Page 1 of Chaos & Carnage

Prologue

I blink in and out of focus, staring at the dark ceiling far above me. A chill seeps into my skin, flowing into my bones until all I can feel is its icy grip. Cold and numb. And pain. Alotof pain. Everything hurts, and I can’t hear anything over the blood rushing in my ears. My head pounds, my limbs ache, and every damn inhale catches and stabs.

Behind my eyes, violent images flash out of order. The slashing of a blade. The roar of an engine. The bright red, sticky blood gushes, coating my hands, tongue, and mouth. Silence. Weightlessness. The feeling of being suspended in gravity, that second of absolute stillness before life comes roaring back into existence. The acute pain and jolting, as though your body is being pulled in a hundred different directions, can only come from a severe crash. Rolling, rolling, rolling, my body like an egg as it’s rolled down the side of a hill. One crack, two. How many cracks can a body take until it fractures? Until my insides come gushing out like yolk, coating the sidewalk and staining it red?

Hairs prickle at the back of my neck seconds before something brushes over my skin. With far too much effort and pain, I crack open an eyelid, not realizing I’d even closed them. Everything is blurry, taking too long to pull into focus. When it does, what I see doesn’t reassure me or put me at ease. A dark silhouette hovers over my broken, weary frame.

Maybe this is death, come to claim me finally. Our meeting must be long overdue, yet I don’t feel ready to leave. Ironic really. I always waved away death because I didn’t want Luc to be alone, but now that I know he’ll be taken care of and will never be alone again, I’m still not ready to go. Along with Luc’s guaranteed protection came four hulking, violent, ruthless men who make everyone else around them quake in their boots and rush to obey their commands. Men who have infuriated me, harassed me, held me against my will, and forced me to marry them. Men who have blown apart the very narrow-minded view I had of the world and turned it from something monochromatic into technicolor. From survival to something worth living for. Worth fighting for—even if that fight is with death.

I feel his cold talons wrap around me as he draws me into his arms, his face shrouded in darkness. Even the pull into the afterlife comes with its own brand of agony, every muscle screaming in pain as I’m hauled into death’s arms.

A voice murmurs at the back of my mind. I can sense the urgency behind their words, but I’m too out of it to catch hold of them before they disappear into the thick fog that’s quickly clouding my head, making it feel heavy and weighed down. My body rocks against a firm chest as death carries me deeper into the warehouse, the darkness swallowing us until I’m no longer sure if my eyes are open or if they’ve fallen closed again.

My arms sway, my body rocking, like I’m a boat cresting the relaxed waves of the ocean. My body a vessel as it crosses the river Styx.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The shutting of a steel door solidifying my fate slashes through my mind, and still, I can’t think straight, can’t connect the dots, can’t get my brain to process the danger. There’s no fighting back this time. No winning against death. My body is done, and so is my mind. If this is the end of the line, then death can have me, but he’ll never have my heart because it already belongs to four broken men, without whom I’d be broken too.

Chapter 1

“I want every man we can spare out on the streets looking for her,” Cain barks into his phone. “Now!” The entire time, Dante glares at Cain, looking so menacing that it would have most men on their knees, begging for forgiveness. Not Cain, though. He meets Dante’s furious glower head-on, their gazes clashing as he barks more orders down the line to Marcus before hanging up.

The second he does, Dante steps up close to him, attempting to use his tall, muscular body to intimidate Cain, but even though they are both the same height, Cain has more muscle on him.

“If anything has happened to her,” Dante growls in a low, threatening tone. “If one hair on her head is out of place, I will make your death so fucking agonizing, you will beg me to end it. I won’t give a shit that Sawyer has feelings for you. It’s my job to protect her, even from selfish assholes like you, and if she’s hurt, then you don’t fucking deserve her.”

You don’t fucking deserve her.Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth. How is it that I've been stuck in my head, overthinking everything and beating myself up because of the hand fate dealt all of us, questioning my relationship with Red. Still, the second Enzo said she never showed, ice-cold dread like nothing I’d felt before slid into my veins. Now, everything seems crystal fucking clear and I can’t believe I ever doubted us.

I’ve been such a fucking idiot, and now Red is somewhere out there, possibly hurt, and all she knows is that I didn’t have enough faith in us to trust that she was the one when things got a little rocky. She needs to know that she’s it for me. She’s everything I don’t deserve, my reason for waking up in the morning, the guiding light that gets me through the day. Evie’s return threw me. It brought up everything I’ve buried since the day she disappeared, and guilt rubbed me raw, yet when I look at Evie, I don’t feel anything close to how I feel when I’m around Red. There’s no heated passion or fiery chemistry, no overwhelming need to hold her close and bury myself inside her. No hungry desire to be her entire world.

What I feel for Evie are love and affection, but what I feel for Red transcends everything. For her, I’d set the world on fire. For her, I’ll play nice with the Antonelli douchebags. For her, I’ll bring Giovanni to his knees and help rebuild Black Creek from the ashes of his burning empire. I’ll make this city somewhere she can be proud to live, somewhere she can be happy. Its blood-soaked history will be nothing but a story of the past. A reminder of how far we’ve come and what we had to survive.

Red is the one for me. Theonlyone. We need to find her.Ineed to find her. The thought of something bad happening to her when there is this rift between us… I need to fix it. I need to reaffirm that I’m in fucking love with her, no matter how many apologies or how much groveling it takes.

“We need to get out there, too.” There’s an urgency in my tone, one I’m sure all of us are feeling. It’s been several hours since Red left here. Several hours since god-only-knows what happened to her. She could be hurt or injured, bleeding out in a goddamn alleyway, or worse…

Refusing to even go there, I focus on Dante and Enzo. “Did you see any signs of her on your way here?”

“Do you think we’d be here if we did?” Enzo snaps irritably, making my jaw tick and my hand clench with the desire to show him just how much I appreciate his back talk.

Something behind me snags their attention, and Cain and I turn at the same time to see Evie standing at the top of the stairs, wearing a strange mix of Sawyer’s skinny jeans and Cain’s massively oversized hoodie. Her wide eyes bounce between Cain and me and the two suited pricks now standing behind us, panic flaring in them. “Cain? What’s going on?”

“Red’s missing,” I state, bitterness coating my tongue.

Her eyes round. “Do t-they have her?”

I don’t know how much she knows about the Antonellis. Whether Santos—the sick bastard—kept her all to himself or if she knows much about Giovanni and the rest of his minions, but her face pales at the knowledge that they might have Red.

Cain’s face softens, and I can tell he’s working hard to cover up his true feelings as he looks up at his sister. “We don’t know yet, E.” Turning back to face Dante, any softness quickly evaporates as he snarls, “Get the fuck out of my house. You’re scaring my sister.”

“I-It’s okay,” Evie says, her voice sounding small and unsure.

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