"Here's the situation." The man leans against the porch railing like they're old friends catching up. "The family's been patient. We made a courtesy visit. Your president made his little speech. Very impressive. But the ring doesn't run on speeches, and the investors want their fighter back." He pauses. "Come with us. Willingly. Fight one season. The family gets their return, thecrowds get their show, you walk away clean at the end of it. She walks free right now."
One season. Like it's a job offer. Like fifteen years in a cage is a gap on a resume he's asking Garrett to fill.
"If you don't," the man continues, "the family will keep coming. Next time it won't be a conversation. Next time we won't be so gentle with your little friend here." He nods toward me. "Next time it'll be the clinic. The pregnant nurse. The president's wife and child. We know where all of them are, Garrett. We've always known."
The clearing holds its breath.
Garrett stands in the doorway with his hands at his sides. I know what he's going to say before he opens his mouth. I've watched him put everyone else first since the day I met him, and the look on his face right now is the same one he wore when he packed my bags.
"Yes." His voice scrapes out, gravel and rust. "Let her go. I'll come."
The sound that tears out of me doesn't have a name. Not a scream. Not a word. Something between the two, raw and jagged, pulled from the same place the anger has been sitting for two days.
"No." I wrench my arm free. The younger man reaches for me and I shove his hand away. "Garrett, no. This is the same thing. This is exactly what you did with the bags—you're deciding for me, you're sacrificing yourself because you think that's what love looks like—"
"Nina." He comes down the porch steps. Two strides and he's in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off him, close enough to see the tremor in his hands that he'sfighting to hide. He takes my face in his palms. His fingers span my jaw, my temples, the whole of me held in hands that could break the men behind us without effort.
"Call Knox." He says it low, just for me, his lips barely moving. "The second they leave. Call Knox."
He's not surrendering. The realisation cuts through the panic like a blade. He's buying time. He knows the brotherhood will come—he just needs me safe and the call made.
"Don't do this." My voice cracks. "Garrett, please—"
His thumbs brush my cheekbones. The purr starts—faint, broken, a sound meant only for me, too low for the men to hear. He holds my face for two more seconds. Then his hands drop and he steps back.
He walks to the SUV. The older man opens the rear door. Garrett has to duck to fit inside, folding himself into a space built for men half his size, and the image guts me—a man making himself small for a cage he's chosen so the people he loves don't have to.
The doors close. The engine turns over.
I stand in the clearing with my boots in the frozen mud and my breath coming in short, sharp pulls and I watch the taillights move down the forest road.
The second they disappear around the bend, my phone is in my hand.
Knox picks up on the first ring.
"They took him, Knox." My voice holds. Wrecked, shaking, but it holds. "Three men in a black SUV heading north on the forest road toward the highway, from his cabin. They took Garrett."
Silence. One beat. Then Knox's voice, flat and certain and stripped of everything except the order underneath it:
"Stay where you are. I'll send someone to get you, and we'll go get your man."
The line goes dead.
I stand in the clearing in front of the dark cabin with the phone pressed to my chest and the cold biting through my jacket and I don't move. I don't collapse. I don't cry.
I wait.
Chapter 12
Garrett
The SUV takes the first curve too fast and my horns scrape the ceiling liner, tearing a seam in the fabric. The younger man behind the wheel flinches at the sound like he forgot what he put in his back seat.
She'll call Knox. I told her to call Knox, and she heard me. I held her face in my palms and gave her the only thing I had left to give. A plan. Two words pressed into the space between us where the purr should have been.Call Knox.She'll do it because Nina doesn't fold and she doesn't freeze and she's already dialling as the taillights clear the bend.
Knox will come. The brotherhood will come. I need to buy time.
The older man rides in the passenger seat. He turned around once after we pulled out of the clearing, looked at me the way you'd check on luggage, then faced forward. He hasn't spoken. The younger one drives, knuckles white on the wheel, his jaw set. The third man sits to my left, his shoulder pressed to the door, as far from me as the seat allows. Smart. He knows the only reason he's breathing is that Nina stood six feet away and I couldn't risk her getting caught in it.
