SAWYER
I’m a barnacle plastered to Angel’s naked back, and his question—Why the fuck are you naked?—only makes things awkward. Because I tense from my neck to my toes, my hips bucking with the sudden rigidness.
“Uhhh.”
“Get the fuck off of me.” Angel throws his elbow into my rib—not hard, but enough to ache. My limbs release him as I roll to my back with a groan.
It takes half a second for my body to grow cold in the fire’s absence; the rock beneath my back may as well be a sheet of ice. I crawl past Angel to situate myself in front of the flame, my hands rubbing together just inches from the fire’s flicking tongue.
Angel grabs his soaked boxers in my periphery and pulls them on while I contemplate how this could be so awkward.
It’s not the nakedness. We were college roommates and spent a decade as neighbors on a kink island… We’ve been in more than a few orgies together.
But that time is over. I hadn’t felt how finished it was until now, and I think he feels the same.
A sound skitters from his mouth. A breath… A grunt…
A laugh.
My head turns as his laugh grows bold, a light chuckle vibrating his chest. He runs his hand through his hair and squeezes water onto the rock.
“What?” My voice is harsher than I mean it to be.
A faint tan line on his third finger catches my eye as he rolls his wrist. I’m surprised Luna didn’t notice it. “Do you not see the irony of this?” He waits a few beats. “You don’t, do you? God, you’re a fucking sociopath.”
Something tightens in my chest.
Sociopath.
Even the newly initiated women on the island weren’t so careless with that word. Thirty years passed without a single person throwing it around, and yet for a year it’s all I’ve heard. Until now, it’s been easy to dismiss as ignorance—how could a stranger know anything?
But Angel and I have known plenty of sociopaths. In the business world, and in a place like the island, they’re hard to miss.
He knows what a sociopath is.
I clear my throat and go back to warming my hands.
“You use me for years to help build your fucked-up empire. You send a contract killer after my wife. You kidnap her eighteen-year-old niece. You tie me up, set my house on fire, and leave me to die. You have my wife kidnapped again. Again… And you have the goddamn nerve to save my life.”
I stare at the fire, watching it whip the air as it crackles. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know, Sawyer,” Angel says without a second of hesitation. “That’s what makes you terrifying.”
I drag my feet from under me and flex my numb toes toward the fire.
“They told you to keep me alive, didn’t they?” Angel asks with a tone just shy of desperate. As if he needs the reason.
“Aurelius would like it if you came back alive. Luna wants me to extract your bank account information and kill you.”
“And you’re listening to Aurelius…”
My jaw tightens as I snap my gaze at him. “No, Angel, Jesus fucking Christ, can I not just save your life because I want to? Could it be that I’m not lying my ass off when I say you’re family? My only family? Do you even consider that a possibility?”
“Yes,” he says with a calm voice and a straight face. So matter-of-fact, it’s sobering. My shoulders shrink an inch.
“But I have more family than just you now.” For a man who almost froze, he hardly looks cold as he leans forward over his knees.
His lips are blue, but the arms crossed over his thighs never tremble.
“And I have to protect them. It terrifies me to think it’s you I’m protecting them from.
I know what you’re capable of. I know how manipulative you can be.
” He flicks his eyes over my face. “Do you think I want to be afraid of you?”
I look away.
Afraid of me.
For a moment, I let the idea fester. Let the heat spread up the slopes of my neck and rest behind my ears. But it’s hard to question his logic when I know what he means. He’s smarter than me, taller, stronger, ruthless, and…
Malleable.
I wish I could stop myself from shaping him.
“I love you like a brother, Sawyer… I just don’t trust you.”
“Then how can I prove to you that you can? Tell me what to do to earn your trust.”
Angel doesn’t notice when I cringe at my own words—lines I’ve used a hundred times. Lines that, miraculously, work to unveil a person’s weakest walls nine times out of ten. Vulnerability commands vulnerability.
But I mean them this time.
I want my friend back.
Questions don’t pour from Angel’s mouth like I expect. Whatever plan he has, surely I have information that could help.
He shrugs.
My lips twitch as I search for words. “Well, I mean… Let me help you. I know a lot about this place. Just tell me what you need to know to accomplish whatever it is—”
“It’s already done.”
The temperature oddly drops. I glance at the roaring fire as if I’ll find it snuffed. “What?”
“You remember that guy we hired a while back to hack into Fox Corps security feed?”
Angel hired. I was never that committed to my job. Still, I nod.
“The moment you tipped me off to your location, I had him go to work on the computer you were on. He got the albino cunt’s email, and as soon as she replied from her own computer, he was able to find the cult’s accounts.
He moved some things around and filed IRS reports showing false deposits to Al-Qaeda. ”
My brows pinch. “You had their accounts frozen.”
He nods.
“Then why the fuck would you give them hundreds of millions of dollars first? You just lost that money.”
“I needed them to let me in here.”
“Yeah, but…” My palm finds the dip in my temple, and I rub with quick strokes. “You could’ve just taken their money. You didn’t have to freeze it.”
Angel scoffs. “Spoken like a thief.”
“You’re joking.” My ass scrapes rock as I shift toward him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
He replies with nothing but a straight face.
I groan. Mottled scars scrub my face before I throw my hands up. “Goddamn it, Angel. Why does everything have to be so lose-lose for you? Fuck, can you not just—”
“Sawyer.”
He stares at me seriously—a parent scolding a child.
“I don’t want my wife’s kidnappers’ money.
I want my wife.” He hesitates a moment. “I want you. And I want these motherfuckers to hurt. All of them. In every single way imaginable. I want them to watch their money be taken. I want them to fear investigation. And when they think that’s the worst of their worries, I want them to die a slow, agonizing death worth every bit of two hundred million dollars to see. ”
The cold hugs my spine while he talks. There’s a drumming in my ears that almost blocks out his voice, but I don’t take my eyes off Angel. I don’t squirm. As seconds pass, I realize I’ve stopped breathing.
If Luna’s image didn’t materialize, I wouldn’t know what caused the sudden race of my heart or loss of breath.
“How are you planning on killing them?” Spoken so evenly, I might as well have asked for the time.
He points toward his abandoned boot. “Check at the front, beneath the sole.”
I stretch out and drag the soddened leather to my lap, then snake my hand inside. I peel back the lip of the cushion to retrieve a small cylinder—a capsule. Almost like a pill, but too hard of plastic to swallow. The boot clatters on rock as I toss it Angel’s way. “What is this?”
“Deadly bacteria.”
The capsule slips from my fingertips and rolls to a pile of clothes. Angel chuckles.
“What are you planning on doing with it?” I stare at the capsule as my hand flinches with the bizarre urge to chuck it into the rain.
“It’s already done. That one’s just a backup.” He nods at the capsule. “I contaminated the flour at the mansion.”
The rain pelting the forest pauses—halting partway to the ground as if the clouds are holding their breath. That or I imagine the moment of eerie silence. Even my heartbeat ceases to drum in my ears.
“When?”
Angel’s lips stretch into a tight smile, eyes skeptically narrowed because, yes, that was a stupid question.
Have I ever seen Luna eat bread?
“Yesterday,” Angel answers. “It takes up to seventy-two hours for those infected to show symptoms, so they probably still don’t know.”
She eats mashed shit like an infant for most meals. Not once has the Keep served dinner rolls.
“H-how long do they have once infected?”
“A week or two,” Angel says carefully, eyeing me like he can tell something’s wrong. “It’s treatable with antibiotics if something goes wrong.”
“The cult doesn’t believe in antibiotics.”
Luna doesn’t believe in antibiotics.
“Well, that’s the entire reason this works… Is something wrong?”
Is something wrong?
Rubbing the back of my neck, I try to think of a lie. But it’s hard when my head spins and I’m not even sure I know the truth.
If she were sick… I could force the antibiotics into her. If I had to.
I drop my hand and force my head to shake. “Nah, just… It’s kind of a wild card when we don’t know who’s going to eat the flour, you know?”
“They’re stingy with it. I made sure. And it’s a small canister in the mansion’s kitchen, so… Relax, all right?”
Unspoken words: not everything has to be within your control. Even if I didn’t have… something… on the line, I wouldn’t like his plan. Too many variables. Too many possible outcomes, not all of which can be anticipated.
He knows this about me… It’s okay to look nervous.
Still, I try to keep it from my face.
“Yeah.” I nod. Too many times. “Okay.”
“Hey.”
The flecks of gold around his irises warm as I meet his gaze. I forgot about those flecks, but now that they’re in front of me… I recognize them for what they are.
The only kind of love I’ve ever known. From the only person in the world still alive to feel it for me.
That tightness in my chest unravels as if he had it wrapped around his fist. He stretches his arm around the fire, reaching his open palm toward me. “Brothers?”
My tongue feels so heavy, I’m not sure I’ll be able to speak, but when I stretch that way and take his hand, giving it a shake, my vocal cords perform a miracle.
“Brothers.”