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Daisy—Rose—sniffs beside me. I want to hold her in my arms to block out the world and slay every fucker who ever hurt her.
“I know you’ll have questions,” she murmurs. Her earlier confidence vanishes as she hangs her head. Her mind is transported elsewhere, a dark place where I can’t reach her. “It’s a… long story.”
A tear slides down her cheek. I wipe it away and see Seb’s eyes narrow in the rearview mirror like he wants to tear someone’s throat out. I can’t decide whether his anger is directed at me, or whoever caused her pain. Probably both.
“You don’t have to tell us now,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulder to pull her close. She doesn’t resist and snuggles into my chest. She fits perfectly. “But you don’t have to worry. No one will hurt you when you’re with us. Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
Seb’s cheeks redden. Having the dead woman of your dreams come back to life is as shocking as finding out she’s the mysterious redhead who’s been driving him crazy for the past few weeks. Right now, that doesn’t matter. She’s alive, and I won’t let anything happen to her again.
“I don’t want to piss on your parade,” Callen says, “but aren’t you forgetting about Bram? We were supposed to be leaving there with him, not a piece of resurrected pussy. Those bastards still have him.”
“Those bastards you shot at,” Seb corrects. “You broke the rules.”
“Rules are meant to be broken.” Callen rolls his eyes in his usual infuriating way. Sometimes I question why I employed him at all. “Rose knows all about breaking the rules, don’t you?”
“Go to hell,” she snarls viciously. There’s a glimpse of the fiery woman I met at the bar five years ago. The woman I fell in love with at first sight.
Seb snorts, and Callen opens his mouth to retaliate, but I shoot him a menacing glare to silence him. He needs to be careful, or I’ll break my own rules and plant a bullet in his chest.
“You know they’re going to be looking for us now,” Seb says, taking a sharp turn onto our street.
“Who arethey?” Rose asks. Her face pales as reality sinks in. “Are you guys in the mafia, or something? What the hell have you got me into?”
“Something I hoped you’d never find out about,” Seb replies. “We’re nearly there now.”
Rose straightens, nervously peering out of the back window to check whether we’re being followed. We’re not. Seb will have made sure of that.
We pull up outside the nondescript grey brick building behind a uniform hedge that’s become our home and base.
She cranes her neck to get a better look. “Where are we?”
“Our house,” Seb answers. “The Dukes’ house.”
“The Dukes?” Her eyebrows dip in confusion. “But you don’t have a royal title.”
“We may not be royal,” I say. Seb coughs, and I add, “Well, not all of us. Still, we do have a title. I’ll tell you everything when we’re inside.”
“Yeah, because that’s a great fucking idea,” Callen mutters.
I ignore him.
We haven’t got Bram back, although one positive has come from today’s fiasco: history is repeating itself. A chance encounter at a bar five years ago changed everything. When we met, she drew me in like a magnet. For the longest time, I tried to convince myself I imagined it. People told me I was crazy for thinking one kiss altered the course of my entire life, but I knew she was the one then, and I feel it now, too. I won’t let our second chance slip away.
CHAPTER2
SEB
She’s nestled in Freddie’s arms. I’ve never wanted to fight my best friend and the man who gave my life a true purpose… until now.
I check that no one is following us before turning. We’re all clear. I drive down the slope into our underground garage. We’ve installed a system that recognises our vehicles, and a giant sliding door automatically opens to reveal a line of them. Some are rotating on plates built into the floor. It’s some serious Batman-level shit. What can I say? We like cars. There’s also a soundproof torture chamber hidden behind a wall that used to be a wine cellar, but Rose doesn’t need to know about that.
Her voice shifts a few octaves higher than usual as she looks around and asks, “This is where you live? All of you?”
She’s nervous—panicked, even—though she tries to hide it. This is why we don’t get emotionally involved with anyone outside of the Dukes. It’s too dangerous, but it’s too late to worry about that now. The Killers Club has already seen us with Rose. We’ve put a target on her back and have no choice but to let her into the dark part of our double lives.
“Let me show you around,” Freddie says. His reassuring and level-headed tone calms her, showing a different side to him. The man who always has a plan has thrown out our rulebook. He gets out and holds the door open for her, offering her his hand. “You’re going to be safe here.”
