But no. I can’t think about that, about him. We have a job to do, and I’ll be damned if we fail.
“Are we sure this is the guy?” Ryker asks, his raspy voice somehow soothing my frayed nerves in its familiarity.
“Positive.” Beckett’s voice is curt, rife with tension. Lines of irritation etch themselves into his forehead, deepening the furrow there. “We need to know what his plans were for our girl.”
Another surge of darkness pulsates through me.
Just the thought of this slimy greaseball putting his hands on my girl…
Breathe, Dom. Breathe.
The voice, oddly enough, sounds like Landon’s.
Fuck, I miss him.
It’s been hell being the leader of this ragtag group the last few weeks. Sometimes… Sometimes I just want to step away from it all, if only for a moment. Take time to process and compartmentalize everything that transpired this past year.
My dad has been calling almost every day since news of Landon spread through the community. I refuse to answer his calls, but that doesn’t stop the sadistic bastard from leaving voicemails. He wants to meet with me and Ellie again. Bring us to another POP meeting. He’s more determined than ever to bring us into the fold.
God, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore him.
The one person in my family I haven’t heard from is the person I’m desperate to—my older brother, Doyle. He warned us that Ellie had been sold, then he went radio silent. For all I know, he’s dead. Or he feigned concern and is actually a part of this scheme. Or he’s?—
Nope. I’m not going to think about that, about them. My father and brother have dominated enough of my headspace over the last few weeks.
I need to focus.
“How are we doing this?” Ellie asks, her voice uncharacteristically subdued.
All of us slide our eyes in her direction.
Ellie has changed a lot in the past year, but after Landon got stabbed? After she killed someone in self-defense? She has become someone I don’t entirely recognize.
I still love the shit out of her—that will never change—but the perpetual light in her eyes has dimmed. A preternatural severity now blankets the room whenever she steps inside of it. Her smiles are less frequent, her laughter nonexistent, her jokes few and far between.
She’s a shell of the girl I love.
An almost incandescent anger blazes through me yet again.
POP did this to her.
The Divine One did this to her.
So I’ll find them all—and I’ll kill them.
“Ellie, love…” Beckett begins placatingly, turning toward her. He’s going to ask her to stay behind, and she’s going to refuse. A-fucking-gain.
Ellie ignores him and slips on a pair of black leather gloves. She’s wearing an oversized hoodie—Ryker’s, I believe, though I wish it were mine—and black leggings. A beanie obscures her light brown hair from view.
She looks fierce and determined and so goddamn sexy that I lose my ability to speak.
She has changed, yes, but that hasn’t lessened my need for her. My obsession concerning her.
It has only amplified it.
I crave her darkness almost as much as I do her light. Both are the only things capable of pulling me out of the abyss of insanity I would’ve fallen into long before I met her.
“Do you have your stabby dagger,princesa?” Zane asks, circling her. His eyes are molten as they sweep over her figure, and I imagine his thoughts have probably run in the same direction as my own.