Page 1 of Gambit
1
RAPHAEL
Shoving these asshole bushes aside,I’m getting fucked off. I know Eliza’s out here, and I know she’s fucking great at not being found if she doesn’t want to be, but this is taking the serious piss. All there is around me is silence—just the rustle of leaves and my own heavy breaths. I can’t even hear the other guys for shit.
Something’s wrong.
Shaking my head, I push it aside, knowing Eliza can take care of herself.
“Raphael,” Tarquin hisses from somewhere to my left, and I will deny all fucking knowledge that he made me jump a little. “Anything?”
“Nothing.” I keep my voice low, my eyes scanning the dense greenery. She’s a ghost in this game, always one step ahead, but there’s nothing. No sign of her, no sound, and that tight knot in my gut screams at me this isn’t right.
I’m an excellent tracker—we all are—but not being able to find her is starting to blast a shot of fear into my soul.
We converge in a small clearing, the moonlight barely piercing the canopy above. Tarquin steps out from the shadowsfirst, his brow creased. James follows, brushing his hands off, while Oliver emerges last, his jaw set hard.
“We should’ve found her by now.” Tarquin’s words hang between us like an accusation against the silence of the forest.
“Eliza wouldn’t just disappear,” James mutters, raking a hand through his hair. “She wanted this.”
He doesn’t have to add the question, ‘Didn’t she?’ to the end of that statement because we are all thinking it. Her idea is dark, seriously dark, and we are all up for it. The thought of taking her while she pretends to be powerless and fights us is more intoxicating than I could ever have imagined. Up until I heard them in James’s room the other week, it wasn’t something I’d even thought about, let alone could form into words to suggest.
“Let’s spread out again,” Oliver suggests, his gaze darting around the clearing as if expecting Eliza to leap out at any moment.
“Something’s not adding up.” I can’t shake the feeling, the instinct that tells me our game has turned into something else entirely. Something serious. This is more than just hunt and capture.
We split up again, moving with purpose. We know Eliza can take care of herself. We know it. But tonight is an unknown, and that’s what scares the hell out of us.
I sweep my gaze across the forest floor and then take a few steps before crouching down. Two sets of footprints. One’s small, likely Eliza’s. The other’s larger, heavier—a man’s. My stomach drops.
Not part of the plan. Not part of any game we were playing.
“What is it?” Tarquin asks, coming up behind me and peering over my shoulder.
“Eliza’s?” James asks, voice tight as he joins us.
“It has to be,” Oliver confirms, crouching beside me, his fingers hovering above the smaller imprint, “and whoever’s with her isn’t one of us.”
“So, what does this mean?” Tarquin asks, his voice steady but his eyes reflecting the tornado building in my gut.
I ignore him. “Let’s move.” The words are out before I can blink, and we’re on the trail. “One…” I mutter, staring down as the two sets of prints become only one. This is not just about finding Eliza anymore; it’s about who took her from us and who I have to slice open to reach in, pull their intestines out to wrap around their throat to strangle the fuck out of them with.
We slip into a familiar formation, silent and deadly as shadows. Every snapped twig and every rustled leaf under our boots feels like a betrayal of the silence we need to maintain.
We’re no strangers to tracking—business demands it sometimes—but tracking our woman? That’s new. That’s personal.
“Eliza wouldn’t go down without a fight,” James mutters, his voice low.
“Unless she had no choice.”
He glares at me, it’s that blank stare that is devoid of anything, only a cold abyss like he’s staring into the scope of his rifle about to take the shot.
“Fuck,” Tarquin grunts.
We press on, jaw clenched, ears straining for any sound out of place. Each step sharpens the fear inside me, whittling it into a fine point aimed straight at the heart.
“They can’t have got that much of a head start,” Oliver growls. “How did this happen?”
