The hairs rose on the back of Kris’s neck and he turned sharply.
“Jackpot, boys.” A barrel-chested man was wandering toward him. He looked normal enough, casual clothes and an average face, if it weren’t for the loathing glittering in his stare. A few more figures took shape behind him.
Jesus Christ. What had he walked into?
“Hey,” Kris said, as a foot scuffed on the road behind him. He shot a glance toward Zara’s apartment building as two shapes emerged from the shadows either side of the entrance.
They were moving in fast.
The man with loathing eyes said, “We have ourselves a Highness.”
Kris adjusted his stance as panic bleated inside him. “What the hell is this?”
“Where’s your pretty bodyguard?” someone asked from his left, and Kris’s stomach turned, before a stringy man from behind said, “Hurry up. We won’t have long.”
Kris glanced around. Five—no, six of them, and for a moment, he saw in double. The brutal grins in front of him—and the cruelty in the eyes of the men who’d come to his ranch for Erik Jaroka’s son. Not the same men, but the intent had endured.
So, this was how Tommy and Jonah had felt. Surrounded. Frightened. Knowing in their bones they were on the brink of violence. This was what Kris had done to them.
Now he’d done it to himself.
His skin was ice as he raised his hands. He might be outnumbered, but he wasn’t going down without a fight. “What do you want?”
“Don’t you worry about that,” the man said, and they set to work.
Frankie ran.
Hardly breathing, muscles tight as a bullet, the alley walls blurring beside her. Her skin smelled bitter with sweat, yet she was chilled to the marrow.
Kris had gone to Zara’s apartment alone.
“Left,” she snapped, and banked up a cut-through. Hanna, Peter, and Gul darted in behind her, nothing but huffs of air and swift footfalls at her back.
Turned out Kris had offered to check on Adam with Zara after the ceremony—so she’d told him her address to pass on to his ever-prepared guards.
He hadn’t passed it on.
“Right.” Frankie threw herself around a narrow splice between buildings and mounted the steps three at a time. Guards from the venue had set out in cars, but they’d take too long. The roads in this architecturally cluttered city were haphazard at best. Half the laneways were too tight for vehicles and many were linked through narrow steps and shortcuts.
Snakes and ladders. All uphill. Faster on foot.
At the top, she hauled ass down a residential street.
This bitch of a day needed to end.
Maybe it was the series of emotional blows it had dealt, or an intense love–fear for Kris that instinctively assumed the worst, or the simple fact that he’d slipped security to aim directly for the home of a man who wanted him dead, but back at the cocktail lounge, Frankie’s composure had finally shattered.
She’d forgotten to pretend she wasn’t terrified.
Her reaction had scared the others. Ava and Zara had rushed in with questions, but she’d barked at her team over their heads. Alarmed, Tommy and Mark had tried to follow her out, but their guards had barred their exit at her order.
Kris. The foolish, desperate, impossible man.
Adrenaline made a whip of her heartbeat, slashing and gouging inside her chest.
More steps. She hurdled over the gate to a community-garden laneway, sprinted out onto Blueridge Crest and struck straight up the hill.
Fixated on reaching Zara’s building, on getting to her unguarded prince, she didn’t immediately notice a black clot in the street’s shadows. Thick with men, thrashing with movement. A fight. Too concentrated; too familiar.
Terror zapped her at high voltage.
Six against one.
Booted feet pulled back and pounded in. Fists dropped. Light grunts wafted downhill.
Her eyes grew hot; her breath ripped in her throat. And that was before she realized Kris’s silhouette on the ground wasn’t moving.
Her pace stumbled.
“I’ll beat you,” Hanna panted from right behind her, a challenge to reset Frankie’s focus.
No, she thought, pulling farther out front. I’m going to beat them.
Silent, she sped so fast up the hill it felt like her burning muscles would shred clean off her legs. Her team were right on her tail.
They punctured the group like a spearhead.
Frankie first, slamming the blade of her hand into the biggest man’s windpipe, and then the others cleaved through in her wake. There were startled shouts, filthy curses. These men weren’t trained fighters. The reaction was sloppy, unskilled. One man started to run—Gul slide-tackled him. Another sped off downhill—and