The Wedding Debt (Underworld Kings)

So I ignore the red light in front of me and drive as fast as I can through the city, all along the outer banks until we’re far away enough that I can breathe again.

“What are you doing, Jill?” Liam asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, clutching the steering wheel so hard I feel like I might break it. “But he was about to kill you, and I had to do something.”

“I won’t let that punk kill me,” Liam says, swiping away some of the rain off his forehead. “Jill, you gotta go back.”

“What?” I scoff, looking his way. “No, no way am I going back to that lunatic.”

“He’s not a lunatic. He’s my brother,” Liam says.

Even though Luca just threatened him with a knife, he still means something to Liam. How can Liam be so kind after all of that?

“He tried to hurt us both,” I retort.

“Yeah, well … we hurt him first,” Liam says, licking his lips. “He saw us.”

A blush creeps onto my cheeks, so I hide my face behind my hair, afraid he’ll see. That kiss … should’ve meant the world. Instead, it did nothing for my heart and ruined everything else.

Fuck.

What do we do now? Where do we go from here?

Luca is surely waiting for us to come back.

And if not … his parents will find out in no time, along with mine.

Either way, we’re fucked.

I look out at the boulevard we’re driving on, wishing I could just drive off into the sunset with him.

“We should go back,” Liam says. “Maybe he’s cooled down a little.”

The rain still slams down onto the roof, the sky only darkening further. Thunder is encroaching us from all sides, and the silence before the lightning strikes brings goose bumps to my arms.

“Jill,” Liam says with a stern voice.

I bite my lip and frown as I look ahead at the swaying palm trees along the boulevard. “No.”

“Jill,” he growls, his voice almost as loud as the thunderstorm outside. “Turn around.”

“It’s not safe.”

“That’s fucking life,” he replies.

“So?” I look at him. “I’m just supposed to let him knife you?”

“You think he’s the first to have tried?” He raises his shirt, showing a part of his delectable muscles but also the scars that cover them, and my eyes are glued to his skin.

“Oh my …”

God.

“How did that …?”

“Business. You know the type our parents do,” he responds.

And something about that makes my skin crawl.

“I’ll fight it out with him, brother to brother,” Liam says.

“But what if you lose?” I ask, barely paying attention to the road anymore.

“Then I’ll lose, and he gets what he wants …”

The way he looks at me with those beautiful eyes of his undoes me.

There is no darkness to be found.

Until he says the word, “You.”

My skin erupts into goose bumps.

Suddenly, lightning strikes right in front of us, and it disorients me so much that I shriek and turn the wheel away from the blast. Off the road. Into the railing.

The car flies up and tumbles in the air several times.

I see stars all around me as the sound of twisting metal and thunder in the sky mingle into complete and utter destruction.

One. Two. Three seconds.

SPLASH!

I don’t even see the water before we hit it, the harsh landing knocking me forward and then backward against my seat, knocking me out for a few seconds.

When I come to again, the car is filling up with water … and Liam is still right beside me, out cold.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck!

I frantically try to undo my belt as the water begins to rise. The car is sinking into the river, and I can’t fucking get out. I jerk the door, but the lock is sealed tight from the water trying to get in.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I shove Liam and slap him a few times, but he doesn’t wake up. “Liam!”

There’s a bloody wound on the back of his head.

Panic swirls in my veins.

“Liam, wake up!” I pull back his belt buckle and try to get him to wake up, but nothing I do is working.

The water is rising so quickly that I’m shivering like crazy.

Still, I gather all my strength and kick at the window, trying to get it to break, but nothing seems to work.

“Goddammit!” I squeal.

This can’t be how we die. It just can’t be.

I have so much life left in me. So much to do, so much to see.

I wanted to travel the world. Feel free as a bird.

And now the water threatens to take that all away.

It’s almost up to my neck now, and I’m freaking out, not knowing what to do. I look behind me, but I don’t see anything, nor beneath me. So I inhale a deep breath and go under, searching for something I can use to break the glass.

Finally, I find the emergency hammer.