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Chip unbuttons his shirt as he approaches, tearing the garment off and throwing it aside.

He flexes his biceps. “You’re going down, Cage. Might even fuck her in front of you.”

Those words seal his fate.

As Chip rolls his shoulders and bounces on his feet, I simply stare at him, letting his comments fuel rage I’ve spent years controlling. Anger can get you killed if you don’t harness it, and mine has been leashed for far too fucking long.

“You ready, Chip?” Felton asks.

“Born ready!” He flexes again, roaring into the night sky like a fucking prick before coming to stand in front of me. He smells like sweat, whiskey and tobacco.

Training prepared me for this. At the beginning, when I’d stand on a mat across from a fellow recruit, my heart was a freight train. Panic would claw at my muscles. Anxiety would muddy my thoughts. While I had the physical strength, my control was nonexistent.

I’m a different man now.

I’m fast. Strong. Quickest in my class. Smartest, too. I outshine my colleagues because my world is this job and doing the right thing. Fixing things that can be fixed. Erasing people who have no business existing in our world.

Chip is one of those men.

“Ten-second countdown,” Felton says.

I clench and unclench my fists, picturing Chip’s victims. Stolen women. Used. Abused. Broken. Killed. Lost without a trace all so he can line his bank account.

“You know what I’m gonna do to her when I win her?” Chip grumbles at me. “I’m gonna⁠—”

Felton shouts, “Fight!”

I grip Chip’s head and twist.

His neck snaps, and he drops to the ground in a heap.

Chapter 3

Cage

“You’ll come back, right?”

“I … I don’t know.”

Sunday’s eyes gleam, and a tear slips down her cheek. “But you said⁠—”

“Things are different now.” I snatch my bag off the bed, and she follows me down the stairs of a home I’ll never come back to.

“Cole.”

“I’ll call you.” I reach for the door handle, desperate to get out of these four walls before they close in on me.

“Cole!” Sunday cries and I pause. Tears burn my eyes and block my throat, but I’ve cried enough, and it’s fucking pointless. It doesn’t turn back time or make hearts beat again. I turn, and Sunday is midway down the stairs, tears shining on her cheeks. “Promise you’ll come back for me.”

My grip on my bag becomes almost painful.

I’m twenty-two. A kid, my uncle says. Too young to decide the rest of my life, even though I now know how short it is.

I love this girl. I know I do. It’s the only thing I’m sure of anymore, but maybe that was the old Cole. The one who had hope. The one that hadn’t lost everything.

Structure has to help. The military is the right step … it has to be.

Before I spiral. Before the grief sets in and I ruin myself and her.