Page 21 of Cruel Hearts

Though he isn’t mine anymore. How could he lose faith in me so easily? So completely? There was pure hate in his eyes, even when he licked me until I came, he hated me.

I squeeze the disposable coffee cup.

All along I thought it was Ash trying to kill me, but maybe it’s not.

Maybe it’s Zane.

Only he knew how important Maryanne was to me. Only he knew I loved her like I would a mother.

If he wanted to hurt me, if he wanted to pay me back for leaving him, he would know the best way.

Tears blur my vision. I don’t want to think him capable of that. I really don’t, but my naïveté and stupidity will get me killed if I can’t face facts.

It’s dark when I finally stand from the splintered bench. I walk down a shadowed sidewalk toward where I hope the closest bus stop is, though I haven’t decided where I’m going. It’s too late to go to the hospital. Visiting hours must have ended longago and I’ll need to wait until morning. I’m exhausted and need sleep, but I can only do that if I know I’m safe. If I choose to go to the warehouse, I have hours of connections ahead of me. I don’t think Zane wouldn’t care if I went back to my apartment, and I doubt he’d bother me. It’s closer, and it’s tempting, but I need to tell Luis what happened to Quinn.

Decision made, I try not to cry and keep walking. A dog snarling and barking in a yard a few feet away spooks me, and I stumble into the middle of the empty road to avoid it.

A vehicle turns a corner and the bright lights of a car stare me down. The driver revs the engine, and the sound growls through the sticky air. It barrels toward me, its tires shrieking, and I stop, frozen in the street. By choice? Perhaps. What can I do? I have nowhere to go, no one to turn to for help.

Let this car kill me.

Who cares if it’s Zane or Ash behind the wheel. What difference does it make? I’m tired of fighting. I’m one lone woman against a massive power—Black Enterprises. The one person who could go up against the Blacks thinks of Ash as a brother.

The late evening breeze blows through my hair and cools the perspiration on my skin.

The car roars as it approaches me. The lights are blinding, and I shield my face.

I want to try to see the driver. I want to stare into his eyes while he runs me down the way Maryanne faced her killer.

I can be strong like her.

Brave.

I can be tired and scared and still be brave.

Someone tackles me from the side and knocks the wind out of my lungs. We slam into the curb and my head cracks against the concrete. Stars burst behind my eyes.

I struggle to see through them, but in a brilliant streak of light, my world goes dark.

CHAPTER SIX

Zane

Ishouldn’t have seen Stella. I can’t rinse the taste of her out of my mouth, can’t quiet her sobs in my ears. My fingertips can still feel the silkiness of her skin, my lips can still feel the delicious pressure of hers.

I shove my hands into the pockets of my pants and lean my forehead against the cool glass of the window that looks over King’s Crossing. In what was once my father’s office, I hold the city in the palm of my hand, but it’s nothing. Nothing compared to what I had for the short time Stella belonged to me.

I still love her.

Someone knocks on the door, but I left it open, and Ash strides into my office uninvited, his hands fisted at his sides, his body shivering with rage. “I’m going to kill her. Where thefuckis she?”

I appreciate the anger on my behalf, but I wave him off. “Calm down. She’s nothing.”

“Did you forget how catatonic you were when she disappeared? How you couldn’t eat? Couldn’t sleep? She put you through so much pain—let me pay the bitch back.”

“I’ve already seen her. Let it be.”

This quiets him, and he approaches me, his eyes narrowing. “What did she have to say for herself?”

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