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“If I looked at you with anything but disgust, it was because I respected your work. I was inspired by you. And you just…” I shook my head as my throat closed up, choking off my accusations. My eyes stung, and my stomach lurched.
“I quit,” I forced out.
He took another step toward me, something like horror widening his eyes. “Allie—”
“Don’t come anywhere near me!”
He froze again. “Are you going to tell your father?” he rasped.
A strange, maddened laugh burst from my chest at the mention of my father. No, I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t trust him. He’d been lying to me my entire life. I had no idea what he was capable of. I had no idea who he truly was.
I didn’t have the words to formulate a reply. This whole situation was too sickening, too surreal.
I turned on my heel and fled, bursting out of his office into the hallway. I heard Mike call my name before I slammed the door between us. I half-ran toward the elevator, tears blurring my vision as I groped in my purse, searching for my phone. Max wouldn’t be here to pick me up until the end of the workday, but I had to get out of here. I didn’t dare go home. I was too scared to go anywhere without my dark protector.
I fumbled with my phone in the elevator, somehow managing to text him a plea to meet me outside as soon as possible. Waiting for him would be agony. Each ragged breath drove a knife deeper into my heart, the pain making my head spin. I stumbled into the square in front of the building that housed the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the place that’d been my dream and had just become a nightmare.
I was so dizzy with nausea that I didn’t see the pair of hulking men approaching me until it was too late.
“Hello, little bird,” a terribly familiar voice crooned.
The world came into sharp focus, as though a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. Twin pairs of black eyes—so eerily similar to Max’s—stared down at me. But where Max’s shone with fierce desire, the lust I saw in his cousins’ eyes was sick and twisted.
I took a step back, but a meaty hand shackled my forearm. Before I could protest or form a scream in my chest, the other twin opened his leather jacket, giving me a glimpse of the gun holstered to his side. He placed a finger over his lips, which were stretched wide in a feral grin.
My jaw locked up tight, and fear iced over my bones, freezing me in place.
“Be good and come quietly with us, or I’ll blow your pretty brains out right here,” the one with the gun threatened.
I shook my head in a sharp jerk. We were in a bustling public square. They wouldn’t dare.
“You’d be arrested,” I managed to whisper. “You can’t.”
The one holding me scowled. “It would be worth it. Max stole our birthright.” His face darkened with rage. “Better to rule in prison than be stuck serving that useless little shit.”
My heart hammered against my ribcage. Max would be here soon. If I could just stall…
He jerked on my arm, and I stumbled toward him. “Now, little bird,” he bit out.
His thick arm snaked over my shoulders, pulling me tightly to his side. The one with the gun strolled casually beside us, as though we belonged together. As though I wasn’t being stolen away in broad daylight.
I swallowed hard as they steered me toward the street, heading for a black sedan. My hands shook as we rode in tense silence; I scarcely dared to draw breath with the gun on me.
My heart leapt into my throat when I recognized the route we were taking. If we were going to my place, surely Max would find me. If he came to pick me up at work and I wasn’t there, he would come check my house. If he didn’t decide to check for me at his apartment first.
My pulse hammered in my ears. How long would it take him to realize I was gone? To guess that I might be at my place?
What could his cousins do to me in the time it took him to come?
I pressed my lips together to hold in the scream that wanted to burst from my chest. I’d be dead before I fully released it.
Max will come for me. He’ll find me.
But what might they do to him if he did try to rescue me? There were two of them, and they were huge—just as big and powerful as Max. One of them had a gun.
After what seemed an eternity but also far too soon, we arrived outside my house. The men hustled me to the door, and my flesh crawled beneath my captor’s restraining arm.
“Open it,” the other commanded when we reached my door.
