Page 114 of A Bloom in Winter

Apex was pretty sure he was hit again. A couple of times. Until he was just drooling blood on his fleece. Again.

It was okay. He wasn’t making it out of this alive, and that was all right. He’d been done as of last night anyway. The only thing he was really worried about was Mayhem, and dear God, he hoped like hell that that female didn’t insist on coming with him.

Mostly, he hoped that the Black Dagger Brother Vishous got the feed from this house.

He was going to die in this chair, but if the Brotherhood could just get here in time to save the other two—

Wait, there was one more thing he had to do.

“Remis,” he croaked.

“Oh, you’re back.” The male got down on his level again. “You know, that eye doesn’t look very good—”

“I killed your boy.”

One brow lifted in arrogance. “Excuse me?”

Apex took a deep breath. “Broadius . . .” The name came out as barely more than a hiss, so he put more into the name. “Broadius. I killed him.”

Forcing his head to level, he looked up at the camera that he’d mounted to the right of the hearth. Little could he have known what it would be filming. But hey, if they were going to kill him, he needed to make sure the aristocrats didn’t do something jinky and pin that hit on someone else. Apex knew firsthand theglymerahad a long history of making up shit to engineer results. The whole prison camp had been stocked with the victims of their agendas.

“Go . . . get my duffle.” He stared at the camera. As if he could will the Brothers to come. “By the front door. I’ll . . . prove it.”

Remis barked a command. A moment later, one of the guys in the hoodies brought the bag over.

“Open . . .”

“Well, fucking unzip it,” Remis demanded to his goon. “Do it—”

Hoodie did the duty—and pulled out the white parka and snow pants Apex had been wearing the night he’d broken into Broadius’s tacky fucking McMansion, disarmed the security system with the code he himself had set when he’d installed it, and snuck up the stairs, finding the bitch in his dressing room.

“Stripe of . . . blood on the sleeve.”

Apex had deliberately laid the bastard out on his bed. ’Cuz you sleep where you lie. And in doing so, had got himself messied.

“Scent the blood . . . and there’s also a gold cufflink and his phone. In the bottom.”

Apex looked up at his camera with the eye that was working—and waited for the inevitable question.

“What the . . . hell are you thinking? Why are you fucking with us like this?” Remis breathed.

“I owe the Black Dagger Brotherhood,” Apex said to the camera. “And I know what you’re doing. Whestmorel and you are plotting against . . . the King. The Brothers liberated the prison camp . . . so I owe them and couldn’t let you destroy them—”

Remis put his head in front of Apex’s and then trained his sight at the same angle, right up at the monitoring unit.

Apex started laughing, even though it made him spit up even more blood. “Say . . . cheese, motherfucker. You’re onCandid Camera—”

Remis yelled like someone had stabbed him in the back. Because . . . someone had.

And out came the gun.

As everything went slo-mo, that muzzle swinging around toward Apex’s head, there was a sudden crashing, a splintering of glass—

As a great white wolf broke through the triple-paned window, took two tremendous leaps, and bit Remis in the face. The force of the attack was so vicious, it knocked the male over.

Unfortunately, the hoodies were also all armed. And they were somewhat trained.

Three aimed at the wolf.

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