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“June. Open your mouth.”
“Fuck you!”
His hand grips my jaw, fingers pressing into the hinges until my mouth opens involuntarily. The gag slides in. I try to spit it out, but he’s already fastening the strap behind my head, pulling it tight. The silicone fills my mouth, pressing my tongue down, making it impossible to form words.
I scream anyway. Or try to. What comes out is a muffled, desperate sound that doesn’t carry past the motel room walls.
“I know you’re angry,” he says, smoothing my hair back from my face with a gentleness that makes me want to vomit. “I know you think I’m betraying you. But you’ll understand eventually. When this is all over and we’re safe and we have that life you want, you’ll see that I did this because I love you. Because I know what’s best for us.”
I scream again into the gag. Thrash against the restraints. My wrists are already aching from pulling against the cuffs.
“I’ll be back in a few hours. The meeting with Moose won’t take long. We’ll hash out the details, make sure we’re both clear on the arrangement, and then I’ll come back here and we’ll talk. Properly. Like adults.” He leans down and presses a kiss to my forehead. “I love you, June. Never forget that.”
Then he’s moving away. Picking up his phone from the dresser. Pulling on his jeans, his shirt, and his boots. Getting dressed like this is just another day. Like he hasn’t just tied up the woman he claims to love and left her helpless while he goes to make a deal with murderers.
He pauses at the door, looking back at me one more time.
“This is for the best,” he says. “You’ll see.”
Then he’s gone.
The door closes with a soft click. The lock engages. And I’m alone.
Bound, gagged, crying so hard I can barely breathe through my nose. The sobs tear through my chest, but the gag swallows most of the sound. My wrists burn. My shoulders ache from being stretched above my head. The t-shirt has ridden up completely now, and I’m exposed and helpless and everything I feared about Dylan — about Wraith — has just proven true.
He never changed. New Dylan was just another mask. Another way to control me. Another manipulation dressed up as love.
And I fell for it.
I let him inside my body and my heart and my dreams, and he used all of it against me.
This is what I get for trusting him. For believing in second chances. For thinking New June could have something good.
I pull against the restraints one more time. They don’t give. Don’t even creak. They just hold me exactly where he put me, exactly how he wanted me.
Helpless. Silent. Controlled.
Old June all over again.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Wraith
The parking lot asphalt is rough under my boots when I walk to the truck. My hands are shaking. Not from fear — I know what fear feels like, know the metallic taste it leaves in your mouth, the way it makes your peripheral vision go sharp — but from something else. Something that feels like my chest has been hollowed out with a dull blade. June’s muffled screams are still echoing in my head, the sound she made when I fastened the gag, the way she thrashed against the restraints. The way she looked at me.
Like I was a monster.
Like Old Dylan had never left at all.
But that’s not what this is.
I unlock the truck and climb in. The driver’s seat is cold through my jeans. My reflection stares back at me from the rearview mirror. I see gray eyes that look too dark in the sodium light, jaw tight enough to crack teeth.
I look away.
This is protection. Love. Making the hard choice because she can’t see past her own idealism to understand what testifying would actually mean. Years of trials. Her face plastered everywhere. Every Sons associate with a grudge and a gun knowing exactly who to hunt. She thinks the Devils can protect her, but protection only works until it doesn’t. Until someone gets sloppy or desperate or just lucky enough to slip past the guards and put a bullet in her head while she’s sleeping.
I love her and I can’t let that happen.
