Page 17 of Tempting Fate

“I hate playing the long game.”

“Then don’t,” I reply. “Let me go home.”

Shaking his head, Hugh quips, “He better not break you, not before I get to take my fill too.”

“In your dreams.”

I scowl at him. Hugh offers me a grin and a wink. Silence dawns between us. It’s filled with a strange combination of camaraderie and hatred. Almost like we have a common enemy. In the eyes of the man standing in front of me, I can sense ambivalence.

Maybe I can negotiate my way out of this?

For a moment, I allow hope to loosen the tightness in my chest.

“Ah, fuck it.” Hugh closes the distance between us in two strides. Confidence shattered, I back up as fast as I can, only halting my retreat when the back of my thighs hit the mattress. When he reads the revulsion on my face, the man I now know to be a mobster sneers down at me with lewd intent. “He owes me a taste.”

I react on instinct when his hands close around my upper arms. My knee lifts, colliding with his balls, hopefully hard enough for him to gargle them. Hugh’s fingers flex, his grip bites into my biceps a second before he stumbles past me and face plants on the bed.

As he cradles his dick with both hands and groans, I make a run for it.

My adrenaline spikes. It powers me on when I stumble. Energises me as I fight the drug-induced sluggishness that refuses to set me free. Every step seems to happen in slow motion, yet it feels like I reach the end of the hallway in a flash. When the toe of my stiletto catches on the edge of the runner, I drop to my knees. The pencil skirt I wore to work tears as I spring back to my feet like a marionette.

With two hands, I grip the material on either side of the rip. I split the skirt to the top of my thigh, lengthening my stride, then kick off my stilettos. I’m not sure how they survived the scuffle in the van and the journey inside the house, but the sacrifice of my favourite Louboutin’s to my getaway plan doesn’t even make me blink.

If I have one shot at escape, I’m going to take it.

Conscious that there are three other men with Hugh, I slowly creep around the corner. The area is clear, but my senses detect the same cologne from the bedroom in the air. Since I suffer from patches of lost memory—trauma-induced amnesia is the label my therapist gives it—the foreboding that winds its way around my throat yields little answers, even as it squeezes tight, choking me, while I futilely search my mind for clues.

A single word echoes around my skull.

Alex.

But that’s impossible.

He’s supposed to be in prison for another year and a half.

Deliberately shaking myself free of the hazy memories his name invokes, I remind myself that the Shamrocks would know if he was mysteriously released early. Zeke would have flown me out of the state if that was the case. There’s no way he’d allow me to wander, unaware and oblivious, around the same city as Alex.

And, if Zeke somehow didn’t know that Alex was out, then Gabriel would.

News of that magnitude wouldn’t slip by unnoticed.

There’d be a media frenzy.

Signs of my personal Armageddon.

Reporters invading my privacy again.

The Chosen Cherubim re-emerging from their slumber to torment me.

Forcing myself to cling to my steadfast belief in the men I trust with my life and the system that came close to failing me, I offer one last glance past the living room that spans the distance between me and the front door, then I edge the rest of the way around the corner. Eyes fixed on my clearest route to safety, I hike up my skirt to the top of my thighs and sprint as fast as I can to the exit.

“Please be unlocked. Please be unlocked.” That one sentence, repeated over and over, is a prayer, a benediction, a promise, and a worry. “Please be unlocked.”

When I reach the door and twist the handle, my shaking hands impede my escape. I try again, my shrill cry of impatience loud in the empty room. The knob turns, the door pops open. As I squeal with delight, the sound of someone rushing toward me from somewhere in the house turns my glee into desperation.

Light of foot, powered by survival, I fly out of the door and into the front yard. The gravel path crunches under my bare feet. Something digs into my heel, a burning jolt of pain flares in its wake. I barely register the puncture wound, intent as I am on making it to the road I can see at the end of the driveway. Arms pumping, I scream for help, even as I try my hardest to save myself.

I reach the head of the concrete drive.

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