Page 43 of Gilded Secrets

I look around for some kind of weapon. Anything.

Think. I can’t outmatch his strength, but I know what he wants even more than me with my legs spread wide open.

I hope my men can forgive me.

“You don’t want me. You want money and power. Having me was nothing more than you showing you had all the power. What good is an heir if you don’t have what you need to back it up?” My voice is raw, and it hurts to speak. The bruising is already forming from the inside out. If I survive this there will be no stopping the men from burying him alive and watching him slowly die.

“Shut the fuck up. If I can’t have you, I will bury you where even the cadaver dogs can’t find your rotting body.”

His chest moves against mine with his heavy breathing. All those years of cigarettes are catching up. But still not soon enough.

I hold my chin a degree higher. “Tell me I’m wrong,” I challenge with raging fear. There’s no getting rid of it or wishing it away. But I don’t let it control me. Not any longer.

“I can get you both. I have information that will put you ahead of Con and his partners.”

The rings of his pupils bleed into his irises, turning them pitch black. “What could you possibly know?”

“They’re uniting with the Northern Alliance. The men of Genesis. You want what they have, and I can get it for you.”Don’t oversell it. Keep cool.

His fingers are back at my throat. “Where do you have this information?” His eyes are wild.

“In a safe with the maître d’.”

“Meet me here in twenty minutes. That gives you time to get what you have and get there.” A card is shoved into my hands. “You have what you say you have, I won’t kill them. But you’ll still be coming with me. You’re lying and I’ll kill all of you.”

I’m not stupid enough to believe he will not kill my men. Murder lives in his soul and the thirst for blood shines in his black eyes.

He releases me and picks up the cracked phone. I watch him dump it in the wash basin and turn on the automatic water spout.

Shit.

“Run, little prey. Twenty minutes is all you have.”

I edge against the wall and bust out of the bathroom only to run into three bodyguards. One looks dirtier than the next and I’m not talking actual dirt and grime. If there is something lower than snakes, then the freezing death vibes coming off these three are that.

I dash into the nearest elevator and check that I’m not being followed. I get off on the second level and run back down the stairs to the first floor.

I check the hallways and wait until there are no members in sight before falling out the back door and into a dark alleyway. It’s cleaner than you’d think with only a few dumpsters dotting the yards of cement between me and either end. Fuck it feels like the crossroads are miles away.

Plan A. “A taxi. Then Club Genesis and sanctuary.”

There is no plan b. There’s a light at either end of the alleyway and another one directly over me. Surprisingly it doesn’t offer enough glow to reach much past the tips of my boots. It’s not thedarkness I’m afraid of anymore. It’s what it hides that scares the shit out of me.

And the glow of a cigarette.

The shadow lumbers in my direction. “Did you really think I’m that stupid?”

“I’d hoped, you deranged piece of shit,” I spit out.

And then a gun goes off and it’s not mine.

Fifteen

Con

“If you don’t catch up to that cab, the next bullet out of my gun will be for you.”

When Laila’s call came in about fifteen minutes ago, I thought it was another nude picture to tease us with.

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