He mechanically starts freeing my legs, then rubs the wounds again around my ankles.

“P-please don’t hurt me . . . !” I cry, kicking then calming down when he eases back. “Is it because of the money . . . ? I’ll get the money, I’m getting the money,” I start rambling. “My car is up for sale, I just haven’t had takers and owe half of it anyway, so I need just a little more . . . !”

He does something unexpected. He reaches for my hand and gives me a squeeze. Not an angry squeeze, a reassuring squeeze. I fall quiet. My heart skids as he keeps his hand on mine for a moment too long, until he seems to be sure I’m breathing right. He lets go. I feel his footsteps and the creak of my window, and suddenly I reach up and scramble to remove the hood.

I’m in my apartment. The shower water is running. He left . . . through the balcony and emergency stairs?

There’s blood on me. There’s blood all over me as I slide into the tub, fully dressed, and take a bath, scrubbing myself clean. Quietly crying. I went to beg those awful men for more time, and they gave me some, but I’m running out of time again. Why on earth did I ever think I could make a stupid bet and not get involved with these kinds of people? I think about asking someone for help, but I’m too proud to. I’m too proud to tell my best friend, my friends, I’m too proud to tell my parents who think I’m perfect and can do no wrong. And Greyson. For some reason thinking about him makes me most sentimental of all. He makes me feel so safe, like he could protect me from the world. Even from men like these.

But I’m too proud to let the only guy I’ve had a connection with know about this. He probably doesn’t like me that much anyway. No. It’s never like that for me. I cry quietly in the tub, feeling so dirty I never, ever want to get out.

ELEVEN

KILL

Greyson

“FUUUUCK!”

These bastards want to play around? Touch what’s mine? Then they better all. Be f**king ready. To die. Whoever sent these four to retrieve her, whoever made the call, they’re dead. And as for the ass**le C.C. brought back with us to the warehouse? I’m going to motherfucking kill him, tear him apart, limb by limb.

Hissing in pain, I stick my bleeding upper arm into running water, my eyes burning from the rage, the impotence, the pain of knowing what they were about to do to Melanie tonight.

I couldn’t even f**king talk to her. I couldn’t even tell her it was going to be all right. Because of the list, because of Zero, because he can’t be known out of the Underground; so I had to hold her in my arms and hear her sobs. I had never, ever held a crying woman before. Hear her beg me to please not hurt her, only adding fire to my already roiling gut. They were going to . . .

Goddammit, I can’t even think.

I stare at the mirror in the dingy warehouse restroom, nostrils flaring, my face pale from blood loss, my eyes brilliant with that cold gleam of death. I look deranged. I feel deranged. I pull the mirrored cabinet open and search for bandages, things clattering to the ground when I find nothing.

I press a towel tighter to the wound and try to knot it, all while unable to tame the urge to kill rushing in my blood.

I haven’t had a drop of real humanity in me since my mother left. But despite my upbringing, I wanted to tear that dirty hood off Melanie’s head, wipe her tears, look into her eyes, and command her to stop crying because it does something to destabilize me. And command her to stop shaking because it makes me shake in rage. And promise her that it’s going to be all right and the next time she’s touched, it will be by a man who wants to please her more than himself. Most ridiculous of all is that somewhere in my twisted mind, that man is me.

C.C. stalks into the bathroom of the small warehouse where he brought the sole survivor of our encounter.

“Where the f**k is he?” I yell.

“Hell, you’ve looked better. We need to stitch you up, man.”

I follow him outside to where the group of girls who usually trail after C.C. is gathered around. “Get a needle,” I tell the one I see first, then I kick a chair out from a plastic table and lean over to talk to C.C., just me and him. “Tell me he at least f**king spilled something?”

C.C.’s eyebrows furrow low. “He doesn’t seem to know who hired him.”

“What about the others?”

“I stashed the bodies. Just the lucky survivor will be getting a visit from you.”

“I wouldn’t call him lucky.” I scan our surroundings, wondering who could be after her, and why.

My father, Eric, any of the guys. Is there a hit on her? Is this my father dabbling in his own affairs after he gave me his word? Was this a warning from one of my own “loyal” brothers-in-arms?

My arm is so numb, I can’t feel it, but my skin is sticky and warm with blood and I’m so frustrated I want to kick something.

By all that’s holy in the world, if my father’s behind this, I will kill him.

I’m battling with my emotions as the brunette comes back with the needle to stitch me, and she brings a bottle of alcohol.

“Well, well, now, looks like I’ll have my hands on you after all,” she purrs. “What have we got there?”

I extend my arm as she opens the bottle of alcohol.

“It’s a nick from my girl,” I growl. “She doesn’t like it when I don’t call.” I don’t want to remember how she was sobbing and I wanted to rip off that hood . . . and do what? Reveal myself to her? Can’t do that.

The girl pours the alcohol over the wound and I bite back my reaction, gritting out, “Make it nice and tight. Small.” I tear a piece of my T-shirt and bite down on it and don’t make a sound, watching as she sews me up.

“She did good. For a princess,” C.C. tells me.

I’m in pain, and I’m still f**king fuming. I clench my teeth around the cloth.

A redhead comes and sits on my lap as her friend bandages me. “Oh, Z, we were so worried.” She licks her lips. “What do you need?”

“Mindy,” I say, spitting out the cloth. “That’s your name, right?”

She nods eagerly.

“Mindy, I’ve been teaching my girlfriend how to shoot her new gun. I don’t think she’d appreciate you sitting here.”

“Oh.” She eases off me.

“Come here, darling, I’ll give you a long, slow petting now.” C.C. edges his legs open and makes room for Mindy, eyeing me. “Girlfriend, huh? She know about it yet?”

“I’m informing her tomorrow.” I turn my attention to my best friend now. “C.C.—this could be coming from the Underground. This could have something to do with that f**king debt.” I tighten the bandage just a little more. “I need her name scratched off ASAP and I think I know how.”

“Well, you can’t let Slaughter know you so much as thought to buy her a paper or he’ll f**k with you, man. He’ll make her disappear just like he did Lana.”

“Don’t you think I f**king know that? No. I need her to have the means to pay without her ever sensing it.”

Stalking to the small bar, I pour myself two fingers of whiskey and drink, gazing at the path of my own blood on the floor. She’s too good for this, but now she’s involved. Now she’s more than a name on my list. She’s on somebody’s blacklist and I am one pissed-off motherfucker here.

“Whoever it is, they f**ked with the wrong girl.” I toss back the whiskey and pop some Vicodin back with it.

“Ah, god, I’m vastly entertained by the look on your face. I’m almost sorry for our guest.”

“Take me to him.” As I follow C.C., I ask him to get me a plane ticket to my apartment in D.C. for early morning. “Make sure I’m back by six so I can make the wedding.”

♥ ♥ ♥

THERE ARE THREE types of knives for throwing. Blade heavy. Handle heavy. Or balanced. Grip and angle are most important. Long range, you keep your wrist unbent when you throw so the knife won’t turn too much in air. Mine hardly turns, it shoots straight ahead. I used to practice on cardboard cereal boxes, then willow, birch, pine slab, hanging in the wind. Now there’s a man before me and I know exactly how to shift my weight from my dominant leg to the other to create momentum, how to swing my forearm, elbow straight out on my release. It’s not about strength, but about finesse. Little force is needed. The knife gathers strength on its own.

If you hit with the butt, you don’t change the force, only allow more or less rotation by standing back or forward. I have all this science behind my technique and I’ve never been more ready to apply it.

He’s tied to a chair, at a small corner room in the warehouse. One light flares bright over his head. He’s bleeding and swelling, but the sight of his blood isn’t enough to give me satisfaction.

He looks at me, I look at him.

His trembling increases, and it pleases me. Immensely.

I start approaching, keeping my voice low. “Who hired you?”

“I’m n-not talking, like I told your ff-friend.”

I pull open my knife roll and shoot, grazing his temple. He yelps, and I keep throwing until knives are stuck into the wall all around him, outlining his ass**le face. Then I aim for the center of his thigh. It hits.

“Fuck! Another crazy f**k? I thought you were the good one!”

“I’m sorry to break it to you, but you already met the good one.” I don’t even fake a smile, I feel nothing for this motherfucker. Not even pity. I pull out another knife and test its tip. “I’m the guy whose girl you just f**ked with, so I’m making this extra painful. I’ll be taking a little piece of your skin, one throw at a time. One ball at a time, a piece of your dick at a time. I’ll draw it out, make it slow and painful, until you tell me who hired you.”

I hit him in the tip of one finger, pinning him there. He cries out. I smile and pull out my next knife.

“Was she a surveillance?” I ask.

A lot of contracts begin as surveillance and end up as something else. I hit his next finger. He cries out and stains his pants.

“Was this ransom, kidnapping?”

He’s choking on sobs. I hear the faint sounds of traffic outside. I hear her, my big dreamy green eyes, sobbing under a f**king black hood and I clamp my jaw and send one knife that lands straight in the center of his palm. “WHO’S YOUR BOSS?” I demand.

The blood’s pouring now; but I won’t stop until the words start pouring too. Just when he’s falling asleep, numb from the pain, I quietly command C.C., “Music please. We won’t be sleeping tonight.”

♥ ♥ ♥

Four hours later

I DON’T HAVE a name.

I have a shitload of anger, a ton of f**king frustration, no sleep, some pain. But no f**king name.

We don’t know if she has a mark on her, whose target she is.

I need her off that list, and fast.

How will your pride take it if I give you the money, princess?

Will you throw it back at my face?

You will, won’t you?

Hell, I know you will . . .

Stepping into my apartment, I’m still hung up on the glimpse I got of her in bed, sleeping with a mountain of pillows on both her sides as I left her dress on the knob of her bedroom door.

She looked exquisite. Fuckable. Vulnerable. And I stood there, the blood rushing faster in my body, my c**k throbbing as much as my patched-up biceps and the left side of my chest.

Now I open up the safety deposit box and nearly yank the handle off its center. Some of our debtors are in so far they have to pay in barter. Watches, gold, jewels. Sometimes we keep “scraps” for bribing officials, anyone who gives us any trouble in any undertaking. Sometimes my father won’t take the scraps and I’m forced to provide the cash while I pawn, sell, or otherwise.

I grab a brilliant diamond necklace from one of the extras I’ve collected. Once, I thought my mother would enjoy wearing it. Now I hope, instead, that Melanie will enjoy selling it.

I’ve got that sweet little girl pegged, even if she’s a complicated little thing. In her fun little brain, it probably never occurred to her that she would lose her bet. She must’ve pictured new shoes and wardrobes in her future, and maybe, to finalize the payment for her car. Instead, now she owes her life to the Underground. To my father. To me. We have a highly elaborate team for bookkeeping and collecting all debts, organizing the fights, selling the tickets. The tamer “Underground Committee” handles the tickets and the fight organization. But it is the Slaters who handle the gambling and the funding—the collecting, and the things nobody else should ever know about.

If Melanie is like any woman I know, she’ll accept a gift from her new pursuer then say someone stole the necklace rather than tell me the truth. That she sold it to pay a debt. And that’s all right, she can lie about this. I’m lying to her too. We’ll be even. She’ll have paid her debt, learned her lesson, and won’t ever have to know I’m part of her nightmare.