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“Sunny,” I started, voice steady despite the chaos raging within me, “it's over. Your people are scattered, dead, or dying. There’s nowhere to go.”
Kennedy’s muffled attempt at speech was stifled by Sunny’s hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes pleading above his fingers. The raw terror in them dug into me like a blade.
Sunny’s words cut through the darkness. “Greyson, drop the gun. You’re coming with us.”
Greyson’s grip on his weapon tightened for a moment before he let it clatter to the ground. His eyes never left Sunny.
Greyson was dangerous even without the gun.
But so was Sunny, and he had Kennedy.
I could only watch as Sunny, with his gun still trained on my girl, began to back away into the swirling mist of smoke. Greyson moved cautiously beside him, blood soaking through his shirt.
Then, the haze enveloped them. Kennedy turned her head slightly, fighting Sunny’s grip. Her gaze met mine, signaling desperately with her eyes, trying to tell me something.
The outlines of their bodies became ghosts in the smoke and fog, and then they were gone.
25
Sunny yanked me along mercilessly. My lungs burned, my eyes watered, and I wasn’t sure how he even knew where we were going in the dim light. At least some light came through the clouded factory windows, but the factory was full of smoke too. The acrid taste singed my throat and mouth.
In the smoke, it was hard to see until we were almost on top of someone. Shadowy figures loomed like wraiths out of the smoke. I searched for a familiar face, but the eerie glow of night vision goggles just stared back at me, blank and inhuman.
Greyson moved alongside us, lost in the smoke from time to time or to the watery vision that made it hard for me to see.
“Ambush!” I tried to call out, to warn him. But Sunny’s hand was pressing over my mouth, and it was barely an audible croak.
“None of that, or I’ll kill him now,” Sunny hissed into my ear, his breath hot against my skin.
Fear tightened my chest even more than the smoke. He was using me to get Greyson outside, but once he did…I was sure he would kill Greyson. He was just trying to make the most of the brief peace he’d managed to force on Greyson.
Suddenly, Jack’s voice cut through the haze. “Lights!”
Beside us, Greyson tore off his night vision goggles immediately.
The lights blazed back to life. The sudden illumination stabbed my eyes, but then as I blinked and cleared them, I could see more; the light filtered through some of the smoke.
And Jack was standing a few yards away, his rifle set in his shoulder, his face grim and watchful. He was frozen too, waiting for an opening when Sunny couldn’t kill me instantly.
His familiar face brought a surge of relief. There was Greyson, and now Jack; my men were alive. Hopefully Sebastian was fine, too.
I just had to keep them all that way.
He met my gaze across the expanse of the factory floor, his eyes softening for a split second before he winked at me. It was a promise that everything was going to be alright, and it was ridiculous, and it lit me up with hope anyway.
Gritting my teeth against the pain radiating from where Sunny’s fingers dug into my arm, I kept stumbling forward. His gun was cold and unyielding at my temple. My legs kept buckling as I moved forward, but he always held me up with that bruising grip until I managed to get some control of my limbs.
Greyson’s form was lost in the fog, then emerged again, steadily keeping pace with us. “It's going to be okay. We’ll get out of this.”
His gaze flicked to Sunny, hardening with resolve. “You can’t win this, Sunny. The Jackals are mine.”
“Are they?” Sunny spat back, anger seething just below the surface. “You took what should’ve been mine!”
“If it was ever your right to be the Jackal, you’d be the one leading them,” Greyson countered. “I fought for my place. If it’s a challenge you want, I’m right here.”
“Or I could just kill you now,” Sunny said, his tone chillingly casual.
“No, you can’t. Because we’re your ticket out of here.” Greyson shook his head. “This was your plan? All these fucking years, and this was the best you came up with?”
