Clare

  After our short talk, Sawyer, Elijah, and I fell asleep. When I woke up again, I was toasty warm, nestled comfortably between Sawyer and Elijah, and it was already dark outside.

  I groggily pulled out of the cuddle sandwich of Sawyer and Elijah’s arms, moving to the living room to get some water while trying to remember where I kept my phone.

  After taking a cup of water, I quickly found my phone with my backpack on the couch. The time was a few minutes past 9pm. Not only was my 10pm curfew fast approaching, I had also gotten a text message from Josie.

  The text made me apprehensive: “We need to talk.”

  There was no doubt that she had seen the scandalous video, and I was very afraid of what she would think of me.

  I took in a shuddering breath and released it as I decided to just face Josie head on, hoping that my side of the story would convince her not to hate me.

  I went hunting for my clothes and found them in the dryer.

  By the time I got dressed and arrived back in the living room, Elijah was seated on a stool by the counter, dressed casually in a tracksuit and sipping water quietly.

  “Are you ready? I’ll take you home. Sawyer seems to be really tired, so I didn’t wake him up.” He explained.

  I smiled gratefully at him and watched him sling my backpack onto his shoulders before following him to the car park.

  When he drove me to the car park close to Josie’s, I persuaded him to leave instead of escorting me in. “It’s pretty late, so just go home. Thank you for taking me home. I’ll see you tomorrow at school?”

  He hesitated, and I knew he wanted to escort me right to my doorstep, which was totally unnecessary because Hawkins was one of the safest towns I had ever lived.

  It was so safe with law-abiding citizens that even in the trailer park where Josie’s mobile home was, she had left her Mac book out on the porch all day and met it at the same spot at night.

  As if he could see how insistent I was, he finally nodded. “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow. If Sawyer is still too knocked out to come pick you up, can I come pick you up?”

  I smiled and shut the door. “Sure.”

  I waved at him and then left for Josie’s, knowing that he was going to sit in the car and listen for me to enter Josie’s house safely before leaving.

  However, when I walked into Josie’s living room, I instantly regretted not letting him escort me to Josie’s front porch. That way, at least, he might have sensed the three men in Josie’s living room.

  Because I was careless and had very little of the advantages that full-blood wolves and even some mixed bloods had with their sense of smell and hearing, I walked right into the waiting arms of the one person I knew would want me dead if he realized what I’d done.

  Remy, the brother of the man I’d killed.

  From the way his henchman stood behind the door, grabbed me and covered my mouth as soon as I walked in, he knew that Elijah was listening for me to walk into the house.

  So he easily controlled me by sliding the dagger he was holding just under Josie’s neck and giving me a sinister smile with a finger pressed to his lips to warn me to keep shut.

  With the scar at the corner of his eyebrow and the familiar bloodthirsty smile he had on his face, I knew better than to make any sounds because he would immediately end Josie’s life. After all, I knew him very well. Not only had he been the manager in charge of the overall activities at the Diamond Gentlemen’s club where I initially worked when my stepfather brought me to the Diamond Organization, but he was also the manager of the fighting pit hidden under the guise of the club where I eventually worked as one of the doctor’s assistants.

  He was a bloodthirsty man who always seemed eager to use violence to keep people in line. Just like his brother, he also didn’t know how to take no for an answer. However, unlike his brother, he was much more cunny, meticulous, sneaky and patient.

  I stood frozen, locked into his frosty gaze that told me that he had somehow found out that I killed Zayn. And he was definitely not letting me go scot-free for turning his beloved little brother into a lifeless vegetable. In fact, from the flinty, cruel look in his eyes, he was going to teach me a lesson that would make me regret ever existing.

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  He broke away from our locked gaze and looked outside the window for a second, obviously listening for Elijah, before smiling at me.

  It was worse than any creepy smiles I’d ever gotten from him. It was a smile full of madness that divulged into a mad laughter that made my heart drop into the pit of my stomach as his dagger shook haphazardly under Josie’s neck.

  Thankfully, even if he was a crazy bastard, Remy was one of those men who prided himself on how much control he had over himself and his actions. And that dagger never accidentally nicked Josie’s neck. At his laughter, the man who had ambushed me as soon as I walked into Josie’s living room and covered my mouth to prevent me from making a single sound let go of me.

  “Well, it’s just been a few months, but look at you…you blossomed again.” He said with a crafty smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  I glanced at Josie from the corner of my eyes, finally noticing how much she was trembling in fear and realizing, apologetically, how much trouble I had brought to her life and to her home.

  “Such a pity that I didn’t get to taste you first. Was it Kai? That bastard who always likes to walk around like he’s better than me, even though he’s not? Or is it one of your new boyfriends? The person who told us your location told us you now have two boyfriends. I didn’t know you were freaky enough to handle two people at once, but don’t worry, when we return to the Cage, we’ll definitely explore all your limits.” He said with a flirty smile.

  “Just…just leave her out of this. She doesn’t have anything to do with this matter.” I said, looking stubbornly at Josie.

  His smile faded away as his face turned expressionless. “Do you really think you have any right to bargain with me right now? Kai is dead now. I made sure of it. There is no one else to protect you or her from me.”

  His words made my hand tremble. I clenched them into fists to try to maintain control over myself as the words, ‘Kai is dead now’ echoed in my head over and over, bringing a pang of pain to my heart.

  Kai was dead. How could he be dead?

  “How did he die?” The question slipped out of my mouth before I could control myself.

  And it made him mad. I saw it when the vein on the side of his neck started pulsing and his face contorted into a scary scowl.

  A shiver of fear raced through my body as he stood up and strode menacingly toward me.

  When he raised his hand and reached for my face, I flinched and took a step back before I could control myself. After all, I’d seen him slap half the life out of a girl at the club once with one hit.

  My fear delighted him and irritated him at the same time. It was all there in the madness of his eyes as he gripped my chin and pushed me backward until my back hit the wall. “When I’m done with you? You won’t even remember who Kai was.”

  His grip on my chin tightened and just when it felt like he might break my jaw, he released me.

  Turning his back on me, he asked, “What did you do to my little brother?”

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I just kept silent. I knew better than to tell him the truth. Kai was dead now and my instinctual magic was my only way out of this situation once I got Remy and his group away from Josie.

  He turned back to face me and caged me with his brick-like arms.

  “What did you do to my little brother?” He asked again in a menacing voice.

  “I…It was a mistake.” I avoided his gaze. “He wanted to force me so I…I hit him and pushed him.”

  A scary smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You’re lying, but don’t worry, I will enjoy pulling out every single truth about what you and Kai did to him from you.”

  He moved back to the sofa and sat beside Josie, crossing his legs and placing his clasped hands over his knee. “I killed Kai because of you. If you don’t want her to die too, you’re going to do everything I say. First, you’re going to write a letter saying that you ran away because you couldn’t stand the pressure of everyone knowing what you did for work before. You’re going to make sure that your little boyfriends believe every word in that letter or trust me when I say that I don’t mind killing them to punish you. Let’s start with that.”

  In the next several minutes, I wrote and rewrote the letter four times until Remy was satisfied.

  “Good girl,” he praised me sardonically as he watched me put the folded letter into an envelope. “Now, go pack your things. Dave, watch her.”

  I did as he said resignedly, but when I returned and found him standing behind a seated Josie and holding her head in his hands, I threw down my bags and ran toward him, screeching when Dave held me back.

  “What are you doing to her?!” I asked when I saw him help Josie rest her head on the couch.

  “Don’t worry, I’m just changing her memory. Stop yelling. Do you want your neighbors to come running here? I don’t have enough energy to change multiple people’s memories, so anybody who comes here will probably have to take the secret of seeing me to their grave. You don’t want that to happen, do you?” he asked with a smirk that made me shut up instantly.

  He stood up and stretched his hand back to the man behind him who was already holding a case of wet wipes which he used to wipe his hands.

  “Come on, let’s go, sweetheart.” He said after he wiped his hands twice, dumping the used wipes in a disposable bag carried by the man who had offered him a wipe and wearing his gloves again.

  As we walked toward the door, I couldn’t help looking back at Josie where she was sitting with her head leaning on the back of the couch and her eyes closed. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yup. She won’t even miss you too much because I tweaked some of her memories of you. I think you’re better off worrying about yourself, little chicken nugget. Once we get to the cage and you start serving those brutes in there, you’d wish you could die. You’d wish you had taken my offer when you first got to the club and you would wish you had just laid there and allowed my brother to have his way with you.”

  His words brought a lump that I couldn’t swallow to my throat as his crew led me to the car they’d parked three parking lots away.