“Isla?” He stepped one foot in, frozen there, his eyes failing to find me even as I began walking backward, submerging myself into the dark. “Isla, if you’re in here, come out! I knew you were going to react like this so I’m not mad. I even paid for the drinks.”
My God, what a saint. Though with Evan, paying for anything was a miracle.
Standing dead center in the alley, I stared down at him, a sneer curling my lips as I dared him to step foot into the pitch black. He didn’t have the guts to. I knew it. So I stood there watching until he backed away. When he was finally out of sight, I sucked in a deep, quivering breath and willed myself to calm down.
You’re strong. Be strong. You’re fine. I repeated the words I told everyone in my family when they felt like they couldn’t hold on. You’re strong. Be strong. You’re fine. They always worked on my mom, albeit temporarily, and I could almost feel them slowly lifting me out of my hole.
I’ll be okay.
But the second I believed myself, my body hurled forward.
“Get the fuck out of here!”
A growl and a shriek – the latter was my own as I felt a hard grip on my shoulder, controlling my body and shoving me away. Gasping, I stumbled to the ground, gravel scraping my knees. Panic clenched in my throat as I scrambled onto my back, ready to bolt the fuck out with no questions asked.
But I froze when I saw what stood before me.
Breathless, chest heaving, I stared ahead at two long legs in dark jeans and leather boots, my heart slamming faster as my eyes traveled skyward, realizing the sheer height and size on the man who’d roared for me to leave. His sweat-drenched T-shirt clung to the tapered V of his torso, every muscle flexed and rigid like those shoulders wide enough to break a doorframe.
Holy fuck. I scrambled backward when my darting eyes saw his fingers wrapped around a metal pipe. His grip crushed it, the vein in the back of his hand bulging, traveling up his muscled forearm and all the way to a lean bicep my hand wouldn’t wrap around half of.
“Get on your feet now.”
I’m going, I swear, my lips tried to utter. But then I looked up at his face and the breath snatched from my throat.
Despite a warrior’s build, he had the looks of a royal – piercing blue eyes under strong, dark brows. A long, straight nose. The squarest jaw and most sculpted lips I’d ever seen. He was stunning. The kind of unreal beauty I was used to seeing on billboards, red carpets – not in dark alleys, gleaming with sweat and flecked in what I hoped to God wasn’t blood. My pulse jumped into my throat when he spoke again, his low voice rumbling like a mounting storm.
“You have two seconds to walk away on your own.”
His wolfish glare blazed into me, paralyzing every inch of my body. My lips parted but said nothing and when I failed to move, he dropped the pipe and started forward.
“No – ” I managed something like the word as I cowered from his imposing frame. But just as he lifted me like a ragdoll, another voice rang out in the alley.
“The fuck we do with this now?”
I turned around, my wide eyes landing on a blonde man in a suit, dragging something heavy that he dropped to the ground when he saw me.
A body.
I heard its lifeless leg fall with a thud before my eyes traveled to his head, still pouring thick, red blood. My stomach turned as I then fixed my stare on the gash of white gleaming above his eye.
His skull.
My hair was yanked back the second before I keeled over and heaved.
chapter two
I jerked awake once my eyes opened. My resting pulse spiked.
This wasn’t my room.
My room was a small, windowless square big enough to fit one twin-sized mattress and IKEA shelf. This room was twelve times the size with arched windows and a wrought iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Sprawled with me on the mattress was a plush duvet and a half-dozen pillows cased in ivory silk. Everything in my vicinity screamed money. Opulence. But despite the luxury comforts, my heart was pounding out of my chest. A million awful things had happened last night but my mind was taking too long to catch up and recall.
The second it did, a gasp ripped from my throat.
Evan. That dark alley. The warrior of a man gleaming in fresh sweat and blood. I’d wound up in his car last night. I’d let a stranger who’d split another man’s head open take me back to his home. “Fuck.” My heavy limbs scrambled to get out of bed but the second I moved, the door swung open. I froze.
Holy shit.