Page 450 of Shadowblood Souls
Jacob mutters a curse. “I think Griffin sprained his ankle.”
“I’ll be fine,” his brother replies. “The hard part is over, right?”
Yes. We just have to get to the planned meetup spot, deliver the hard drive to Balthazar, and…
And what guarantee do we actually have that he’ll fulfill his side of the deal? A deal made with a madman?
As the guys gather around us, Griffin limping, my stomach sinks like a stone. My gaze catches on the vague shine of the device in Zian’s arms.
Balthazar wants it. He wants it enough that he played his trump card to force us to get it.
Why can’t it beourtrump card now?
I wet my lips, a weird mix of hope and trepidation tickling through my veins. “Before we go back… I have an idea.”
Seventeen
Riva
I’m expecting a brutal welcoming party when we arrive at the villa. Balthazar must already know that he isn’t getting his prize as easily as he hoped.
But no one is waiting to intimidate us into submission. When the drawbridge rumbles to a halt at the top of its raised position, the courtyard stands eerily silent.
Somehow that’s worse than if a brigade of goons had marched out to meet us. Like our keeper is still perfectly content to wait for us to come to him.
Like nothing we’ve done actually matters.
As we head into the villa, Jacob catches my hand. Griffin takes the other, while Andreas shoots me a reassuring glance and Zian lets out a protective growl.
We’ll meet whatever’s waiting for us together. We all made it back in one piece, and that’s what matters the most.
I only dozed on the flight and drive back, nothing that I could call real sleep. My weary legs would like to walk me right into my bedroom and toss me onto the bed.
But I can’t rest until Dominic is returned to us. And that means confronting the man holding him captive in his own body.
We stride through the dawn-lit halls together, the twist of tension in my gut contrasting with the delicate frescos painted on the walls we’re passing. This place should be beautiful, but to us it’s only become more horrifying with each passing day.
Balthazar clearly knows we’ve arrived. When we file into the drawing room, the screen is already raised from the tabletop, though it’s currently dark.
The machine by Dominic’s bed continues its shrill, faster beeping. Does his skin look even more washed out than before?
I mean to watch him for a breath—to count how long he’s taking between them—but then the screen blinks to a view of our captor.
Balthazar peers out at us, looking even more the predatory lion than usual. A few locks of his graying tawny hair shade his penetrating eyes. “It appears you’ve failed in your mission.”
My spine stiffens. I glower back at him. “We didn’t fail. We got the hard drive you wanted.”
“Then where is it?”
The twins tighten their grip on my hands. Jacob speaks before I can, even though this gambit was my idea. “You’re not getting it until Dominic is awake. Otherwise how are we supposed to believe that you’re actually going to pay us back for the job?”
Balthazar lets out a low huff. “If you’ve left the device somewhere it’ll be damaged, it isn’t worth the sweat on your skin.”
I resist the urge to clench my jaw. “We made sure it was safe. And that it’s somewhere you’re never going to find on your own. It was a long walk between the train tracks and the pickup car.”
A hint of a smirk touches Andreas’s lips. “And something that small is very easy to hide when you’ve got an entire forest to work with.”
A growl ripples through Balthazar’s otherwise even tone. “It doesn’t do me any good ifyoucan’t even find it again either.”
