. I’d spent years learning how to keep every emotion and impulse buried beneath a mask that never slipped. But tonight? My chest felt like it was caving in.
I’d been so damn focused on settling the score, blinded by the need to make those who’d taken everything from me pay. But in my obsession, I hadn’t seen the potential price someone else might pay.
I hadn’t seen the price Imogene might pay.
She’d left me because of this, walked away from the darkness I’d let consume me. I convinced myself it was for the best. That I was on a suicide mission anyway.
Now, there was a very real possibility Imogene could be dead.
Because of me.
The thought made me sick.
I gripped the seat tightly as dread gnawed at my insides. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. This wasn’t what I wanted when I started down this road.
“We don’t know anything yet,” Henry tried to assure me in the calm, collected way he did everything. “Just stay positive.”
I pressed my hands into fists, resisting the urge to slam them into the dashboard as Henry raced down another stretch of road. Everything about this night felt like a punishment, like karma coming back to collect what was due. Each second brought a fresh wave of panic, outrage, and guilt crashing over me. I was unraveling, the pieces of who I was scattered like debris on the side of that road with the remnants of Imogene’s shattered car.
When we screeched to a stop in front of the hospital’s emergency entrance, I flung open the door and sprinted toward an ambulance that had just arrived, red and blue lights casting harsh shadows across the pavement.
My heart thrashed in my chest as I watched the hospital staff rush toward the ambulance, hurriedly pulling out a stretcher.
And lying on that stretcher, Imogene’s broken body was barely recognizable.
An oxygen mask covered her nose and mouth, blood streaked across her face and arms. Any control I’d managed to retain over the past few minutes crumbled, leaving only raw terror.
My feet moved of their own accord, driven by the desperate need to feel her skin against mine. To feel some sort of reassurance she wouldn’t die because of my actions. But as I approached, a member of the hospital staff stepped in front of me, her expression firm.
“Sir, please stay back.”
But I couldn’t stay back. Not when it came to Imogene.
“You don’t understand. I need to know if she’s going to be okay. She’s?—”
My voice cracked under the weight of helplessness consuming me. I hadn’t felt anything remotely close to this since I woke up in a cold cell and learned my fate.
“Please,” I begged, hoping this woman who’d probably witnessed death on a daily basis would show me compassion.
“We’ll do everything we can for her,” she assured me, but her words felt empty. She probably said the same thing to everyone in my shoes. “But to do that, I need you to stay back.”
I wanted to shake her, force her to tell me what I needed to hear. But I stayed rooted in place, watching them wheel Imogene inside, my only tether to this world slipping farther away with each step.
I thought I’d faced hell in all its forms. Survived horrors beyond imagination and lost parts of myself I knew I would never get back.
That was nothing compared to this.
A hand landed on my shoulder, and I whirled around, staring into Henry’s green eyes.
“Let them work, Gideon. She’s in the best hands now.”
His words were supposed to reassure me, but they didn’t. They couldn’t. Because none of this should have happened. The one person I’d tried to keep safe, the one person I’d wanted to protect from everything I’d become, was now lying on an operating table, her life hanging by a thread.
All because of me.
Confucius warned when starting out on a journey of revenge to dig two graves.
I didn’t anticipate that one of those graves would belong to Imogene.