32. Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
JUDE GRAVES
Blood is everywhere by the time we make it back to the cabin. The moment the front door slams open, the entire house feels like whatever fragile sense of safety we built here is fucking gone now.
Rafe moves quickly, clearing the dining table with one sweep of his arm. Plates crash to the floor and shatter across the wood while Nico drags medical supplies out from beneath the kitchen sink.
“Get him up here,” Rafe snaps.
Micah grits his teeth as I help haul him onto the table.
Blood has soaked through the side of his shirt near his shoulder.
Kieran lowers himself into one of the nearby chairs with a strained curse, his hand clamped tightly over the wound in his side, while Nico immediately begins throwing gauze, alcohol, and bandages across the table.
The cabin reeks of iron and smoke and melted snow. For a split second, it reminds me of when my dad took me hunting as a kid up in Washington State.
“They took them,” Micah says hoarsely. “Jesus Christ…”
I turn away sharply, dragging both hands through my hair as rage tears through me so hard I can barely fucking breathe. Every instinct in my body is screaming to go back now. Not tomorrow. Not after resting. Now.
Rafe shoves a needle through Micah’s skin without warning.
Micah hisses. “Fuck you.”
“You’ll survive,” Rafe replies flatly, finishing up his wound and tying off the bandage before glancing toward Kieran. “Yours next.”
Kieran lifts his middle finger weakly. “Touched by the tender touch of The Dark Monster.”
Under any other circumstance, it might have been funny. Now it just feels like everyone’s trying not to drown.
Nico stalks across the room with a phone pressed to his ear, speaking rapidly in Russian before hanging up. “If that motherfucker Vlad is involved, we need to hurry,” he says. “I should be watching roads, ports, airports, probably every major route out.”
“They won’t leave the city,” Rafe says calmly while cutting through Kieran’s bloodied shirt with surgical scissors. “Not yet.”
My jaw tightens. “How the fuck do you know?”
“Because Alexei doesn’t want them gone.” His icy gaze lifts to mine briefly. “He wants leverage. He may introduce them to Vlad, but he needs them if he wants you.”
My stomach twists.
I pace toward the kitchen window, staring out at the snowstorm swallowing the trees beyond the glass. My hands won’t stop flexing at my sides, like my body is preparing itself to break something apart. I want to break something apart.
“We strike fast,” Rafe says behind me. “There won’t be time for proper recovery. Alexei knows where this cabin is. We rest for a few hours because, unfortunately, our bodies require it. Then we move before he decides to come to us instead.”
Micah wipes blood from his hands on his discarded shirt. “Good.”
Nico mutters something vicious under his breath while loading fresh magazines at the counter. Nobody argues, because we all want the same thing now.
War.
My phone vibrates suddenly in my pocket, and when I pull it out, every muscle in my body locks. The second I open the message, my entire world narrows. It’s a photo of Emma, Heather, Adela, and Adriana all chained against the concrete wall of that basement.
That fucking basement. Chained where I was once chained.
The thought nearly sends me through the goddamn wall.
Emma’s face is pale beneath the harsh overhead light, her wrists restrained above her head exactly where mine used to be. Heather looks terrified. Adela looks furious. Adriana is withdrawn again.
Jesus Christ.
My vision blurs. Below the photo is a single message.
One final surrender, little rockstar. Or Vlad takes ownership.
Something inside me snaps so completely that I don’t even realize I’ve crushed the phone in my hand until blood drips across my knuckles from the case breaking. “No,” I say immediately.
Rafe looks up. “What is it?”
I throw the damaged phone across the table hard enough that it skids through blood and gauze before stopping beside Micah. Rafe grabs it first, and the moment he sees the image, his entire expression darkens.
“Oh, I’m going to fucking kill him,” he says quietly.
Micah goes pale.
But I can’t stop seeing Emma’s face. She’s trying so hard not to look afraid, and that’s what fucking destroys me. “I’ll do it,” I say.
The room stills.
Rafe’s gaze narrows on me. “No.”
I turn toward him so fast my chair nearly tips backward. “If I surrender myself, he lets them go.”
“He will not let them go.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I absolutely fucking know that.”
My chest heaves as rage crashes through me again. “Then what’s your plan, Rafe?” I snap. “Because right now they’re chained in that basement waiting for Vlad to fucking buy them while we sit here!”
Micah flinches at the word buy.
Rafe doesn’t.
He steps toward me slowly, calm in a way that somehow feels more dangerous than screaming. “Listen to me carefully,” he says. “The moment you surrender yourself willingly, this ends. Not for Alexei. For you.”
“I don’t care about me.”
“That,” he says coldly, “is exactly why you are currently incapable of making this decision. I did not stay up countless nights working with you on your fucking trigger words for nothing. I trust you remember what can snap you the fuck out of it?”
I stare at him, then offer a nod. For a second, nobody speaks.
Then Micah’s voice cuts through quietly from the table. “She needs you alive, Jude.”
My fists clench.
“I need you alive,” he continues. He looks exhausted, blood loss paling his skin beneath the warm cabin lights, but his eyes stay locked on mine. “Emma didn’t drag you out of hell just to watch you walk yourself back into it.”