A familiar voice interrupts my interrogation.
Sadly, it isn’t the one I’m desperate to hear.
“It’s Caidyn.”
I pull my phone down to check the image on the screen. It is as seen only moments ago—the sneaky picture I snapped of Maddox one afternoon when he was deep in thought. His beard is thicker than it usually is, and his reddish-blond brows are pinched together as he peers out the window of the cabin, but it is very much the man I recall anytime memories of the past two months lift my lips into a smile.
After returning my phone to my ear, I ask, “Why do you have Maddox’s phone?” I try to keep the angst out of my tone. I miserably fail.
“A surgeon found it in Justine’s tattered clothes.” The siren of an ambulance bounding out of the speakers of my cell phone gobbles up my petrified sigh. “I don’t have time to go into details right now, Demi. I just need you to listen to me very carefully.” Caidyn can’t see me, but he must hear my nod because he resumes speaking without waiting for verbal confirmation. “After the surgeon updated us on Justine’s condition, I searched Maddox’s phone for clues on what had happened. I found a note in the message section of his phone. It was dated an hour before Justine was carried out to me.” My head is swirling. Surgeons. Conditions. Justine being carried out. What the fuck did my uncle do? “The message was addressed to you, Demi.”
“What did it say?” I’m surprised I can talk with how hard my heart is raging, and the situation worsens when Caidyn mutters, “It’s just one of those days, Demi. I’ll love you back for eternity. Don’t ever forget that.”
“It was written exactly like that? ‘It’s just one of those days?’”
“Yes,” Caidyn answers before adding, “When we were kids, that was Maddox’s SOS when he needed help.”
“I remember.” Tears careen down my cheeks when I recall Maddox including me in the secret society of his family two weeks after I grazed my knee. He gave me that exact code to use when I needed help. It is the very reason I made it our SOS after we were ambushed by Dimitri in the parking lot of the warehouse. We needed a way to communicate that it was time for the other to run. I only agreed to his suggestion because I thought we were safe. I assumed since we were sheltered under Dimitri’s umbrella, no one could touch us.
How stupid was I?
My focus returns to Caidyn when the noise of a door being slammed shut sounds down the line a short second before an engine being revved overtakes it. “That hasn’t been Maddox’s code for years, Demi. He gave it to you in middle school.” I clamp a hand over my mouth when he says, “Then a couple of months ago, he made Landon, Saint, and I swear if we ever heard him say it, we would immediately get you out of Hopeton.”
“No,” I push out with a sob, aware of where he’s going with this but incapable of believing what he is saying. “I only agreed to run if he was taken down.” When I choke, Caidyn chokes. “You know that isn’t the case. We’d know if that had happened.”
“It was his life for Justine’s, Demi. He had to pick.” His horn honks when he slams his fist into the steering wheel of the car he’s commanding. “Justine is barely hanging on, and that’s physical. I have no fucking clue what’s going on in that head of hers. She’s strong, but fuck… this type of shit isn’t real. Who orders for someone to be mauled by a dog?”
Oh god. This is worse than I realized.
“She’s a human being, for fuck’s sake. She is barely an adult—”
I cut his ramblings short by muttering, “It’s my fault.”
“What?” Caidyn asks. “How could this be your fault?”
I swallow down the bile scorching my throat before answering, “Max attacked Col. He gnawed on his arm.” I feel the blood methodologically draining from my veins. “Justine’s punishment was meant for me. She was attacked because of me.” I’m exhausted, drained of the will to live, and slightly hormonal, but not even the naïveté of a child could hide the truth for a second longer. “And the same thing will happen to Maddox if I don’t intervene.” As I snatch up my keys from the desk and Max’s leash, I say, “This is how my uncle operates. If he can’t get what he wants, he goes after the people associated with them… Justine, Maddox, then you. He’ll continue going down the list until he either grows bored or he gets what he wants.I’mwho he wants, Caidyn.” I bang my heaving chest with my fist. “Me. And I’m going to give him who he wants because nothing he could do to me would hurt more than losing Maddox.”
“Dem—”
After dragging my phone away from my ear, I hit the end button on the screen, foiling Caidyn’s plan to talk me out of my scheme, then I bob down in front of Max. “I’m sorry, buddy. I know you think this is your fight, but it isn’t. I can’t risk him hurting you too because he’s angry at me, so you need to stay here.” I click his lead onto his collar before banding my arms around his fat yet adorable head. “If you can get over your neurosis of men, Chef Jude knows how to cook. You’ll be in heaven if you give him the chance to prove himself.”
I smile when Max stands on all fours while licking his lips. He truly is the smartest dog in the world. So much so, he whimpers like I’m breaking his heart when I lift one side of my cousin’s ginormous desk to slip the handle of his leash under one leg. Since I can lift the desk, I’m certain Max will have no issues dragging it across the room when I leave without him, but the desk is too wide to fit through the door. He’ll be trapped in here until the morning shift at Petretti’s starts.
“Be a good boy, Max. It’s better to be bad sometimes than all the time.”I’m about to learn that the hard way.
I scrub behind his pointed ears one final time before I race toward my future. If the rumblings in the sky are anything to go by, it will be as bleak and depressing as the howls Max releases when I slip into the driver’s seat of Caidyn’s jeep without him hot on my tail.
20
Maddox
My shirt is soaked in blood. I’m nicked and bruised from the Rottweiler’s obvious annoyance about me ending his bout before he claimed the ultimate trophy—my sister’s life—and my heart is damaged beyond repair, but not one of those things are associated with the three goons sitting across from me, waiting with bated breath for Col to give them the go-ahead.
I had no intention of following the pledge I made when Col tossed Demi into our negotiation as if she is a bargaining chip. I merely said anything he wanted to hear, aware years of training award me the endurance to suffer hours of torture. By the time Col realized Demi was hiding in plain sight, my brothers would have found the message I wrote for Demi on the phone I stuffed into the pocket of Justine’s dress after checking her for a pulse. Demi would be far from Hopeton, Justine would be getting the medical attention she needed, and I’d be able to die in peace knowing they were both safe.
When I was shoved into the middle SUV in a line of many, it appeared as if everything was going to plan. I spotted the taillights of Rocco’s Buick race away from the Petretti compound, Col’s men made a show out of cracking their knuckles during our twenty-minute drive to a residence hidden in the hills miles out of Hopeton, and I was shackled to a chair in the basement of a mansion-like property hours ago.
I am a sitting fucking duck, yet not one punch has been thrown.
