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PROLOGUE
The blood in the air left a taste in the back of my mouth. Copper and familiar, like. Comforting almost. The taste of my childhood. Of Christmas and Saturday nights. Birthdays.
Poppy ran across the lawn, a ghost in the dark.
Go, I thought. Go, princess. My unspoken words were a hand at her back, pushing her faster. Further. She wouldn’t go to the Constantines. I was sure of that. She’d been rattled by Caroline’s manipulations.
I’d left my car down the road. The keys were in it. A stash of money. I had a man watching it; he would do what he could to get her into the car. Or follow her until she collapsed, and then he’d get her into the car.
Prayer had not been completely beaten out of me by the priests, and I sent whatever remained from deep in my gut heavenward. Please get in that car. Even if just to climb in the back seat and hide. Sleep off whatever Theo had drugged her with.
Up until ten minutes ago she’d been managing in the dark forest all on her own, sticking to the path like a good little girl. Theo had just been her driver. Caroline Constantine had been her kindly godmother and I’d been the wolf, taking bites out of her tender skin whenever I got the chance. But now everything was different. There was no path. Her house had been burned down. Caroline had been lying to her all along. Her driver was a spy for the Morelli’s.
She needed to get the fuck out of this forest.
But she wasn’t going to take help from the big bad wolf, I’d made sure of that.
She’d get to her sister. Poppy was smart. Capable. So fuckin’ brave. She’d get to her sister and they’d take care of each other. I’d get word to Zilla, tell her they had to vanish and Zilla would get it done.
Goodbye, princess. Godspeed.
But then, in the dark of the yard, Poppy stopped.
No. No, baby. Don’t do it.
But of course she did. She turned. Looked back at her house.
At me, standing here in the bright doorway. Well, that wasn’t totally true. She turned back to look at the man she thought I was. The man she wished I was. I’d played so hard on that, using it to bend her. Manipulate her. Get between her legs.
She didn’t know me. If she did, there’d be no looking back. Only a deep gratitude for escape.
It would be nice, though. To be the man she thought I was, even though that man was a son-of-a-bitch. A son-of-a-bitch, but not a monster, and the difference was a taste of something sweet after all these years of blood and rot.
Not for you, lad. Never was. Never can be.
The monster I truly was lifted the gun in my hand and pointed it at her. The stakes were high, and she needed to get away. From me. From all this shite. On the floor between my legs was Theo Rivers, the Morelli hit man I didn’t see coming, breathing his last. “They . . . want . . . her,” he gasped.
“They won’t ever have her,” I said. “Shut up and die, Rivers, you fuckin’ cunt. There’s nothin’ for you here.”
My eyes were still on Poppy. I imagined her in the dark. Her wide whiskey eyes. Her mouth.
Rivers laughed, the sound so absurd I looked down and found him lying in a growing pool of his own blood, more bubbling from his lips.
But he had another gun in his hand.
Pulled from a holster I hadn’t seen from under his arm, he was pointing it at Poppy. My brain was a step behind, focused on Poppy, on what could never be mine. It was my only excuse, the only reason I’d fucked this up so bad.
“Dead or alive,” he said and pulled the trigger. Rivers was former military, a sniper with an alarming number of kills. And even dying, he made the shot. In the dark of the yard, Poppy screamed and fell.
My brain blanked. I put a bullet in Theo’s and ran to Poppy, sliding through the wet grass to fall at her side. The bullet from Theo’s gun took a chunk out of her arm, a rough raw wound oozing fresh blood onto the grass. She was out cold from whatever shite Theo put in her.
Dead or Alive.
That was how the Morelli family wanted her. And the Constantines weren’t going to be much better.
I fixed things. It was my value. It was why I was alive.
But I didn’t know how to fix this.
CHAPTER ONE
Ronan
Pitch-black, the night howled. The wind rattled the shutters and swept over the chimney, creating a low moan that sounded like a wounded animal. In the hearth, the fire sputtered and then roared, sputtered and then roared again.
Dead or alive. Dead or alive.
