I rounded the end of the bed, approaching her like she was a wild animal that’d been backed into a corner. “What are you saying? Who found you?”
A distressed sob raked from her throat and ricocheted against the walls. “He found us, Jud. Carlo. He found us.”
She may as well have bashed me with a sledgehammer. The way pain splintered through my head. I stumbled and my knees locked.
Sickness, hatred, and dread coiled through the room. A vortex that would suck us in and consume.
“Did you say Carlo? What are you saying, Salem? Tell me you’re not saying what I think you are.” The demand cracked through the heated air.
Carlo.
Marcello’s piece of shit older brother.
He was the family head. The one who’d called the shots. Gave the orders. He was the one I’d thought I’d have to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for, sure he’d be back for revenge. Thinking one day he’d come for me. Instead, the coward had up and disappeared after it’d all gone down.
The bastard who’d had his wife and babies killed. The one who was responsible for the deaths of the two officers posted to guard them. Not to mention his brother and two of his men who had been found on the scene—only those three had been compliments of me.
Carlo was one of LA’s most wanted. As far as I knew, he’d become dust. Vapor. There had been no sign of him for the last four years.
She backed away. “Did you do this? Oh my god, did you do this? Trap us?”
A disorder blustered through her words, and my brow pinched in pained confusion. “What the fuck are you talking about, Salem? Tell me what the hell you are saying. I would never hurt you. I love you. I fucking love you. Please, tell me what is happening.”
She gasped against my words then rushed for her purse, and she tossed out the words like they made perfect sense. “Not everyone died in that house, Jud.”
“What? Fuck, Salem, tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
She flew around to look at me, her face soaked. “The news reported that we all died, Jud. My son…Lucas…he was in his crib. I lost him. Oh god. I lost him.” Her knees nearly buckled when she said it, and her hand darted to the table to steady herself. Her grief was so thick I could taste it. “But Juni and I…we got out.”
Sorrow trapped her in that dark, dark storm.
She squeezed her eyes shut before a rush of words tumbled from her mouth. “I was rocking Juni in the other room. We heard noises, and I went to go for him…I begged to go for him, Jud, but the officer…she forced us out the side door and said she would get him. She promised she would get him.”
The words broke on the last because she hadn’t.
She hadn’t.
Dread sank through my spirit.
Because I had.
I had found him.
Had found him too late.
And there was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do.
The walls spun.
It had been Salem in that house.
Salem and Juni.
And her son. Her son.
Gripping my head, I bent in two.
“Oh, fuck. Salem. No.” Agony clawed through my being. Enough to drop me to my knees.
I managed to stay standing so I could move for her. The only thing I wanted was to wrap her in my arms. Hold her and protect her.
On a yelp, she put her hands out in front of her. “Stay away from me, Jud. Don’t you understand? If you didn’t do this? It was him. It’s a set up. He found us. He’s going to kill us both.”
“No. Won’t let that happen.”
“You killed his brother, Jud.” The plea spilled from her mouth. The truth of what all this really meant.
“I did.”
Terror filled the void between us.
Rippling and shivering.
“I was a fool for coming here. For losing sight of my purpose. I have to go. We have to get out of here before it’s too late.”
“Let me—”
She shrieked when I reached for her, and I felt it then. The blame. The hate. The truth of what I’d caused. What I should’ve stopped but had been too blind to see.
She backed out of the doorway. “Stay away from me.”
“Salem, please.”
“Stay away. I mean it.”
THIRTY-FOUR
SALEM
Panic flooded my bloodstream.
A surge of terror that rose high and swept me under, but it was the heartbreak that would do me in.
Jud.
It seared me in two.
Cleaved me in half.
Jud had been there that night. He’d been there, and he’d tried to stop it.
As soon as I’d accused him of working with Carlo, of tricking me into falling for him, I’d known it was wrong. I felt Jud’s agony just as sure as I felt my own.
Those aching pieces of myself that were barely held together were obliterated in his pain.
In this torment that I couldn’t fathom.
Couldn’t process.
It was gutting.
Shattering.
It only spiked the anxiety farther. The rush of adrenaline—of awareness—that promised I had to get out of there.
Leave it behind.
That for me and Juni, there was no such thing as home.
Jud couldn’t fix this. It was only going to destroy us all.
My mind spun with every horrible possibility. There had to be a bigger reason I was there in Redemption Hills. A bigger reason I had found Jud. A reason we had come together.
It spiraled with every gut-wrenching scenario of how Carlo had found us.
I knew it. I knew he had. I knew he was there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Sickness clawed and crept and seeped all the way to my bones.
A cold dread that shivered and froze.
This time when I pressed down on the accelerator, I forced myself to ignore everything else around me.
Every call and every claim.
I couldn’t give thought or reason or purpose to Jud’s pleas as he chased behind us. As he tried to break through the disorder the same way as he’d done last night, although right then, I knew we’d already ended before we’d ever really begun.
Our destinies had already been carved in stone.
“Salem…just listen…you can’t leave like this. Fuck, please, don’t do this.”
Juni whimpered from the backseat, more afraid than I thought she’d ever been, while I mashed the accelerator to the floor. The SUV fishtailed as I skidded out of the Iron Ride parking lot and onto the street.
My hands cinched around the steering wheel as I prayed. As I prayed for a moment. For a break in time. For a fighting chance.
For escape.
Tears blurred my eyes as I sped down the street, barely slowing as I took a sharp right.
I flew past Absolution then took a left at the next intersection.
Prayed these wings would give us flight.
I barreled down the roads of the small town, spinning it into chaos, the brightening sky ominous as the sun lifted on the mountain.
As the glimmering rays gave way to a new day that I was terrified would be our end.
How could this happen? How could I let this happen? I’d known not to come here. Not to become complacent. Not to fall.
I took the few quick turns before I made the last left onto the sleeping neighborhood street. My aching heart was lodged in my throat, and my stomach was twisted in knots of terror as I quickly approached the narrow driveway of the small house that had come to mean so much.