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TWELVE
Decima
The last wordsin the voicemail message rang in my ears long after the call had ended. In your possession. Retrieved by whatever means necessary. Like I was a fucking bauble the crew had stolen that should be returned to its rightful owners. I had the urge to claw the tattoo with their awful mark right off the back of my neck.
Then the image filled my mind of the shadowy figures from the other end of the phone call storming in on the crew and slaughtering them to get to me. For them to have run the kind of assignments they’d sent me on, the people behind the household must have enormous resources. Now that they knew where I was, how the hell could we escape them?
I wouldn’t be a prisoner again. I simply wouldn’t.
My ribs felt as if they’d closed in around my lungs. Dragging air into my chest was a struggle. I squeezed my hands into fists against the back seat of the car and willed myself to calm down, but it didn’t work. A faint wheeze crept into my breath.
I needed more oxygen. Somehow I couldn’t get enough.
“Dess?” Julius said. I couldn’t answer when it was taking all my concentration holding in the panic bubbling inside me.
He didn’t say my name again, only jerked the wheel to pull us over onto the shoulder. The car slammed to a halt. He and Talon burst out, both coming around to the door next to me.
“Come out,” Julius said firmly. “Get some air. Walk it off.”
I fumbled with the seatbelt and pushed myself into the open terrain. We’d stopped in a desolate strip of countryside, only patchy fields around us and forest up ahead, no buildings or other vehicles in sight. For some reason, that reassured me just a smidge.
I started walking, pacing away from the car into the tufts of grass and back again. Frantic thoughts kept whirling through my mind.
The crew went to great lengths to keep the location of their home base secret, but they weren’t completely infallible. And we couldn’t live shut away in there for the rest of our lives anyway.
What would I do if the client found us and managed to capture me again? There was no reason for Julius to risk his whole crew for a woman he’d just met. But I couldn’t let the people who’d run the household take me back. I’d die before I let those bastards touch me again.
I closed my eyes, retracing the steps my feet had already found without needing sight. Get a grip on yourself, Dess.
“He was bluffing,” Julius said with deadly certainty. “Empty threats. No one would risk coming at us head-on, if they even knew how to find us. And if they tried, we’d destroy them. We fulfilled our obligations. You were never part of the deal.”
“And now you’re part of our crew,” Talon said, simply but steadily.
Julius didn’t argue with him.
Was I? Was I really one of them now, just like that? It was hard to wrap my head around the idea. But they’d both spoken with so much confidence that the quivers of panic inside me started to subside. I dragged a deeper breath into my lungs.
“That’s right,” Julius said, somehow commanding and gentle at once. “Let yourself come through it. You’re still every bit as powerful as you were before. You won’t let those fuckers take you down. I know that.”
His words settled my nerves even more. He was right. I didn’t have to let anyone control me ever again. I decided how I lived now—or how I died, if it came to that.
I stopped a couple of feet away from the car and the two men, a shamed flush creeping over my cheeks as I met Talon’s and then Julius’s gaze. “Sorry. I don’t— I usually have more control over my emotions than that.”
“You’ve got a good reason to be particularly emotional on this subject,” Julius said. “But what I said stands. Anyone who thinks they’re going to come at you will have to get through us first, and they’ll find that a losing game.”
Could he really be so sure? He had no more idea exactly who we were up against than I did. My throat tightened, thinking of how much the crew had helped me—and what a horrible way of repaying them it would be if I got them slaughtered for their trouble.
“I wouldn’t expect you to stand up for me,” I said, keeping my own voice even so they’d know I meant it. “This is my battle, and you don’t owe me your support. If anything, I owe it to you to keep you out of it. You’d be risking your careers, even your lives.”
Julius stepped forward and gripped my hands, his gaze holding mine with a fiery fierceness searing through his deep blue eyes. “No one will ever get their hands on you again. You won’t be torn from us as easily as they seem to think. You’re a part of the crew now, and we protect our own. We kill for our own. And I say that without the slightest hesitation.”
Those words held more loyalty and devotion than anyone had ever offered me before. The heat in Julius’s eyes sent a different sort of flush over me. A connection hummed between us, electric enough to send a tingle over my skin. I wanted to sink right into it, to wrap myself in his strength and assurance.
If I leaned in and kissed him right now, how would he react?
He’d never given any clear sign that he was interested in me that way. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking for too much.
My gaze slid to the other man, the man who I knew could match my hunger even if he’d kept his own under wraps lately. Talon gazed back at me without retreating.
