“Fuck you, Gaspard. This is my daughter we’re talking about here!”
“And we’re getting her back. No one is dying today but Reyes. You have my word.”
Several beats of silence pass, and no one in the SUV breathes. We’re all waiting for judgment to be handed down. Whatever Mount says next will change the course of our lives. Hell, it’ll change this city if he decides to bathe the streets in blood.
He’s done it before, and that was over Keira.
No onewill survive if something happens to Rory.
“You try to stop me from getting my kid back, and your life is forfeit, Gaspard.”
“We’ll get her back, but I won’t hand Magnolia over to a madman who will butcher her. Promise me right now, on your wife’s life, that you’ll fucking work with me, or I don’t bring Magnolia back to you. Understand me? He wants her, and youknowI can make her disappear. Neither of you willeverfind her again.”
“Stop it! Both of you!”
Keira’s voice comes over the phone next, and shame eats through me like battery acid from the pain I hear in her ragged words.
“I’m so sorry, Ke-ke. I didn’t think— I would’ve never come to you— Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Sobs rip from my throat, and all I want to do is hit my knees and pray, because I’m not strong enough to handle this by myself.
“You come back, and we’ll work it out. My baby will come home, and no one is killing my best friend. Period. You hear me, goddamn it?”
Like a fucking empress, Keira tells us all exactly how it’s going to go. A flicker of hope ignites in my soul that I didn’t just ruin the lives of the people who matter most to me.
Thirty-Nine
Moses
We have no fucking time to waste, but I still walk into the lion’s den with caution. Mount is a wild card right now—rightly so—and as much as I don’t want to kill the man, I will do what I have to do to save that little girlandMagnolia.
I didn’t just get her back to lose her all over again. Even though I understand exactly where Mount’s coming from.
With Magnolia’s hand clasped in mine, I’m one hundred percent certain she’ll give herself up to Reyes to save Rory.I know itdown to the depths of my soul. She would never choose to live if it meant that baby lost her life or endured a single bit of pain on her account.
But I’m not letting any of it happen today.
No fucking way.
Footsteps pound up the pavement from behind us as we walk into the door from the garage. I whip around, my gun in hand, ready for anything, but relax when I see Trey and Jules.
“On the way back from the funeral, our driver said Mount’s kid was kidnapped. Is that for fucking real?” Jules asks, looking from me to Magnolia with wild eyes.
“Yeah, it’s for real. Come on. We don’t have time. We gotta get a strategy together. We have barely thirty minutes before we gotta go.”
“It was Reyes?” Trey asks.
My head dips once.
“Fuck. He wants Magnolia bad,” Jules says with a shake of his head. “We can’t go in there. Mount will serve her up to get that kid back. No fucking way this ends well.”
“You try to run and you all fucking die,” Mount’s voice bellows from the darkness ahead of us. “Get in here before I end you all where you stand for bringing this to my door!”
“Stop it!” Keira says, tears coating the steel in her voice as the light flips on. “There are enough people we already have to bury after today. We’re not adding any more bodies to the count. Everyone in. We’re getting our baby girl back, and no one else is dying. Goddamn it, don’t make me say it again.”
“I’m so sorry, Keira.” Magnolia rushes her friend, wrapping her arms around her as she sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll go. I’ll go. I won’t let anything happen to her. I swear. This is my penance. I’ll pay for my sins. Rory is coming home to you. I swear it.”
My heart cracks right down the middle to hear the despair and finality in Magnolia’s wrecked voice, but it doesn’t make a single dent in the stony expression on Mount’s face.
“We doing this my way? Or are we having it out right here?” I ask him, my finger resting alongside the trigger of my gun.