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The guy yelped, but I’d already yanked the door shut. Jamming the lock in place, I tossed myself into the driver’s seat, pushed the key into the ignition, and slammed my bare foot down on the gas pedal.
The car tore down the street, tires screeching as I avoided a parked truck just ahead. I sped around one corner and then another, weaving back and forth, nothing in my head except getting the fuck away from the guns and the blood.
Well, the guns, anyway. There was plenty of blood here, spilling down my arm from where the bullet had gouged it. My head started to spin.
Where the hell did I go now? What the hell had justhappened? Colt and his men—they’d just killed my whole family—he’d tried to killme—
Had this been his plan all along? Some kind of long game to wipe out the leadership of the Claws? He’d been playing me—and Dad—for the entire year of our engagement?
My stomach churned, but only some of the nausea was thanks to the pain burning through my arm. I’d trusted Colt. Not completely, but enough to be willing, even happy, to tie my life to his. He’d acted as if he cared about me. I’d pictured a whole future with him.
And now it was gone in a hail of gunfire.
I’d had no love for my father, and I couldn’t say I’d liked most of the rest of my family either, but I hadn’t wanted themslaughtered. And Grandma… A lump swelled in my throat, my vision blurring with tears.
As I blinked them away, anger crept up through the grief. It expanded through my chest, searing almost as hot as the gunshot wound.
Howdarehe? How dare that snake turn this night into a massacre, steal my entire family from me—shitty as most of them were—and for what? If I got my hands on Colt…
My knuckles ached from gripping the steering wheel. My arm throbbed, more blood streaking down it. I blinked harder and refocused on my surroundings as well as I could through my growing wooziness. I’d been driving without paying attention for who knew how long.
I’d ended up in Paradise City, the jewel of Paradise Bend County. Skyscrapers towered on either side of me. And up ahead loomed the big hill at the north end of town with its massive white mansions, aglow now with the gleam of their security lights…
When I was a kid, Dad had driven me up there sometimes to point out the biggest mansion, smack in the middle. “That’s where the people who rule all of Paradise Bend live, Mercy. The Nobles. Play our cards right, and one day we might be half as posh as they are.” Then he’d laugh.
I’d never been sure what the joke was.
A plan formed in my pain-addled mind. I turned at the next intersection and cruised past polished storefronts followed by increasingly overblown houses.
People who figured they were somebody lived in Paradise City. The rest of us got stuck with the Bend, the sprawl of grungy suburbs and smaller towns that bled into one another in a loose arc around the city—so close and yet so far from Paradise. But I’d bet there were just as many assholes here as there. At least we knew what we were.
As I aimed the car up the steep slope that led to the peak of the hill, a wave of dizziness swept over me. I clenched my jaw against it and rammed my foot farther down on the gas. The engine grumbled, but we made it to the top.
My father had battered enough sense into me that I parked three houses down from the Nobles’ grand mansion rather than right out front, because at this point the car was basically a moving crime scene along with being stolen. My thigh stuck to the seat for a second before I peeled myself out; the whole side of my lovely dress was soaked with my blood. I staggered a little on the asphalt.
There wouldn’t have been anywhere to park in front of the Nobles’ house anyway. Sedans and sports cars cluttered the broad driveway and both sides of the street almost as far as my car. Tuning out the pain in my arm and the trickle of blood over my skin, I gathered myself as well as I could and strode across the expansive lawn to the front door, which stood half open.
These were the people who ruled all of Paradise Bend. If anyone could crush Colt into the smithereens he deserved, it was the Nobles.
The faint bass of a rock song thumped through the doorway, hitting me at full force the moment I stepped into the foyer. People milled around—men and women bobbing with the music, waving glasses around, mashing their faces together and sometimes their hips too. A few older guys stood stern-faced watching the crowd.
I avoided them, melding into the mass of bodies. None of the partiers seemed to notice my seeping wound or the blood saturating my dress. Too caught up in their posh, powerful lives, huh?
These idiots couldn’t help me. I needed the actual Nobles. Dad had pointed the father and heir out to me once a few years back when we’d crossed paths with them at a distance. Fancy suits, fiery auburn hair, faces like carved marble.Rich pricks, I’d thought at the time, but I’d also committed their names to memory. You never knew when a stray tidbit Dad or any of the other Claws dropped might come in handy.
I dragged those names out of my whirling head. Ezra. Ezra Noble. He was the big boss. And the son—
I stepped through another doorway, and my gaze latched onto a head of tousled auburn hair. Speak of the devil. My lips curled into a wobbly smile.
Wylder. That was him. He was bent over a pool table right now, lining up a shot. No suit jacket tonight, just a navy-blue button-up with the sleeves rolled up over his muscular forearms, brawny shoulders flexing in a way that would make a lesser woman want to run her hands all over them. I had more important things to take care of tonight.
As I wove through the spectators to the table, the guy landed his shot and straightened up into a cocky pose. The man next to him, a handsome hulk with cropped black hair, shot him a grin. A skinny blonde in a dress that covered more of her arms than her boobs shimmied where she’d decided to dance stripper-style on the edge of the table. The guys didn’t seem to be paying much attention to her, but she glowered at me.
I ignored her too and marched straight up to Wylder. Or maybe it was more a sway. The floor was getting tipsy on me.
“Wylder Noble,” I demanded, prodding him in the arm with a determined finger.
The guy turned, his eyebrows rising. Fuck, he was stunning up close. Blazing green eyes, sculpted jaw, nose just a tad crooked so he was perfectly imperfect. That kind of face should be illegal.
“You want something?” he said coolly, and another surge of dizziness rose up over me, fogging the edges of my vision. Wylder’s gaze dropped to my dress, and a flash of something beyond calculated boredom crossed his expression. Probably peeved I was bleeding all over his swanky floor.
“I need to talk to you,” I announced. “Now.”
Which might have gotten me farther if the world hadn’t closed in on me completely then. My legs gave, and everything went black.
