“I have to finish this, Annabelle. I want to finish this.”
“More than you want to be safe and happy with me?” I ask.
Regret surfaces then and he captures my hand, extracting his wrist from my hold. My stomach bottoms out, expecting him to pull away now, but instead he brings my hands to his lips and leaves a gentle kiss there.
“There’s nothing I want more than to erase all of the bad shit that’s ever been done to you. I don’t have the power to do that… but I do have the power to erase the people who did it.”
Every hair on my body prickles, goose bumps rising up all over. A desire so deep I’m not even sure I can call it that suddenly blankets m
e and I’m nearly overwhelmed by the tenderness.
This man, this wonderful, ruthless, mystery of a man… he loves me.
You don’t risk your life to slay dragons for a woman you don’t love.
As scary as that is, as much as I don’t want him to go, as much as I would rather run and know we’ll all be safe… I also feel a swell of pride. It may not be the healthiest impulse in the world, but this man wants to protect me, and I’ve always wanted to be protected.
On impulse I swoop in and grab him, pulling him down for a kiss. I don’t intend it to be much of one, since we need to get the hell out of here, but his big hands close around my waist, pulling me against his body, and suddenly nothing else exists. There are no cold, dank walls in a scary, abandoned warehouse. There aren’t two men of questionable moral character just ahead of us, and people wanting to kill us potentially around every corner.
There’s only me and Liam, his hands on my body, our tongues colliding, hearts pounding. There’s nothing else. Just us.
Someone loudly clearing their throat finally pierces our moment and I pull back to see Ryder giving us a highly unimpressed look.
I can’t help smiling, and Liam catches my hands, entwining our fingers as he pulls me along. Even though everything is crazy and scary and uncertain, in this moment I’m happy.
I guess I should’ve known.
It’s not like he made it a big secret. He never came out and told me what the plan was, never explicitly answered that question when asked, but he’d given me the pieces I needed to put the puzzle together if I cared to try.
Liam was going to kill my whole family and virtually everyone I knew.
That had always been the plan. Before I arrived at the junkyard that day to steal apples, before he pinned me against the tree, before I was more than a faceless guest on a list, Liam was commissioned to engineer all of our deaths.
Once we were there, outside the house I grew up in, bustling with well-dressed partygoers and uniformed help, I had to beg him one more time not to go in. Whatever Raj had planned, just let him do it. Let the other guys do the dirty work.
It made no difference. With one last searing kiss, Liam demanded I wait in the car and he took off with Ryder and Ali, melting into the darkness. Left alone with only my nerves for company, I dug around the car and found a small pair of binoculars under the seat.
I wasn’t sure I even wanted to look. As much as I wanted to accept every side of Liam, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spot people I knew, knowing what Liam had planned for them.
The first several minutes of perusal turned up only strangers, but that didn’t really help. They could be good people. They could have children at home in bed, waiting for them to return. Friends, parents, colleagues who would mourn them. I didn’t want their deaths. I didn’t want destruction on this level, not even on my worst day. I can see wanting Pietro gone, even Paul, but must there be so many casualties?
Helplessness hits me because I can’t even call Liam. There’s no way to reach him, to beg him to reconsider. It’s too late. Theoretically I might be able to find him if I get out of the car and go creeping around, but I’m not an idiot, so I don’t do that.
Suddenly, my attention is caught when I come across Paul. I’m a little floored to see he brought Marlene to my mother’s anniversary party. He’s such an ass. I feel a sliver of pity for the dumb girl, but at least she chose her fate. I never got that chance.
I turn my binoculars to the wooded darkness Liam and his pals disappeared into. Somewhere in the foreboding darkness, the fate I chose is preparing to risk everything—again—and I hope like hell it works out better this time than last. I’m so frustrated by his insistence on doing this, but at the same time… I sort of get it. I guess he needs to know the job has been finished, that Pietro doesn’t survive like the cockroach he is. If we leave, he has to trust some stranger to do it, and well… Liam isn’t so big on the trust thing.
I don’t know how it’s going to happen until I hear the first explosion. The sound’s so loud that it reverberates in my chest and I duck behind the front passenger seat intuitively. Chaos ensues outside, more explosions, smaller explosions, but what really gets through, what I expect will haunt me, is the steady sound of people screaming in terror. Clapping my hands over my ears, I remain crouched on the floor. I know it’s cowardly, but I can’t look. I don’t want a visual to accompany the sounds or the feelings.
I have to look at Liam when he comes back, after all.
The sound of gunfire explodes somewhere outside the car, far enough away that I know I’m reasonably safe, but still so close that I can’t keep from trembling. I wish they wouldn’t have brought me. I know there wasn’t time to take me anywhere else, but I don’t want to hear what’s going on out there. I don’t want to be here.
It goes on forever. The screaming winds down but I remain hunched over and hiding with my eyes closed. Too many thoughts fly through my head. It feels like my heart’s going to zoom right out of my chest. I’m relieved that the screaming has at least stopped, and it’s sounding less like a war zone outside, until I consider what it probably means that it’s getting quieter.
Liam
We make it back to the car to find Annabelle in the back seat, hunched over, hiding her head in her arms like she’s sick. My stomach drops. She sits up but doesn’t look at me as I slide in next to her.