Chapter 28
ADELAIDE
My chest aches from fear.
Luca’s hand closes around my arm so hard it’s going to leave bruises, but I don’t care. He drags me past the kitchen island, the dining table, and shoves me toward the mouth of the hallway. “Go.” His voice is a low bark I have never heard from him. “Hide. You know where. Now.”
He turns away just as my former boss and ex-lover, Daniel, charges toward me across the open-plan space with a small, tight smile, one hand already outstretched, the other loose at his side. “Adelaide. You’re still mine. Don’t you dare—”
Luca throws himself at him, tackling him center-mass like a truck, and the oof that comes out of Daniel leaves me cringing. Both of them go sideways into the edge of the couch and then down onto the wooden floor with a crash that shakes the whole room.
I stumble to catch my footing, tearing my gaze away and running for the hallway.
Behind me, the house explodes.
I get two steps into the hall, and I can’t help it—I glance over my shoulder.
Luca has Daniel on the floor. He pulls him up by the shirt and drives his fist into his face, and Daniel’s head snaps sideways. A spray of red hits the white tile, and Luca hauls him up again like he weighs nothing.
North meets the first of the chief’s men halfway across the living room.
The man throws a punch, but North catches it against his forearm and drives his knee up into the man’s stomach so hard the man folds over.
North’s other fist comes down on the back of his neck in a single hammering motion, and the man hits the floor and doesn’t get up.
The second of them is on North already, a blade flashing in his hand, and North slides sideways with a movement that doesn’t look human and catches the man’s wrist.
Ace takes two of them, dives low under a fist that whistles over his shoulder, shoulders into the man’s ribs, and comes up off the floor in one spring.
His foot hits the second man across the jaw, and the man spins sideways into the wall, cracking the drywall.
Ace turns on the first one before he’s even landed, and his elbow comes down on the back of the man’s head.
A body, one of theirs, crashes into the couch so hard the couch goes over backward. The lamp on the side table gets taken with it and hits the tile and shatters, glass exploding across the floor.
Somewhere in the chaos, somebody is shouting a word I can’t parse, somebody else is grunting, wet and awful, and a chair gets thrown into the wall and the wall takes it.
My pulse is in my teeth and behind my eyes while there’s ice in the pit of my stomach.
Run.
I run.
My feet slap on the hallway, and the only thing keeping me upright is the sheer animal instinct of a body that has decided motion is better than any of the alternatives.
The hall is dark because the power is out, and the only light is the gray storm light coming through the skylight above me.
The far wall with the surf photo is right there.
I skid to a stop in front of the frame. My hands are shaking, and I frantically press the button beneath it, and the door hisses open. Then I’m rushing toward it, when something slams between my shoulder blades.
I pitch forward off my feet, my heart rising to my throat, and I’m falling. Oh, fuck!
My knee hits the top step. A cry tears out of me. My shoulder scrapes the stairwell wall, and I’m tumbling—elbow, hip, elbow—and I smack against the wooden basement floor on my palms. I sob because it hurts everywhere, and my knee is screaming.
A low white light flickers on. Must be a battery backup since the rest of the house is dark.
Footsteps descend the stairs behind me, and I try to push myself to turn around, when I spot Malia coming down the last two steps, a small black-handled blade held low and angled forward in her right hand.
“Malia.” My voice cracks. “Did you push me down the stairs? What the hell?”
“Up. You’re young and you’ll survive.” The blade lifts, the tip now sitting three inches from the hollow of my throat.
Every part of me goes cold at once.
I scramble up. My knee is pulsing, and my breath rushing out in small, sharp bites.
“Sit.” She points at the leather armchair near the end of the man cave.
I don’t argue. I hobble over with my eyes on the knife, then sit down.
Upstairs, something heavy slams into God knows what. A man roars. Glass breaks again. A wet crunch, and I can’t tell whose voice that was but pray it’s not one of my men. Why is it that things are finally working out for me… or at least heading in the right direction… and World War III breaks out?
“Malia, please let me call someone. The police. An ambulance. Anything. I can—” I reach for my back pocket.
My phone is there, but she’s on me before I’ve managed to unlock it.
She snatches it out of my fingers and drops it into the pocket of her coat with one clean motion, and the blade shoves back up.
I shrink into the chair.
“Who are you, really?” My voice is small and shaky. “You’re not the Malia I know, are you?”
“You don’t know me, girl. You met a version of me I wore. That’s not the same thing.”
“Clio—”
“She’s a sweet child who thinks she’s clever. Clio and her sister and their silly little Tuesday night pretend detective agency and their snacks. Do you know why I joined that club?”
I shake my head, annoyed at what I’m hearing. She’s been faking it this whole time? What the hell for?
Upstairs, a thud, then another. My chest is caving in that my Alphas are up there, and I pray they’re doing all the hurting.
“Please, Malia, someone is going to die up there.”
“Maybe they will.”
“Malia, you don’t mean that.”
“Do you want to know why I joined that club?” Her hand is shaking around the blade.
“Because I needed someone to help me find Rebecca. She’s my cousin and means everything to her family.
And do you know what my brother told me, the man who could have found her killers?
” She’s shouting now, her voice ricocheting off the concrete.
“To let it go, that she was gone, so I should just mourn. My brother, who has men, told me to fucking let it go.”
“Malia—”
“As if she were a piece of laundry.”
Upstairs, a loud gunshot, and I can’t breathe right. My ribs are too tight. My eyes sting. Tears are running down my face as I keep imagining one of my men getting killed.
“And those silly girls in the club, they were the only people on this island who were willing to sit with me and look. So I sat with them. Every Tuesday. I baked for them. I listened to their theories. I ate their snacks. I did the research they were too busy to do, and I took it home and worked on it until three in the morning, because at least they cared.”
“Malia, listen to me, please—”
“Quiet.” The blade lifts.
I press myself back into the seat as a small sob escapes me, but I clamp it down.
“And then you walked into that room, later revealing you were with those three boyfriends.” She’s laughing now, a thin, cracked laugh.
“You and your three scent matches, and I sat there watching you, and I thought, ‘What lovely luck. What a gift.’ And then Clio told me you found those masks, so I brought out the photo and I saw your face, girl. I saw that you recognized those men, recognized the bodies. You knew, and I realized you knew what I needed.”
“So, what, you called Daniel? How do you even freaking know that asshole?”
“My brother had a whole file on him, and when I read that he was connected to you, of course I called him. I told him where you and which of my brother’s men could be bought, because I’ve spent my whole life in my brother’s house, learning exactly what he does.
” Her face contorts. “And I brought them all here, to your lovely little house, so that your three killers could die in their own living room as revenge for what they did to Rebecca Hana, and you could be someone else’s problem. Fair is fair.”
“You’re so wrong,” I start when another gunshot sounds.
Single. Sharp. Loud. And my world stops. Every drop of blood in my body turns cold. My hands fly to my mouth, and I whimper. Was it one of my men?
My vision blurs from the tears in my eyes. “Malia. Please. I’m begging you. Please let me call the police.”
“No!”
“Please, Malia, someone could be dying right now. Please—” I’m trembling, leaning forward, figuring I could try to take her, attempt to grab my phone back, but I’m not a fighter and would just as likely get stabbed.
“You think I care what happens to those men?”
“They didn’t kill Rebecca.”
She stops. The blade does not move, but her breathing catches, and her eyes narrow. “Don’t lie to me.”
“They saved her. Please. Malia, look at me. I’m not lying to you. I’m begging you. They saved her, and she’s alive.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You’d say anything right now to save yourself.”
“I have proof.”
Her wrist twitches. “What?”
“On my phone, I have a photo of her. My brother found her. Please, Malia, just look. You have nothing to lose.”
Silence.
Upstairs, another thud, but smaller now, duller, like the fight is moving somewhere else. I strain to hear voices.
“If this is a trick…” Her voice has grown hoarse. “If you are trying to make me put the knife down, I promise I’ll cut you deep.”
“I understand. Please look.”
She pulls the phone out of her pocket with her left hand. The blade stays up. She holds the phone out toward me without taking her eyes off my face. “Open it.”
I lean forward, careful, my hands shaking so hard I have to try the passcode twice. The screen unlocks. She takes it back.
“The thread with Clio.” Her thumb moves. Her eyes flick to the screen for a fraction of a second and then back to my face.
“Scroll up. There’s a photo.”
Then she pauses, and her mouth drops open. “When was this taken?” she demands.