The more I inhaled the sicker I felt, and soon I was gagging and then breathing faster and faster, trying not to throw up. That’s when I tried to move, tried to curl in on myself, cover my nose and mouth with my hand.

And found I couldn’t.

My wrists were bound together.

Confused, I tried to bring my arms up, my legs jerked instead. Now panicking, I tried to lift my arms again toward my head, pulling harder this time and again my legs jerked.

I was hog-tied.

Why was I hog-tied?

“Honey, I wouldn’t be movin’ around too much if I were you. The last man who was in your predicament is still there. What’s left of him, anyway. Some dead animals too.”

I jerked toward the familiar voice, realizing instantly what had happened. The woman in the parking lot, the fear, the exploding pain in my head…

And with my memories came awareness of my surroundings, and suddenly I could feel everything. The slimy surface beneath my cheek, the searing pain in the back of my head, my hair matted, sticking to my neck and…oh god, the smell.

The last man who was in your predicament is still there. What’s left of him, anyway. Some dead animals too.

Oh my god, oh my god, no, no, oh my god, what was I lying near and that smell, oh my god.

What was that on my leg? Was something crawling on me?

My stomach heaved and more tears burned in my eyes as I fought with my body, knowing that if I threw up, I’d end up lying in it, along with whatever else, whomever else I was lying in.

“Why are you doing this?” I rasped, my mouth dry, my tongue grating painfully against the roof of my mouth.

“Nothin’ personal against you, boo, you seem like a nice little girl. Real pretty too. But it’s your daddy I’m wantin’.”

“He’ll give you whatever you want,” I choked out. “He has money, he’ll—”

“I don’t want his money, baby, I want him. Almost three years ago, your daddy killed my big brother. It’s time he paid up.”

“Are you going to kill me?” I whispered, already knowing the answer.

“Like I said, honey, it’s nothin’ personal.”

It was nothing personal? Was she for real? She’d knocked me out and kidnapped me all so she could get to my father, to kill him. Whether she planned on killing me in front of him or after she’d killed him, I didn’t know. Either way, it was personal. It was very fucking personal.

And if my father failed at whatever his plan was, because by now I knew he would have one, I was going to die. This was it; I was only going to get twenty-one years.

And all I could think about was out of my twenty-one years of life, I’d only gotten to spend a week of it with Ripper. Secret moments here and there, scattered throughout our summer together, and one single, solitary week.

How was this fair?

He’d just come back to me.

Everything had been falling into place.

And now, I was going to lose everything.

The first sign that something was very wrong was my heart rate. I was already terrified, my pulse racing, but something more was happening. I was suddenly burning up, sweating and shivering, my already aching head began to pound, harder and harder. It felt as if I could feel my heart beating in every limb, beating faster and faster.

I started spinning, the darkness of the room, the inability to see worsening the churning nausea. I needed to turn my body, needed to move, needed something, needed to do something, anything, this couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t end like this, not before I really had a chance to live.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was caving in, my ribs cracking and my heart pounding, exploding, and I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating, gasping for air, choking on the rising bile in my throat.

Desperate, I tried to move, pulling painfully on my wrists and ankles, the binds chafing, burning through my skin, and still it only worsened, the need to get away, to get away, to get away, the need to live…

I had to live.

I had to see him.

I had to tell him I loved him.

I had to live.

• • •

Ripper pulled up to the same grouping of condominiums at the edge of town where he’d last met with Mama Vi. Killing his engine, he toed the kickstand down and looked around. The run-down stretch of building was dark, the lawn still overgrown; nothing had changed since the last time he’d been here. And he saw no sign of Mama Vi or Danny.

Now what?

This was where the bitch had told Deuce to meet her. So where the fuck was she? Their plan wasn’t going to work if she’d lied about her location; if it had been her plan from the get-go to fuck with Deuce, take Danny, kill her off-site and then dump her body.

Holy fuck him, he was going to throw up.

That crazy bitch had his girl. That crazy, fucked-in-the-head, sick bitch had his Danny.

And all he could think about was Frankie, what Frankie had done to him, and what Mama Vi was capable of, might be, probably was, doing to…Danny.

Keep your shit together.

Keep your fucking shit together.

With a shaking hand, he pulled his phone out of his cut and texted Deuce.

Got nothing. Going inside. Wait for my signal.

He put his phone away and got up off his bike.

He was halfway down the walkway when the front door of the first condo swung open and Mama Vi stepped outside and smiled at him. All red lips and white teeth. He wanted to vomit.

“Drop the toys.”

Glaring at her, he pulled both his nines from his leathers, his blade from his boot, and tossed them off to the side.

“White boy, you take me for a damn fool? I said drop your toys. Phone too.”

Fuck.

“Got nothin’ left,” he said, after tossing his phone aside.

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured, obviously not believing him. “Wasn’t expectin’ you, scarface.”

“Yeah,” he growled. “But me is who you’re gettin’.”

“Ain’t no good, honey. You’re just another piece of meat I’m gonna be slicin’ up to get to that prez of yours.”

“Where’s Danny?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “Around. Where’s Deuce?”

He gritted his teeth. Where was Deuce? Hopefully, he was ten seconds away from ripping this bitch’s heart out through her asshole. But in all probability he was still halfway down the road waiting for the text message Ripper couldn’t send him.

“Where. Is. Danny,” he repeated, straining his ears, trying to pick up on any noise that might be coming from behind Mama Vi.

Cocking her head to one side, she gave him a lazy smile.

“You’re shakin’, honey. This personal for you?”

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

Holding up one obscenely long red fingernail, she mmm-hmm’ed him, her finger swinging back and forth like a goddamn metronome.

“I got your girl inside, don’t I?”

He was fucked. He’d fucked their entire game plan straight to shit within seconds. He was so damn strung out, he’d lost the only edge he’d had. That he wasn’t Deuce and didn’t love Danny.

Only he did. And he couldn’t hide it. Worry, gut-wrenching fear, a desperate need to see her, touch her, to fucking know that she was still breathing, was radiating out of him in thick, palpable, suffocating waves.

So, now what? More than likely he’d just gotten Danny and himself killed.

So, yeah, now what?

Thinking fast, he said the first thing that came to mind.

“Deuce ain’t comin’, nobody is,” he told her. “He wouldn’t risk the club for this bullshit.”

Mama Vi lost her smile. “You’re lying.”

Spreading his arms wide, he shook his head. “Wish I was. He didn’t even want me comin’. But you’re right, that’s my girl you got and she’s why I’m here.”

It happened fast, too fast. She spun away, disappearing inside the dark condo, leaving him momentarily startled. It took precious seconds for his brain to compute what had happened and then he was lunging for his guns and phone.

But he wasn’t fast enough, and Mama Vi was shoving Danny through the doorway just as he was straightening.

“Drop ’em,” she spat.

He dropped them.

This was the second time he was witnessing a gun being held to Danny.

It was two times too many.

Ripper scanned Danny quickly, looking for injuries. She was a mess. Covered head-to-toe in filth, shaking and crying.

He zeroed in on her bound wrists and the long stretch of freshly sliced rope that Mama Vi was holding in her hands. She’d hog-tied her. She’d fucking hog-tied Danny and now the bitch was holding his woman on a leash as if she were a fucking dog.

Being tied up like an animal, being demeaned, seeing Danny like this, knowing how it felt, knowing how scared she was, was killing him. It took every last bit of willpower he had not to charge Mama Vi.

If he didn’t get to kill her in this life, he’d find her in the next. And she would suffer.

“I lost everything,” Mama Vi hissed, shoving Danny forward. “My crew, my brother, everything…and if I can’t get to Deuce, the least I can do is make good on my promise to you.”

“Bitch,” he growled. “You already have.”

She laughed. “You think?”

Ripper was quickly losing hope that Danny was going to come out of this alive. Plan A had failed, Plan B hadn’t worked, and now all he had left was the hope that his brothers were here, somewhere, waiting to pounce.

Otherwise, they were both fucked.

“You want her?” Mama Vi asked, stroking the barrel of her gun up and down Danny’s cheek.

He did. He wanted Danny in more ways than this bitch would ever know, would ever be capable of understanding.

“Yes,” he said, his voice breaking.

Grinning, she gestured to the muddy, weed-ridden lawn beneath him. “Beg.”

Beg.

He didn’t know the first thing about how to beg. What did he say? Please? Fuck that. Danny deserved more than empty pleas.

Especially if this was the last time he had with her.

He fell to his knees.

“I love her,” he rasped, his eyes on Danny. “You want me to beg, I’ll fuckin’ beg. I’ll do whatever I gotta do if it means she keeps breathin’.”

Danny choked on a hiccupping sob and broke into a fresh wave of tears.

“Let her go,” he pleaded. “You’re hard up for blood, you want someone to blame, you blame me. I ain’t runnin’.”

He stared hard at Danny. “I ain’t runnin’,” he repeated.

Danny’s breath left her in shuddering spurts. “No…” she whimpered breathlessly. “Ripper…no…”

“Ain’t that sweet,” Mama Vi sneered. “Some real Romeo and Juliet vibes I’m feelin’.”

Ripper caught the small movement, Mama Vi’s thumb gliding along the hammer of her gun with killer precision. Not even Danny, whose ear was no more than a few inches from the weapon, heard the mostly silent click, only a lethally skilled gravedigger could pull off.

He saw it, he knew what was about to go down, knew there was nothing he could do about it.

In the midst of his terror, there was a sudden sense of peace. Danny was going to die, yeah, but there wasn’t anywhere in hell or on earth that he’d be living one day without her. Either Mama Vi was going to take him out next or he’d do it himself.

And knowing that—knowing that it was over, knowing they were done here, but also knowing that he’d follow Danny anywhere, that even in death, he knew they’d never truly be done, he found his peace.

What they had was some real forever kind of bullshit.

So he stared at Danny, held her gaze, making sure she knew it all, everything he felt; trying to tell her that none of it, not one fucking second had been a mistake. That he’d do it over again, all of it, even what he’d gone through with Frankie if it meant he’d end up at her senior prom, she’d end up in his bed, and the two of them would end up forever changed.

He would end up forever changed. A better man.

She’d done that.

I love you, beautiful girl.

Her chin wobbled.

I love you, too.

There it was.

Everything that mattered.

Danny.

Him.

And peace.

He was so consumed by her, ready to die alongside her, that he never saw them coming.

Which, in the end, worked out just fine. Because he was so focused on Danny and Mama Vi was focused on him, she never saw them coming either.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN