Page 171 of Mended Hearts

“They were going to shoot at us! What the fuck is going on!?” I shouted, cupping my hands over Mattie’s ears.

“They’re trying to kill us—or capture us,” Jax said. Like that helped.

“I fucking see that, but why?!”

The engine roared as Jax floored it.

Royce’s voice cracked. “Because your sister stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.”

My concussion-muddled brain clicked disjointed pieces together. All of it—the fuzziness, the holes—roared back into clarity.

The tension between Ollie and Greyson after the accident. The weird distance between Alice and the truth. Detective Riviera blowing off my questions. The official report calling it random. Alice’s sudden memory loss.

But Royce had turned a gun on Jackson. He wasn’t sick to his stomach—he was a traitor.

It wasn’t random gang violence. It was connected. And I’d been too shaken to see it.

“Hands on the wheel, Reynolds,” Royce ordered.

Jax froze, glancing at Alice in the rearview.

“Royce,” Alice pleaded. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”

“Didn’t want to,” he said, voice strangled. The gun stayed on Alice, but his eyes were locked on Jax.

Alice glanced down at Mattie’s untied boots, then looked at me. Her fingers twitched.

Garrote.

I reached down, pretending to adjust Tillie’s laces, pulling gently at the ends.

“Slow down!” Royce barked.

“You’re going to kill us either way,” Jax said. “I’ll take you with us.”

The car surged forward. Tillie sobbed. I kept working the laces.

Alice tried to reason with him.

“I don’t have a choice—they took them.”

“Who?” my sister asked.

“All of them, Alice.”

“The kids?” Her voice trembled.

“When we didn’t turn you over, they—they took Miranda today.”

His wife.

“Who?” Alice demanded.

“I—it wasn’t supposed to go this way,” Royce choked out. “I let them in, Alice. I let her in. It’s my fault. If something happens to them, it’s my??—”

My hand flew to cover my mouth.

Oh my god.

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