Sweet Retribution (Ruthless Games 2)

lacked out. When I woke up, Carson was lying next to me, dead. And Marcus was gone. He was shot three times before we both went down. He was bleeding. A lot.” My throat tightens. “Maybe he could’ve regained consciousness and shot Carson somehow. But I don’t think he could’ve walked away. I don’t see how.”

Ryland’s face is still that same taut mask, as if he’s shoving down every emotion he’s ever had so he can process all of this rationally.

I wish I could do that. I wish I could fucking think straight, but the only thought that keeps running through my head is, where is he? Where is he? Where is he?

“Fuck,” Theo mutters, and I try not to let myself hear the heartbreak in his voice.

I glance between the two of them again, my stomach knotting itself into a hard lump. “What? Where do you think he is?”

“It’s not the first time someone has gone missing in the game.” Theo shakes his head. “When Xavier and Jack were killed, their bodies were never found. It makes cleanup easier and keeps evidence from leading back to any of us, or to Luca. There’s no rule that says you have to leave a body where it falls.”

Leave a body where it falls.

His words tear through my heart like a rusty knife, and I step back, shrugging out of Ryland’s grip. I want him to wrap his arms around me the way Theo did, to envelop me in his embrace and block out the world—but I don’t think I can handle being touched right now.

My skin hurts, as if it’s shrinking around my bones. As if I’m about to collapse down into nothingness like a black hole.

“You think he’s dead.”

It’s meant to be a question, but it comes out as a statement, monotone and blunt.

“No, Rose. I didn’t say that. We don’t know.” Theo’s voice is emphatic, but there’s a roughness to it that he can’t hide, and his eyes are haunted. I can’t tell if he’s lying to me or himself.

“Come on.”

Ryland is already moving before he finishes speaking, striding toward the body on the ground. He squats to examine Carson’s corpse, carefully keeping his feet outside the smeared puddles of blood that surround it. Theo takes my elbow, and although I flinch at his touch, I let him help me walk over to stand above Ryland.

The dark-haired man looks up at me over his shoulder. “Did you touch him at all?”

“His… his face.”

I gesture to the spot on Carson’s cheek that I brushed my fingertips over, and Ryland uses his sleeve to wipe it clean.

Fuck, I didn’t even think about that. I touched a dead man at what will undoubtedly become a crime scene, unless the guys are able to clean all this up before the cops get here.

That thought sends an added rush of urgency through me. We need to find Marcus so we can get out of here. We can’t afford to wait too long.

“There.” I point to the trail of blood I noticed before. “That goes around the corner and then continues on for a little way. And then it stops. Maybe Marcus—”

I break off, because I don’t know how to end that sentence. Maybe he what? Walked away from getting shot three times? Miraculously stopped bleeding somehow?

I’ve been shot. I know what it’s like. And it’s not the kind of thing you walk away from. At least, not fast enough to disappear completely.

Ryland’s head turns as his gaze lands on the bloody smear. He presses to his feet and follows it, tugging a gun from the waistband of his pants as he walks around the corner. Theo and I trail in his wake, and this time, we don’t stop where I stopped. We keep going, peering into the wide alleyways between buildings, scouring the ground for droplets of blood or any other sign that Marcus might’ve left.

My head still aches, and my heart feels like it’s working harder than it should to pump my blood, but I keep pace with the men, occasionally calling out Marcus’s name. None of us speak beyond that, an uncomfortable sort of silence that prickles with everything we’re not saying.

As we walk along the side of a low, squat building, the little hairs at the back of my neck rise, and my footsteps stutter. I start to turn around, praying to a god I’m not even sure I believe in that it’s Marcus—please, please, let it be Marcus—but before I can even complete the turn, I’m yanked backward roughly, shoved behind Theo as Ryland raises his gun.

My instinct wasn’t wrong. Someone was behind us.

But it’s not who I hoped.

Dominic steadies his own weapon with both hands. He’s a few yards away from us, having just stepped out from between two buildings. He’s got his gun aimed right back at Ryland, finger resting on the trigger.

A horrible feeling of déjà vu washes over me as the two men stand off.

No. God, no fucking way.