Chapter 30
OWEN
More men will come for her.
Montgomery is dead, Bianca has something they want, and I’m on the floor with my hands and feet tied behind me while my father decides how to take it.
The rope bites deeper when I pull. My wrists are wet. Blood or sweat. Doesn’t matter. It isn’t helping.
“Successor to what?” William asks.
Alexander closes the case on the worktable before he answers. “The clinics. Research entities. The foundation. His attorney said the continuity documents were already executed and on file.”
“Why would he leave her in charge?”
They turn toward one another and start stripping pieces off her. Signatures. Companies. Whatever the fuck Montgomery built out of her blood.
My father nudges the gun harder beneath my chin until the back of my head touches concrete.
“You boys never see the simple answer.” His eyes stay on William and Alexander. “Put her back in a collar. She signed for Montgomery. She’ll sign for us.”
The collar closes around her throat in my head.
No.
They won’t lay a single hand on her.
Vincent glances toward the contractors near the roll-up door. “Go. Hundred grand to whoever brings her to me.”
William turns. “All of them?”
“They’re tied. Alex brought tranqs. We’re good.”
One of the men has the balls to ask whether the offer is per person or for the team, and Vincent tells him to get the fuck out before he cuts it in half. Engines start one after another, making the walls rattle.
Every engine is another group moving toward Bianca, Freddie, and Megan.
William catches Alexander by the arm and steers him toward the narrow room boxed into the back wall. “We need to know what he put in place and how it affects us.”
Alexander glances at the four of us on the floor. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
The door pulls shut behind them.
I throw myself at my father as soon as they’re out of sight. Which is hard to do when your ankles and wrists are tied.
My shoulder hits his knees. He goes down with one hand in my hair, and the gun cracks against the concrete beside my ear. Pain blows through my shoulder when I land, hot enough to wipe out the room, but I get my teeth around his ankle and bite.
Vincent jerks his leg, trying to shake me off. I bite harder.
He’s already wheezing when he gives up and wraps his hands around my neck.
Ezra has one hand free.
He gets the hood off, rolls onto his side, and hooks two fingers beneath the insole of his shoe. A thin knife slides into his palm. He cuts through the rope around his ankles, reaches into the other shoe, and comes up with a second blade before my father notices and raises his gun.
The knife flies through the air and sinks into Vincent’s forearm. His fingers open, and the gun hits the floor.
Ezra snaps the second blade across the concrete. It spins behind me and stops against my bound hand. Then he’s on my father.
Ezra barely puts weight on his left leg, but his palm drives beneath Vincent’s chin before Vincent can reset. He turns, catches the injured arm, and slams my father into one of the heavy wooden posts.
The old beam shudders above us.
I get two fingers around the knife. It slips in my blood and nearly cuts the tip off one before I turn it. The blade finally catches rope. My father tears his wounded arm free and shoves Ezra hard. Ezra’s bad leg buckles, but he catches Vincent behind the knee and drags him down too.
I saw and yank at the ropes until one hand comes free. The next one is easier.
I cut the tie at my ankles and lunge toward them before my feet are under me.
Tristan is closest. I drop behind him and cut through the rope at his wrists, then his ankles. His first free breath catches against whatever Alexander did to his ribs, but he crawls toward Weller and pulls him onto his side so I can reach the knots.
“Move your hand,” I tell him.
Weller flattens his palm. The knife goes through the last rope.
A body grunts behind me.
Ezra.
My father has him by the throat, the knife still buried in his forearm. Ezra’s boots scrape uselessly over the concrete.
I hit my father from the side.
He releases Ezra, and I get both arms around his waist before he can turn. My feet are still numb from the ropes, but I drive anyway. His heel catches loose rope, and he goes down with me on top of him.
Ezra drops and drags himself clear while I wrench Vincent’s wounded arm behind him and put my weight into it.
My father grunts, then slams the back of his head into my mouth. My grip slips, and he turns, but I catch his shirt and keep him on me, away from Ezra and the gun.
The side-office door bangs open.
“Security,” William demands. “Get in here.”
The doorway stays empty.
You sent them all to hunt my omega, you fucking idiots.
Ezra crawls toward the roll-up door while Alexander moves for the medical case and William sees the gun.
Vincent swings his good arm back at my head. I force it wide and get my shoulder under his chest before he can throw me off.
Weller and William move together, but Weller is already closer. He gets one hand around the gun and rolls onto his back as William reaches him.
“Put it down.” William’s voice is level.
Weller’s arm jerks, but he doesn’t release it.
Vincent twists beneath me, trying to tear free. Pain snaps through my shoulder, but I keep him down.
“You have caused enough damage,” William says.
Weller’s hand shakes around the grip as his father’s fingers close around the barrel. Weller lets him take hold, but he doesn’t loosen his own grip.
“My son,” William says softly. “The coward.”
Weller fires.
The shot deafens me. Vincent flinches, and I use it to force him flat. Behind us, William looks down at the dark hole spreading through his shirt, then at Weller. His knees fold, and he lands beside him.
Weller stares at his father. William’s blood reaches Weller’s knee before he shoves himself upright and turns toward the rest of the room.
Alexander has the case open and Tristan bent over the edge of the worktable. One hand twists in Tristan’s hair. The other holds an uncapped injector less than an inch from his neck. Tristan has Alexander by the wrist, but his bad side is trapped against the wood, and his face has gone white.
Weller swings the gun toward them, but Tristan blocks the shot.
My father bucks me off. I catch myself on one hand, and Vincent is already coming after me.
Alexander bears down harder. The needle shakes closer to Tristan’s skin.
Tristan lets one knee give.
His father follows the movement, expecting him to collapse. Tristan turns beneath him and slams Alexander’s wrist against the edge of the table. Bone cracks. The injector drops, and Tristan catches it before it hits the floor.
Vincent grabs the back of my neck and drives my face into the floor.
Tristan drives the injector beneath his father’s jaw and empties it.
Alexander jerks backward. Tristan follows him down, grabs another injector from the case, and drives that one into him too. The empty plastic hits the floor, and Tristan keeps going, uncapping and injecting over and over. He has no fucking clue what he’s sticking him with.
“How does it feel, dad?”
My father yanks me upright, and his fist is already moving. It catches the swollen side of my face, and white bursts through my vision. I swing where he was and hit nothing.
Alexander hits the concrete convulsing. His chest gives a violent hitch, then another, then his body stops moving.
Vincent laughs at my miss. I drive my shoulder into his stomach.
He folds over me, gets both hands around the back of my neck, and brings his knee into my ribs.
The first strike empties my lungs. The second makes something shift wrong under my skin.
I don’t let go.
He built me for this. Every time I hit hard enough to please him. Every time I didn’t and somebody else paid for it. Emma crying behind a locked door. My mother saying he didn’t mean it.
My fingers slide through blood, catch the handle of the knife in his arm, and wrench it sideways.
Freddie better have both arms around her.
My fist catches his throat, then his jaw before he can recover. He drives me backward until the worktable catches me across the hips. Glass cracks under his shoe.
Weller shouts my name.
I duck. A shot punches through the boards behind Vincent instead of his back.
“Don’t fucking shoot him.” I’ve been waiting for this.
My father looks at me and smiles through bloody teeth, then grabs for me. I catch the injured arm and bite into the open wound. Foul, but whatever works.
Vincent screams, and he punches at the side of my head, but I hold on until skin tears beneath my teeth and his grip breaks. Blood fills my mouth. I spit it at his shoes and drive him backward into the post.
The wood gives a dry crack.
His good hand closes over my throat. He slams the back of my head into the beam once, then again. The warehouse blinks in and out around him.
“Once she really sees who you are,” he pants, “she’ll leave. No one wants you.”
His thumb presses into the side of my neck. “There’s nothing in that head worth staying for.”
Bianca rolling her eyes at me. Bianca naked in the nest, fighting mad, telling me exactly where I fucked up. Bianca yanking my arm into place around her while she sleeps. Bianca looking at every ugly part of me and moving closer anyway.
She already sees me.
I hook my leg behind his and put him on the floor. He hits hard enough to bounce. I go down with him and get my forearm across his throat.
Vincent bucks beneath me. His face darkens, but he turns his chin and steals half a breath. I shift higher.
Weller is close now.
My father claws at my face. One finger catches inside my swollen eye, and pain rips through my skull.
I hold on.
The van door closes on Bianca’s face again, and I’m still telling myself Freddie can keep her safe.
My father drags in another breath beneath my arm.
If he breathes again, he comes for her.
His heels stop hammering the concrete.
His fingers slide from my shoulder.
Then there is nothing beneath me but weight.
“He’s gone,” Ezra says.
The words take a second to reach me.
I push myself off my father. My arms barely hold. Weller catches the back of my shirt before I fall sideways, and I tear away.
“I need to get to her. Right now.”
“We are.” Weller’s voice is rough. Blood has soaked one knee of his pants where he knelt beside William. “Can you stand?”
I stand. The room takes a second to settle.
Tristan is braced against the worktable, one arm wrapped around his ribs. Alexander lies at his feet with his eyes open and nothing moving behind them. Ezra has pulled the knife out of Vincent’s arm and wiped it once on his own pants.
“They’ll come back,” Ezra says. “We need to leave.”
Weller glances toward the vehicles visible through the gap beneath the roll-up door.
“No,” Ezra says. “Anything out there leads straight back here. They could be tracking all of them.”
“Then we get out of here and call for a ride.”
Ezra finds his phone among the shit dumped beside the worktable. We leave everything else.
The glass is cracked, but the map loads.
“We’re outside Emerald Hills.” He turns the phone so Weller can see. “County road is half a mile east. Tree cover most of the way.”
Half a mile might as well be fifty, but Bianca is somewhere beyond those trees.
Ezra calls Winston, and it rings once.
“Winston. We need a pickup.” The answer comes fast enough that I hear its shape without the words. “All four of us are alive. Hurt, but moving.”
I take the phone from him. “Bianca.”
“She’s safe,” Winston says. His voice breaks across the speaker. “She’s at her parents’ house with Freddie and Megan. She fell asleep a little while ago.”
My knees nearly stop working.
Safe.
Asleep.
Freddie has her.
I hand the phone back, and Ezra sends our location. “Have Matt meet us at the county-road pull-off. No headlights when he gets close.”
He ends the call and looks back at the bodies. “Give me thirty seconds.”
Ezra limps through the warehouse and circles back. Fire climbs two separate walls behind him, and smoke is already spreading beneath the patched roof.
We push the roll-up door high enough for us to get beneath it.
Rain hits my face and cuts tracks through the dirt. The warehouse sits among old trees with no other building in sight.
A white gas tank squats against the outside wall. Ezra points to it, and Weller presses the gun into my hand.
I put one round through the metal. The shot rings off the wall, and the tank starts hissing into the rain.
The fire can do the rest.
Weller supports Tristan, and I get beneath Ezra’s arm.
By the time the road shows through the trees, every breath cuts through my ribs, and Ezra is dragging on my shoulder. He checks the map and points south. “Pull-off is right around the bend.”
He stops to call Megan.
She answers before the first ring finishes. Ezra’s grip tightens around the phone.
“Meg? It’s Ezra. We’re on our way.”