I kicked and punched. I wasn’t making anything easy for these jerks.
“Get a hold of her,” Goon Two snapped as he moved closer.
“I’m trying.”
Goon Two slammed a punch into my face.
I staggered and saw stars. Blood pooled in my mouth.
I threw a hand out and it closed on the lamp on the desk. Yanking it hard, I threw it at the closest thug. It smashed into his head and he let out a string of curses.
He hit me again and I slammed backward into the wall beside the TV. Pain rocketed through my head, then I fell onto my hands and knees.
I watched my blood drip onto the carpet.
Then one of them kicked me.
With a cry, I curled into a ball, trying to protect my stomach.
“Get her,” one of them growled. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”
The other one dragged me up.
My head throbbed and the metallic taste of my own blood was on my tongue.
Despair flooded me.
I knew better than to believe I could have a different life. To hope for more.
Life always dragged me back down.
With a goon on either side of me, they half dragged me to the door.
There would be no fresh start for me.
CHAPTER 6
COLE
Iswirled the bourbon around in my glass, the ice clinking against the crystal. I was sitting in my dark living room, just me and the demons in my head. The clock on the wall was ticking, the sound loud in the room.
Usually, I’d be assaulted by memories. Of Delta Team. Both the good memories and the bad. I had so many memories of us laughing and joking. Zillman had possessed a real knack for bad jokes. But I could never get their deaths out of my head. Watching them ripped to shreds by bullets, hearing their groans and shouts. My own pain roaring through me as I tried to get to them.
I’d been shot three times and slashed in the face that night. After the shooters—all members of a drug cartel—had left, I’d crawled to each of my friends. They were all dead and dying. The best men I knew betrayed and led into an ambush. I hadn’t even been able to recognize Green. Zillman had been torn up by the bullets. I’d heard Ramirez’s final rattling breath. It had taken him painful minutes to die.
I’d dragged myself out of there. Covered in their blood, knowing that the client who’d hired us had sold us out. The threemen who’d been like my brothers had bled out in the dirt in the middle of nowhere Mexico.
I took a huge sip of my drink, barely registering the burn.
But tonight, it wasn’t memories of the guys haunting me.
All I could think of was velvet-brown eyes, generous curves, and a pretty smile. I wondered what that red-brown hair would look like on my pillow. What sounds Lili would make if my hand or mouth was between her legs.
“Fuck.” Lifting the glass, I downed the rest of the bourbon.
I sensed movement to my right and tensed. Landon emerged from the shadows, and I huffed out a breath. “Sneaking up on me could get you killed.”
He snorted and crossed his arms. “I know Darkwolf likes to hunt his prey, he doesn’t rush to kill.”
