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Chapter One
Kenz
Sometimes my brain stopped working—it took one look at the situation I found myself in and just fucked right off. It had happened when I’d found out about the murder of my mother and sister, again when my father had tried to kill me and it happened again now, as I faced a man I’d trusted, one I’d relied on, only to realize that he’d been behind everything I’d suffered recently.
“So we officially meet,” Grisham said, taking his phone from his ear, a soft smile on his face as though he didn’t truly mind being exposed. “I didn’t expect you to be the one to figure it out.”
“How could you?” I whispered, trembles running through my body, fear swamping me as I tried to connect the man who had helped me so often with the monster I’d heard about, the nightmare from my dreams.
He tilted his head, making no attempt to rise or do anything but stare back at me. “I’ve already told you—you just didn’t read between the lines. I saw your work at the entrance exhibit, and I knew, right away, that you were the one for me.”
I took two steps closer and slammed my palm on the top of his desk. “You didn’t evenknowme! If you actually gave a damn, why didn’t you do something normal like ask me out? What sort of psychotic idiot has their soulmate abducted and sold at an auction?”
His chuckle came out soft and unconcerned. It forced me to look into his eyes, the ones I thought I’d known, and recognize an overwhelming emptiness in them. They seemed to lack a part, as though a vital piece of him had gone missing at some point.
Or maybe he’d never had that piece at all.
“I tried to get closer, but you never allowed anyone near. You had a wall up no matter what I did, kept me at a distance that I couldn’t cross. We aresoulmates,Kenz, and if you only give yourself the time and space to recognize it, you’ll see it, too.”
A click behind me made me freeze. The safety of a gun flipping off was a sound no person ever really forgot.
Grisham—Lorien?—peered over my shoulder but no change to his expression suggested he worried at all.
“It was you all along?” Hayden asked, rage in his voice that terrified me as much as the man before me.
“You were so close,” Lorien said with a laugh, “but you never saw it. You never managed to put the pieces together to find me. Sometimes, I wondered if you and the others’ incompetence was a sign that you didn’t really want to find me. The four of you should have managed it, yet in five years, you’ve never gotten close enough for it to matter.”
“Who cares?” Hayden fully entered the office, then shut the door without ever removing his gaze from Grisham. “A bullet between your eyes doesn’t require much time, after all.”
Grisham shrugged and sat back in his chair. “You won’t shoot me.”
“Do you really think that? After what you’ve done? After I’ve chased you this long?”
“You’re smarter than that. If you couldn’t find solid proof about me, do you think the police will? Or do you think that if you kill me here, in my office, in a place where others will come quickly at the noise,you’llbe held responsible as a murderer?”
“So? I’m ready to throw my life away,” Hayden assured him, no hesitation in his voice.
It brought back the same crushing pain from last night, the realization that the men I loved didn’t value or even want their lives.
“But are you ready to throw hers away?” Grisham gestured toward me.
He sure knows where to aim that threat.
Hayden hesitated, his lips pressing together, but he didn’t lower his gun.
Grisham’s smile spread wider. “Kenz has enjoyed a quiet life this last year because her existence isn’t widely known. If anything happens to me, her identity will get out. I have ensured that every person who might wish to make use of her will knoweverythingabout her. Her ability to live as she wishes will disappear if that happens, assuming she survives it.”
Hayden lifted his lip, a look of pure disgust on his face. “And you claim you love her, that you’re soulmates, but you would do that to her?”
“I’m a practical man. We’re soulmates, and that means if I go, her time should come soon after. Besides, if something happens to me, do you think my mother would sit back quietly? She may be a meek woman, but mothers are notoriously vicious. If I’m harmed, she will set her sights not only on Kenz herself but on those Kenz cares about as well. I know you don’t value your own life, but you are far too easy to predict, and you’ll value the life of others.”
My stomach rolled as I thought about Nem in danger because of me. Not just her—she was tough, as were the Quad—but others. What about Sasha? What about those who worked for my sister? I’d lived in this world long enough to know exactly how much death came from a real war, when there were no innocents—just the victors and the dead.
Hayden still didn’t lower his gun, but the look in his gaze said he’d taken the threat seriously. “So what now?”
“Now we appear to be at an impasse, don’t we? We both have something to hold over the head of the other. It seems we are at a standoff at the moment.” Grisham moved his gaze from Hayden to me, and I had to fight the desire to take a step away from the intensity of it. “I am not backing down. Iwillhave Kenz.”
“I’m not something to own,” I whispered.
