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My gaze darted to the driveway when I heard the crunch of tires. Not from the road ahead, but from behind me. I groaned as the running jarred my shoulder. I veered off the driveway into the brush, but fell as my ankle turned over in the hidden ditch.
I screamed in agony when my shoulder took the brunt of the impact. My vision blurred and I shook my head trying to clear the fogginess. I took my hand off my shoulder and crawled, but every movement was so painful that I was afraid I was going to pass out.
Footsteps sounded behind me. The crackle of twigs snapping under his weight.
I tried to gain my footing, but lost my balance and fell again.
“Are you done?”
I heaved breaths while lying on my side. Blood soaked into Kai’s shirt, his nice expensive white button-down shirt. He had so many of them and I hadn’t taken them off. I wore one every day just so when I breathed in, it was him who sank into my lungs.
“I’ll never be done,” I retorted. They may be able to take my body, but like Kai said, never let anyone take my mind.
He bent over and grabbed the arm with the bullet in it and yanked me to my feet. I gritted my teeth trying to stop the scream from emerging, but it came out as a moan.
“You ready to go home now, London? Or do you prefer to be called Raven?”
I glared up at him and spit in his face. The glob of saliva hit his cheek and slid down the surface of his skin to drop off his jaw, soaking into his black T-shirt. “Fuck you.”
He hauled on my arm and I had no choice but to stumble after him or have my arm dislocated. I realized I hadn’t made it very far from the driveway; although at the time, it felt as if I’d been running forever.
He opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Not even a flicker of an expression. God, he was a machine. “A new home. One you’ll appreciate… in time.”
“Vault.”
That got a mild lowering of his brows before he leaned over me and did up my seatbelt. Then before I knew what was happening, he had my wrist in a handcuff. He yanked my arm up and attached the other end of the cuff to the handle on the ceiling.
I didn’t bother pulling on it because it was my wounded shoulder and there was no point except to cause me pain.
“I’m going to bleed to death.”
“Doubt it. We’ll see.”
He slammed the door and I watched him walk around the front of the SUV. He was terrifying, not like Kai had been when I met him; this was different because it was like I was talking to a wall of blackness. Soulless.
He folded in and buckled his seatbelt before starting the engine. Then he looked at me, his eyes roaming the length of me before settling on my wound. “Put pressure on it.”
I glared and didn’t want to do what he said, but I wanted to live, so despite the agony, I applied pressure. “Kai is going to be pissed. He’ll come after me.”
He gave an abrupt nod. “Yes. But I suspect he’ll spend months looking for you, thinking you ran away—again.” No. Kai wouldn’t believe that, would he? He’d know I didn’t leave willingly. “And when he does find out, we will then know where his loyalty lies.”
I gasped. This was a test. A test of Kai’s loyalty to Vault. Oh, God.
He threw the car into gear and started down the driveway. “And my name is Connor.”THE MOMENT I opened the door to the house, I knew. The grin tugging at my mouth that had been there since the plane landed faded, and my stomach dropped.
I didn’t need to look around or call her name, I fuckin’ knew London wasn’t here. Coldness enveloped and the rift split open again filling with black tar and suffocating me.
I took my time, checking room by room, hand on my knife, but the precaution was unnecessary because I knew no one was here. And hadn’t been in a while.
She hadn’t been.
“FUCK!” I shouted and slammed my fist into the drywall leaving a large dent. The mirror hanging above the hallway table crashed to the floor and shattered.
Rage was an emotion that had played with me, taunted, over the last few years as emotions crept back into me. I’d kept it controlled. I’d kept it blanketed because I’d seen what it did to other men—they made mistakes.
I had been able to smirk through the anger with my casual calm because I never gave a shit.
Now I did.
Now I fuckin’ did.
And now I couldn’t grin through the anger pulsating through my blood. It had control of me as I strode through the house, a house I spent years building. A house that meant something to me because it lived and breathed London now.
