Chapter 1
Georgia
The air bag has puffed high and blotted out the sunlight.
I press it down, batting at it, blinking away something leaking into my eyes.
The scream of the engine dies to a low whine then ceases.
The car stops rocking and banging about, leaving only a few creaks.
Beyond the cracks in the glass, the shattered windscreen, the twists and dents in the hood, a grassy field lies blanketed by mist. A bird flits by, zipping from right to left.
Nothing moves out there, though the sounds of the crash seem to be bouncing about in my head. A wisp of smoke curls up from somewhere on the car.
Alden reaches in and starts helping me untangle myself. “Come on. You need to get out.”
I grunt and try to shift. Because of fire, I suppose.
After shrugging off the seat belt and smacking some more at the stupid, deflating air bag to get it to behave, I worm through the passenger door then into the open, walk a few steps and collapse.
Alden is talking, asking if I’m okay, I think.
He has his hand on my shoulder, but I can barely hear him past the ringing.
I wave him off. He gives me a last eyeroll and a shrug, then returns to where Rafael squats near a corpse, patting him down.
He pulls a wallet from a pocket, then a phone.
When Alden does the same at the next body—squats and examines him—he retrieves a gun. He aims it low and crooked as if about to shoot the ground, or the man. I feel like I should say something but…he wouldn’t?
“Hey!” Rafael is a moment late for there’s the sharp sound of a gunshot. The corpse jumps.
Alden shrugs, grins. “The fucker killed my car.”
“Give me that.” He takes the gun away from my dumbass ex-lover.
A distant noise from the direction of the road draws their attention.
I sit with my head in my hands, staring at them through my splayed fingers, as they go back through the hedge. On the way here, I watched the route. I know where I am. I know where I can go to hide. I just need some fucking luck, for once, please.
Time to get up.
Once I’m upright, I survey the muted chaos. My squeaky panting is a reminder of how close I came to being badly hurt. Hand on heart, I take some long deep breaths.
Smoke rises from the hissing engine bay and the punctured tires of the Porsche. I swipe tangled hair off my forehead and wetness cools fingers.
Blood. Blood trails down them from my fingertips. I open my hand to find my palm is red. It’s only blood.
Everyone has some.
Guess I whacked my head on something when we crashed.
I’m lucky. I could be dead. The bodies of the men Rafael shot add macabre wisps of steam to the mist. I tug my jacket closer, then meticulously do up one button with shaky fingers. It’s cold enough for blood to turn to mist.
The living men? They’re on the other side of the hedgerow the car ploughed into when we slid off the road. One voice sounds annoyed.
“These assholes have fucked up my day!”
Who is th… Oh.
Alden. My brain remembers to remember.
He’s still going on about it. I smirk at the asshole behavior. Typical of him. I touch my throbbing forehead, wincing as I scrape the abrasion. I jerked forward and cut myself. It’s nothing major. I’ve had far worse, like at the—
The House.
A grinning Shawn and Zasha surface from my memories, advancing on me, silently, with chains and a giant spear. Step, step, step. I swallow.
Anger cracks in and through me, a hot crowbar wedged hard into my ribcage. Shame and horror and terror are all mixed together. I cover my mouth, try to remember to breathe and feel the solid ground under my feet.
Fuck them. They’re dead too.
Today is a walk in the park, a stroll in a carnival. Today is fun times compared to them. I find I’m curling my lip, sneering cruelly. I saw them both die.
Nothing could be as bad as what they did to me.
Live life in the here and the now.
I recheck my surrounds. A zigzag of white roofs peaks above the treetops, hinting at a large manor house a mile or so ahead.
Gingerly, I take a few strides. My black gym shoes seem to find every hollow under the grass, but I keep my balance.
As I pass a corpse with a bloody head, I squint and come to a halt, considering my options. Spitting seems pointless. He’s dead. So I kick him instead. The physical, solid thud of my boot sinking into his flesh is so fucking satisfying in a way that spitting could never accomplish.
These men are connected, somehow, to what was done to me. Yet that last night of my normal existence, the night of the party on the yacht a month ago? That is a muddle of dislocated memories.
This body is the symbol of all my enemies, of all those who wanted me defiled and killed.
So I spit anyway. I land a spray on his still face and I move on.
The Porsche-carved gap in the hedgerow calls to me. After glancing back at the car, I step partway through to peer around the edges of what is left of the tattered vegetation, and as I do so, I remember my plan. I remember what I wanted to do once I arrived in London.
Escape.
Escape from Rafael. That man watches everything I do, has done so ever since he first laid eyes on me. Should I be happy about that since it came in tandem with the deaths of Shawn and Zasha, and my freedom from their tortures?
Is it attraction this devotion he shows, or is it that he’s been instructed not to let me do anything rash? He’s hot, experienced with weapons, and probably fucks like a champion.
Except I do not need a desirable, dangerous John Wick type. I do not.
The CNC Fraternity is insanely wrong, that I do know. Juniper filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge before I left Australia. They are kinky as fuck, organized, and capable of mustering enormous power and wealth due to their sprawling manifesto of members.
Billionaires, government heads, investors, company CEOs, and for all I know, half of the lords and ladies in the UK are members.
At least Australia is free of those posh types.
We just have a ton of dickheads in power, who also have more money and power than they should.
Capitalism sucks when you’re on the wrong side of it.
Alden and Rafael are walking away from me, along the side of the road, with Rafe at the front carrying his gun. I step backward, carefully, retreating into the field. He’s making sure no one else is here. Sensible. Although Alden is tagging along behind him, I doubt he’d be of much use in a fight.
Maybe I can get far enough away in the opposite direction that he won’t find me. At least I’m wearing sensible shoes. I don’t want to feel like I’m merely an object to be surveilled. I need more. Warmth, companionship, and true friendship would be the minimum. Once upon a time I had that.
I don’t know why Rafael sticks to me like glue, but a glimpse of gray metal ahead, through a grove of trees, solidifies my intent. Escape. I think it’s a van, and it’s been parked off the road in a niche, where trees shield it from passing traffic.
Looking over my shoulder reveals only the hedgerow with the leaves shuddering in a light breeze coming across the field. Alden the joker and Rafe are still preoccupied. The corpses show as mounds above the grass stalks. And the Porsche keeps smoking, ticking as the metal heats or cools.
If the grass catches fire will this be a signal that Hell is coming?
I eye my finger stump where it ends with neat suture scars, and my heart pounds into overdrive. I hear the snick-snack of the secateurs again. Feel the grind on my bone as the blades crunch shut.
After the last month of horrors that are surely imprinted on my soul, on my heart, burned into me for the rest of my life, Hell would be a let-down.
Snick, crunch, snack.
“Shut up,” I mutter.
Ignoring the aches and twinges in my back and legs, I resume my wobbly march toward the vehicle in the trees.
That probably belongs…make that belonged, to the dead men.
Are those hoofbeats? I cock my head, half-turning and listening.
My hearing might be damaged. Yet through the large gap in the hedgerow I catch sight of someone riding down the road toward Rafael.
He slows and turns his head as he passes and our eyes meet and lock.
On the huge black horse is a man with peppery gray hair, wearing a fucking suit.
What is it with the brits and their attire?
Then he’s gone. I should hurry. I don’t know who he is and if this property is where Alden was going, it could be that man’s land.
The Somersby’s? His dad was Lord Somersby? Benjamin Somersby, my strangely random memory tells me. It cannot remember recipes or song lyrics but spits out the names of British Lordy Sir Somethings on a whim.
Limping—I may have sprained my ankle—I reach the grove of trees and yank at the driver’s side door of a silver-gray Skoda SUV, while praying they left the keys somewhere inside. The door opens.
Yesss.
I slide in and softly shut the door, assessing the controls as I do so.
After a frantic five minutes of searching under every mat and in all the hiding places, I find the keys nestled in the cup holder in the central compartment, under some balled-up grotty tissues.
How did I miss them?
This is an EV. Thank god. Getting this thing going should be simple.
I press start and it barely makes a sound, the sneaky car, even as I shift into drive and edge out onto the track they’ve used to back into this hiding spot.
I think this runs at right angles to the road we used.
I accelerate onto the small one-lane, one-way road then curve right and merge into the larger road.
I’m cruising along, purring away from Rafael. That simple.
That’s a yell from behind. I refuse to check the rearview mirror.
Rafael might hate me for escaping him. Good.
He’s been like a parasitic thing on my ass, watching me ever since he helped extricate me from that hellhole place, from the Evil House.
I clench my jaw and stop myself reminiscing over the bad shit.
I was beginning to like him and that would never do. Is he a good man? It’s possible.