Page 46 of Possession

Ahead, lights burst on, bathing the front of a huge, fancy house and flooding the circular drive before it.

“Down!” Roman shouts.

I duck down into the footwell as he brakes hard and brings the van swinging around on squealing tires. Then he throws open his door and jumps out.

“Jesus—fuck!” I shout as I peer over the dash to see Roman marching forward, firing at the SUV as it barrels down on him.

His shots hit the windshield—and more shots come from behind him. My eyes flick to the mirror to see that people have emerged from the house.

The SUV brakes hard, skidding along the pavement to a stop. There’s a brief pause like the driver is assessing the situation. More bullets strike the SUV before it reverses abruptly and goes tearing backward along the drive.

I’m scrambling out of the van by the time the SUV makes it to the trashed gate. As soon as it’s through, Roman falls to his knees. I reach him as he pitches forward, one hand slapping to the pavement, the other still holding his gun.

People shout behind me. My head whips their way. There are three of them. Two are fully dressed, one man and one woman. Another man is wearing only a pair of sweatpants. Allof them have guns aimed at me and Roman, but their shouts ofwho are youandget downdon’t really penetrate.

“Help!” I scream, my hands uselessly scrabbling at Roman’s sweaty body. “Help!”

The woman, dressed in black leather and with a long dark braid over her shoulder, reaches me. With shocking force, she grabs my sweatshirt and hauls me away from Roman.

Roman surges up with a roar as I’m thrown to the ground. He wheels, gun aimed at the woman, but he’s unsteady and outnumbered. The man fully clothed in jeans and a flannel shirt knocks the gun from Roman’s hand and kicks the side of his knee. Roman’s leg buckles and he slams to his knees on the pavement. The man steps to Roman’s side and aims his gun at Roman’s head. Roman sways.

“Please,” I beg, trying to crawl back to Roman only to get smashed to the ground by the woman’s boot. “Please.”

The other man, the one who’s barefoot and wearing only black sweatpants, steps forward. He’s big and heavily tattooed. His dark hair is swept back from an intense, handsome face. He actually looks weirdly similar to—

“Roman?” He stares in disbelief. “Is that … fuck, is that …? Christ, Quinn, let him go.”

As Roman collapses onto his face, the tattooed man rushes forward. He drops his gun and rolls Roman onto his back.

A lot of shouting starts up. Something about a doctor. A lot ofwhat the fuckandI don’t fucking know.

When the woman snags her phone from inside her leather jacket, I manage to crawl away from her back to Roman. The tattooed man is kneeling beside him, his fingers at Roman’s throat. He and the woman shout back and forth about what might be happening as she tries to communicate the situation to whoever is on the other end of the call.

“Give me the goddamn phone!” the tattooed man snaps, holding out his hand. When she hands it to him, he shouts into it, “His pulse is fucking racing!” Then, “I don’t fucking know!”

The tattooed man turns to me. There’s an instant ofwho the fuck are youin his expression, then he snaps, “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. “They probably gave him something. They’ve done it before—”

“Who gave him—what do you—never-fucking-mind!” Into the phone, he shouts, “I don’t know, Isaac! Okay! Just fuckingdrive!”

The tattooed man drops the phone and leans over Roman again. Roman’s chest is jerking with short, sharp breaths. His eyelids are fluttering. He’s barely conscious.

“Fuck’s sake, Roman,” the tattooed man mutters, checking Roman’s pulse again. Then he gets up and says to the others, “Let’s get him inside. And you”— he wheels on me—“are gonna tell me where the hell my brother has been for four fucking years.”

SIXTEEN

Lucas

After several hours of absolute chaos, I’m sitting in a stiff-backed armchair in a formal sitting room with Roman’s brother digging out a cigar from a box atop the fireplace mantle. I’ve learned that his name is Vitali, and he’s every bit as scary as Roman but in a very different way.

A black t-shirt now covers his tattooed torso, but the ink trails down his powerful arms to his hands, which are clipping the end of the cigar. He’s almost as big as Roman, and there’s a similar intensity and ruthlessness to his expression. But Vitali is colder, more calculating. Roman might be brutal, but there’s something vicious in Vitali. I can feel it.

But I can also see that his hands are shaking as he lights the cigar and tosses the silver lighter onto the mantle. He breathes out a stream of smoke as he studies me.

The woman guard with the long dark braid is standing at the door. The other, the man, is posted outside the room where Roman is sleeping. The doctor has remained in Roman’s room, just in case.

After they carried Roman into the house, with a lot of shouting about the smashed gate, about the doctor coming, about what to do with Roman, they took him upstairs to a bedroom where they laid him on the bed. I got pushed to the side and hovered uselessly as they took off his boots and cleaned his wounds.

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