I staggered to the hallway, tripping over a broken picture frame and boots that weren’t mine.
My phone.
It wasn’t in my pocket, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it. Holed up with Mateo—nakedwith Mateo—it hadn’t seemed to matter, but urgency ripped through me now.
Terror.
They took him.
Esteban. Juana’s dad.
And they were gonna kill him, slowly, the only benefit that it gave me time to raise a fucking army to save him.
I need help.
It was the only thought in my mind as I tore into the living room and ripped it apart. Then back to the horror scene in the kitchen.
But my phone wasn’t there. Neither was Mateo’s, and Rubi didn’t have a landline.
“Fuck!” I hurdled the broken back door and dashed around the house. Mateo’s hog lay smashed on the ground, pieces of it littering Rubi’s narrow driveway.
Alexei’s Ninja wasn’t there. Somehow, I’d had the foresight to park it up the road, a minor miracle I thanked every deity I didn’t believe in for as I charged up the street.
It was early morning. While I’d been knocked out on the floor, I’d missed the night fading into the first strains of a bright summer dawn. Rubi’s neighbours were starting to wake up and open their curtains. Put their bins out. One called out as I blazed past him, shoeless and covered in blood, but his voice was white noise.
I reached the Ninja, the key still stuffed in my pocket. The goons that came for us must’ve assumed Mateo’s bike was the only one. Did that mean they thought I’d been there all along?
Or had they followed me instead of him from Alexei’s penthouse?
Where Mateo’s whole reason for living still were. WhereRubistill was.
Decoy, if he’d stayed the night.
Ivy’s face flashed into my mind and another wave of panic hit me. I threw myself onto the bike and gunned the engine, tearing down the quiet street with a violent roar.
Rubi’s house was a fifteen-minute ride from the compound, but I made it in ten, pushing the Ninja to its limits, tyres squealing as I skidded to a stop at the locked gates.
Folk popped up from nowhere, a frown already creasing his face as he ran forward to let me in, but I couldn’t wait that long. Muscles bunched, I sprang at the gates and climbed, hurling myself over the barbed wire and plunging to the ground on the other side.
I landed hard, jarring every bone in my body through my bare feet, pain flaring in every joint.
Folk reached me. “What the—”
I pushed him off and ran, sprinting for the clubhouse. “Cam!Cam!”
The door burst open. Cam tore into the yard in his underwear, his bullet scar vicious and gnarled against his tattooed skin, Nash a heartbeat behind him.
We collided in the middle. Cam grabbed me, holding me up. “What is it? What the fuck happened?”
“They came for him—”
“Alexei?”
Fuck. I was riding the Ninja. “No—” I couldn’t catch my breath. I dug my fingers into Cam’s forearm, fighting. “Mateo.They took him. Esteban. They took him, Cam. They’re gonna kill him. I—”
My legs buckled.
Cam caught me. “All right. It’s all right.” His voice was quiet.Tooquiet. I could barely hear him over the noise in my head. “Fuck. Where’s Saint?”