Shit.

“Would you mind walking me in?” I ask, raising a brow as I lean down and stare at her across the interior of the maroon-colored Subaru she’s driving. No way in hell this is her real car. It’s gotta be a rental. “I’d rather not get ganked by a member of the GMP.”

I shut the door before she can respond, but I’m not surprised when she follows me. As I glance over my shoulder, I see Detective Constantine in a car just down the block. He’s watching us which is unsurprising.

Everything I do from now on is going to be carefully observed and recorded.

I move up the walk and unlock the front door, bringing Sara with me. I’m sure if she doesn’t have a search warrant for this place yet, she’ll get one soon enough. Her eyes are brimming with curiosity as the door swings open, and I turn on the lamp near the sofa.

“Not quite the gangbanging shithole you expected, huh?” I ask, turning around and watching as she takes in the simple living room, the dining table with a spray of fresh flowers in the vase, the Christmas tree in the corner we have yet to take down.

“It’s a nice house,” Sara says, waiting near the front door until Detective Constantine and both uniformed officers join her. They begin a sweep of the house, starting with the downstairs. The weed is in a locked cabinet in the converted garage area, and the whole back corner of the house reeks of it. But it is technically legal in Oregon, even if it’s still illegal federally. What a joke, making a medicinal plant a schedule one narcotic. But I’m too stressed out about my boys to go on one of my usual political rants.

I go for the stairs next, ignoring Sara when she calls out for me to wait.

When I get halfway up, I can hear it: the shower’s running.

I sprint up the last few steps as fast as I can, taking advantage of the broken lock on the door to fling it open. It smashes into the wall and I see Victor Channing under a stream of hot water, one hand on the wall, his eyes closed. He glances up at me, his dark gaze slicing through me like a knife. I want to bleed for him. I want to belong to him. More than anything, I want to be his queen.

“Bernadette,” he breathes, looking past me to where Sara is now standing. I glance back at her and see her face flush as she curses and turns away. Heh. Guess even hardened FBI agents are red-blooded women underneath it all. Vic might be eighteen, but he’s a man in every way that matters.

“Would you mind putting some clothes on?” Sara asks after she turns her back on us. What trust she has, to turn her back on the queen and king of Havoc.

“I’d rather not, thanks,” Vic says, giving me a smirking half-smile. That’s a good sign, right? If he’s smiling like that? The other boys must be okay. They just have to be, right? Because my story is incomplete without them. Then again, I know better than anyone that real life makes zero narrative sense.

Not everything can be tied up in a beautiful bow.

Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes really bad things happen.

“Are you the only one here?” Sara asks as Vic grudgingly pulls the shower curtain closed.

“Just me,” he says which reignites some of that awful sinking feeling inside of me. It’s like … all those butterflies that broke from their cocoons and took off in flight because of the boys, they’re dying. Fragile wings are broken. The beautiful dust of their scales flaking off and stolen away by the wind.

“Do you know the whereabouts of Callum Park?”

Sara’s next question gives me pause.

“What do you mean by that?” I ask, alarm pitching my voice an octave higher than it should be. My dark avenger, my broken fairy-tale prince with a crown made of bones. Why the fuck is she asking about him specifically?

“He was at school today, was he not?” Sara asks, turning back around to look at me. “He’s the only one of your … crew, is it? Anyway, he’s the only one we haven’t been able to locate.”

I just stare back at her.

“Meaning you have the rest of my family in custody?” Vic asks, pushing the curtain back and grabbing the towel off the rack. He throws it around his hips and then pauses behind me, resting his forearm on the doorjamb above my head. I can feel him in the same way one might feel an inferno. There’s scalding heat at my back, threatening to burn but oh so pleasant on a cold winter night. My throat gets tight, my mouth goes dry, and I can’t stop the flood of desperate longing that takes over my core.

“Meaning we have the rest of your boys accounted for,” Sara says carefully, and my heart sinks. Her words are no reassurance at all. Accounted for could easily mean dead. I choke a little on the idea. “I’m guessing you don’t know where Callum is either?” I will never forget the expression on that woman’s face. She looks … sad. Not in the same way that I’d be if Callum were gone—that, that would be like a black hole opening up inside of me, a tear so dramatic and violent that entire galaxies could be spirited away. She looks like someone who hates to deliver bad news but is exceedingly good at it.

The FBI doesn’t know where Cal is.

“Can you please leave?” I ask. “I’d like to be alone with my husband.”

“Husband …” Sara begins, exhaling sharply. There’s something in the way she’s looking at me that tells me she knows about the annulment. I don’t care. It’s not official by any means. We’ve only filled out the paperwork to start the process; there’s still a decree of annulment. There’s still a court date.

I’m not going through with any of it.

Victor wanted to keep me safe. I understand that. Shit, I’d have done the same thing for him.

Circumstances have changed.

That, and I feel like I’ve finally grown a pair of ovaries.

“I’ll be in touch,” Sara says finally, heading down the stairs as I turn away. Victor and I ignore her, too intent on one another to pay much attention. My heart thunders in my chest and my nostrils flare with Vic’s scent. His breath hitches, as if he can sense that I’m scenting him. Preparing myself. He shifts that big body of his, steam rising from his inked flesh.

I glance briefly toward the stairs as Sara pauses in the living room to speak with Constantine. Then, finally, they both leave. The sound of the front door closing is as ominous as the careful, shuttered clasp of a casket lid ending the legacy of a life.

I turn back to Vic.

Our eyes meet.

My hands find his towel.

The fabric falls to the floor as he lifts me up and parks me on the bathroom counter. His lips are a hot slash of menace, as they always are, but there’s something softer underneath, something that speaks to me as both a primal, sexual being and a spiritual entity. I feel him on every level. He’s a beautiful masculine specimen, the perfect complement to my femininity. He’s also my soul mate in every way that matters.

Victor growls as he claws at my borrowed sweatpants, wrenching the seam down the center of the crotch, like he can’t even be bothered to take them off. I’m not wearing panties—mine were covered in blood and thanks but no thanks on wearing borrowed underwear from police girl.

“Fuck, you taste like blood,” Vic says, but not like it’s a bad thing. His mouth moves from my lips to my neck, so he can bite down at the same time that he thrusts, owning me, claiming me, just the way I need in this moment. We need to reconnect, readjust, reevaluate. Connecting our bodies this way brings up a firestorm that burns away the confusion and the fear, the frustration and the worry.