“So, what’s it going to be, Tiger Lily? Are you going to keep fighting me and end up lying next to Valentine in the ground, or are you going to join me and rule this kingdom by my side?”
Hearing him confirm Valentine’s death knocked the wind from my sails, and I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.
At the same time, it ignited a new strength in my chest.
A fire fueled by a need for revenge.
I looked at Max.
I hated him.
I hated all of them.
But my resistance wasn’t winning me the war against them.
I needed to change my tactics.
Because in order to destroy them…
… I knew then and there, I’d have to join them.
With a rush and gasp, I wake up. The moment my eyes focus, Doc’s loving face comes into view, and the terror slowly recedes.
“You were having a nightmare,” he says softly.
No, I wasn’t having a nightmare.
I was reliving the nightmare.
I look at the clock on the wall—it’s ten minutes past midnight.
Fighting the ache in my chest, I sit up.
I’m not a victim.
I’m a survivor.
And I’ve made peace with what I did to survive.
But the scars still have their own pulse, and sometimes, I wrestle with the memories in order to keep moving forward.
Looking him in the eye, I take his hand. “I think I’m ready to tell you everything now.”
DOC
We sit in the shadows on the bed with only a small slant of moonlight illuminating the room as she tells me everything. I let her talk without interrupting, so she can get it out without distraction, and my soul crushes beneath the weight of what I learn.
When Lily pushed me out the door of the hotel that night, she knew what plans they had for her. She knew by staying behind, her father would force her into a union with Otto—the man who made her skin crawl—and yet, she still chose my freedom over hers.
What she endured is beyond my understanding.
She explains how the only way was to pretend to give in and become the Inferno girl her father wanted and the woman Otto desired. How she used her body to fool the man who wanted her too badly to see what was really going on. And how she gained their trust by hiding her disgust and her resentment by wearing a mask of fakery.
Then, she tells me how she suspected she was pregnant and knew she had to take her chance and escape.
She made her getaway in the dead of night, hiding in the back of a supply truck heading into Cottonwood Pass the following morning for a weekly pickup. After watching the Inferno guards for months, she knew the pattern they walked around the perimeter at night and what times they changed over.
During the day, she hid a duffle bag in the crawl space of the little cabin her father had forced her to share with Otto and slowly added her change of clothes and supplies to it over the following few weeks. Despite showing loyalty to the Inferno, Max never relaxed his watch over her, so planning her escape had to be done slowly and with a sleight of hand.
The night of her escape, she added crushed up antihistamine to Otto’s dinner to ensure he wouldn’t wake up when she slipped from the room or rouse early in the morning before the truck had a chance to leave.
“I barely breathed the entire time I was in the back of that truck. I knew if Otto woke up and found me gone, there would be a search, and they would find me.” Her face is pale, her cheeks stained with tears as she lets out a shaky breath. “It was the longest hours of my life.”
When the supply truck stopped at a gas station, she jumped out and disappeared into the early morning light with the seventy-five dollars she stole from Otto’s money clip in her pocket and a baby growing in her belly.
She must have been so scared.
I reach for her, needing to protect her from any more hurt or fear.
She’s sacrificed more than I knew.
I tighten my hold on her. There are so many emotions colliding inside me, and I don’t know what to do with them all.
I can’t bear the thought of what she went through.
It’s a debt I need to repay, and I can’t wait for the chance for payment to appear.
I need to make it happen.
Without a doubt, I’m going to find Otto.
I am now the consequence for his actions.
And I’m going to put him in a hole in the ground.
LILY
Emotionally drained, I fall asleep in the safety of Doc’s arms. With my mind finally free of all it was holding onto, it gives my body permission to relax and rest for the first time in months. I sleep deeply and disappear into a world of sweet dreams and bliss, where the Inferno don’t exist, and I’m free from the shackles of my past.