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Dalton creeps in closer and tries to reach for me, but I flinch away from his touch. The fresh air makes it easier to process everything that’s happened. “Come on, Firefly. You’re not safe yet. We need to get you back to Zade’s penthouse.”
My head snaps up and I straighten out, fixing Dalton with a haunting stare. “You’re fucked in the head if you think for even a second that I’m going anywhere with you assholes. Thanks, but no thanks. You did me a solid getting me out of there, but I’m done.”
Without sparing them another glance, I turn on my heel and go to stalk out of the alley, only getting a step before Zade’s strong hand curls around the back of my neck, pulling me back to him and whipping me around to meet his venomous stare. “You’re not going anywhere,” he growls, his tone so low and deep that I feel its vibrations through my chest.
My hands come up and shove him hard, exhaustion quickly creeping up on me. Zade falls back a step, his death grip on my neck released. “Screw you,” I spit, clutching the small, weathered note and shoving it into his chest, watching as he takes it and doesn’t even bother looking over it, though something tells me he’s known what was written on that note all along. “You really are fucked in the head, aren’t you? You think I’m just going to lay down and let you take my life for some bullshit ritual? Let you tear my chest open and go digging around inside? Fuck you, Zade. Anyone in their right mind would run from you, and I’m no fucking different. I’m not going to allow this to happen.”
Zade scoffs. “You really think you have a choice in the matter?” he questions, not denying it. “You’re my sacrifice, my one road to power. I’m not about to let you slip through my fingers again. There is no way out for you. You don’t get to just walk away. Your heart is my fate and you better fucking believe that I’m going to grip it with both hands and tear it right out of your fucking chest.”
I back up a step, my heart racing with fear, feeling as though my back is up against the wall. Desperation pounds through me, and my hands shake with the realization of just how brutal this is going to be. The only way out for me is a slow, violent death. Only, it doesn’t have to be that way . . .
With a disturbing desperation pulsing through my veins, my hand whips out and clutches the gun at Sawyer’s back, my hand curling around the cool metal as I hastily back up a few steps. My eyes go wide, and I lock my haunted stare on Zade’s as I lift the gun to my temple. “You’ll never fucking have me,” I tell him, a tear rolling down my cheek. “If my choices are being brutally slaughtered by you or killing myself in a humane way, then I choose me. Every damn time.”
Dalton springs toward me, fear in his eyes. “No, no, no, no,” he panics, as Sawyer lunges. But I squeeze the trigger before they can get to me, more than ready to end it all.
The gun clicks, and my eyes spring open just as Sawyer’s hand wraps around mine and takes the gun away, guilt heavy in his eyes as if knowing I would have done exactly that.
“What—”
“So fucking predictable,” Zade says, striding toward me as the tears flow freely down my cheeks. “The second I realized you knew about the ritual, I knew you would try to take yourself out. I knew you would try to steal this away from me, but I hoped you wouldn’t be that fucking stupid. Getting away from me isn’t going to be that easy, Oakley.”
He steps right up to me, his fingers brushing up my arm and across my collarbone before curling around the base of my throat. He uses his thumb to force my chin up, meeting my horrified stare. “I’m not ready to die.”
“I know,” he tells me. “But you will.”
I shake my head, not ready to come to terms with this as he releases his hold on my throat, confident that I’m not about to run. I have to fight, have to find a way to survive. “So I’m just supposed to go with you and accept that my life is over? Succumb to this ritual and give my life for you? What’s in it for me?” I cry. “I’m not even twenty-one. I haven’t lived yet.”
Glancing around the boys, I see regret in Easton’s stare, devastation in Dalton’s, and guilt in Sawyer’s, but Zade . . . he’s stone cold—the cruel, callous leader he was always meant to be.
