people. For revenge, power, drugs, docks, routes—you fucking name it. Wankers from all over want me dead for either what I’ve done or what I own. They’ll come for you.” His voice dripped with the inevitable promise of death. “Or at least they’ll fucking try.”
He gripped my jaw in his hand. “The wolves at my door will now be at yours too.” He laughed, but it was humourless. “And they’ll want your blood. Because of me, they’ll want your blood.” I went to speak, but he promised, “And I won’t let that happen.” His voice cracked a fraction, and so did my heart. “I can’t fucking let that happen.”
It was the closest Arthur had ever come to letting me know how he felt about me. The closest I’d seen to him losing his cool, to his usually expressionless face betraying his feelings. I stepped closer to him. He swallowed. “They’ll come for you, princess. They’ll come for you because of me.”
This was because of tonight. This was all because we had made love. Not fucked. Not screwed. But made love.
It had rocked him. It had affected him more than I ever thought possible.
I nuzzled my head into his hand and kissed his palm. Meeting his wild eyes, I said, “They have already come for me, Arthur. The wolves already came. And not because of you.” I closed my eyes and chased my threatening grief from my chest again. I couldn’t let the sorrow catch up with me just yet. Then I thought of the trafficking, the blood, and the brand that marked the slavers who had tried to take me, but I couldn’t think of it all yet.
The padlock rattled again, just as it had when I’d been talking to Freddie. Stark fear stole a breath. What would happen when I let it all in? Would it crush me? Would it destroy me? Would it take me to a place that I couldn’t return from?
Arthur opened my hand and thrust his gun into my palm. The metal was cold against my skin, and it felt too heavy to hold—not just the weight, but the responsibility, the gravity of what it meant if I ever pulled the trigger that brushed tauntingly against my finger.
My hands were shaking. The padlock rattled harder.
Arthur moved behind me. He straightened his arms, taking mine with them. His body enveloped me and his cheek pressed against mine. He moved my hand into the correct position on the gun. “Unlock the safety,” he said, using my hand to do so. “Aim,” he added, then held his trigger finger over mine and pulled. “Fire.” The boom from the gun was swallowed by the soundproof walls of the fighting pits. The bullet pierced the white paper target that was attached to a bale of hay, the hole going right through the red circle.
My blood roared through my ears, and a cocktail of adrenaline and fear and the addictive feeling of control raced around my body.
“Good,” Arthur said. “Again.”
I lined up the shot, then fired the gun. The bullet hit the target, and a rush of relieved breath left Arthur’s mouth. His cheek was still next to mine, and he leaned in and kissed me. I felt the tenderness of it shiver down my spine.
Arthur released the gun and left me holding it myself. “Again,” he ordered and stepped back. As I felt the trigger under my finger, the balaclava-clad face of the man who’d slit Freya’s throat came to my head, the memory slipping through the cage’s door. Then the man who’d plunged a knife into Arabella’s chest followed quickly behind, showing me her eyes widening as the blade sank inch by inch into her still-beating heart. I remembered how she took the blade without crying or begging, how she met death with a steely bravery and an eerily calm façade.
As I aimed the gun, my hand shook harder. Tears built in my eyes, and the bales before me became a hazy beige blur. I fired, having no idea where the bullet landed. No idea if Arthur spoke to me, tried to help me. I felt it then. I felt the padlock snap and the cage door burst open. My heart plummeted toward the well of grief I had tried to keep sealed off. A place of sadness and despair, a hole of quicksand that wanted to drag me down too deep to return from.
I held the gun steady and aimed again. My head filled with Hugo and my