Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

6. Daisy

Iwas drifting off to sleep when I heard the first shout. I tried to go back to sleep, thinking it was a dream, but then I heard it again, the sound drifting in through the small openings that passed for windows in my room.

And this time I could hear the alarm in it.

I sat up fast, my heart beating wildly as I held still, listening.

A second later, the sound of firecrackers tore through the night. Except these weren’t firecrackers — they were gunshots, coming from outside.

It was happening. The Beasts were coming for me.

I jumped to my feet and looked around the room, like there might be something I could do to speed up my rescue. But there wasn’t — I already knew there wasn’t — so I crossed the room and put my ear to the door, listening for clues about what was going on.

Another round of gunfire sounded, closer this time. Not right outside the door, but definitely inside the building.

I was almost hyperventilating with fear and excitement, the prospect of finally escaping the room close enough to touch.

I tried not to think about the source of my fear. Not just that I wouldn’t get out but that something would happen to Wolf, Otis, or Jace. That they would be hurt — or worse — on the way in.

I shouldn’t have cared. Not after what they did.

But thinking about Blake’s murder was too much. I needed to get out of here. Then I would be able to think straight.

More shouting from the other side of the door, then more gunfire, right in the hall outside my room.

I banged on the door. “I’m here! I’m in here!”

I kept banging, wanting to make sure the Beasts could hear me through the metal door and concrete walls, wanting to make sure I wasn’t drowned out by the staccato bursts of gunfire still coming from all directions.

None of it made sense. The Beasts were only three men. There was too much noise, too much chaos on the other side of the door. It sounded like a war zone.

And then, gunfire right outside my door, followed by a thud.

I jumped back instinctively, half expecting a stray bullet to make its way through the metal.

Instead I heard the jangle of keys.

The door swung open a few seconds later, a man standing in its frame in the moment before he rushed into the room.

Otis, with a mean-looking gun in one hand.

“There you are.” He said it like it was any other day, like he’d been looking for me in the house and found me in the library.

I hadn’t rehearsed what I’d do or say to the Beasts if they came for me, but now some kind of instinctual rage took over. All the pain of the days I’d spent locked up — remembering the texts on Blake’s phone, knowing the men I’d been falling for had killed him — spilled out in the punch I landed to Otis’ jaw.

It had felt explosive, all that anger and pain coming out of my body, but Otis just lifted a hand to his cheek.

“Ow.” A single pop of gunfire sounded from the hall. He glanced back, then threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry that happened so fast I hardly had time to register it before he stalked toward the hall. “We have to get out of here, doll. You can kick the shit out of me later.”

And then I was floating out of the room, freed from my prison by one of the three men who’d killed my brother.