Bang. Bang. The salt burns my eyes as it drips in thick drops from my brows to my lashes. I wipe them off, my fingers flying over the keyboard, but regardless of my attempts, the timer continues ticking.
Fifteen seconds.
Owen let’s go of the vault wheel, and the timer stops. Heat recognition? Fuck, there is no way in hell we’re getting into the vault right now. I’d bet anything once that timer is activated, it never truly stops. The only way to see inside the vault is death.
“Get out,” I whisper.
The guys take a step away from the door, another and another.
The explosion cracks the pixels in the screen and the force shakes the foundation. The van rattles and the guys, fuck! They fly backward and hit the wall so hard, I know there’s was no fuckin way any of them survived it.
“Owen? Jaxon? Grayson? Heaven?” I call out their names one by one, but none of them respond. I press the heel of my palms against my eyes and shake my head in denial. No, this can’t be happening. They’re fine. They have to be. “Guys, stop fucking around and answer me!” I scream so hard my voice scratches, and spit flies against the microphone causing static. “Please,” I beg. “Fuck!” I roar.
Without my brothers, I am nothing. I have nothing.
Like a true king, fire blazing in the building and all, I open the van door and run inside to get my boys out. If I die trying, so be it; at least I’ll be with them on the other side. It won’t be heaven, but it won’t be hell.
Just the space in between.
Chapter Two
GABRIELLA
I have no idea how much time has passed. Weeks, months, years? They all started to blend when I was forced to be with a man such as Kendrick Knight. I was a fool when I was a young girl, eighteen, innocent in the mind and lovestruck in the eyes. When I saw him, I thought I had found my own true love.
Now looking back, whoever truly found their love at eighteen?
He was wealthy, a few years older than me, and had a smile that could have me sigh just like the love-drunk teenager I was from a mile away.
So we got married.
And that’s when everything changed.
It started out with him yelling, threatening that if I didn’t do simple chores around the house that I’d regret it. Then he shoved me.
Then he hit me.
And I had never been able to get away from his grasp.
Until I met his brother Sebastian, my savior, my reason for staying next to my abusive husband’s side. We never crossed a line, couldn’t; he was loyal to his brother, and I was too scared to even fathom, to have the audacity to test Kendrick like that.
Come to find out, it didn’t matter.
Kendrick thought I went behind his back, and maybe emotionally I did. Sebastian was kind, gentle, sweet, and always found a way to make me laugh.
Kendrick noticed.
Kendrick punished me.
One day, my husband—ex-husband—got sloppy with his abuse and hit me in the face. When Sebastian saw the bruise on my cheek and my busted lip, he nearly went insane with rage. I had to beg him not to go after Kendrick because I knew Kendrick would kill his own flesh and blood if he had the chance.
Sebastian became my best friend, the brother I should have married. He wasn’t going to allow me to stick around with Kendrick, and he forged as many documents as he could to give me an out. And he did.
I was free.
I had divorced and was living alone in Spain, just counting down the days until Sebastian was out of prison so we could be together. I lived in freedom for four years, until Kendrick found me on the bridge that overlooked the Ebro River. Kendrick stood on one end of the bridge, and when I tried to run in the other direction, his guards stopped me.
Now I’m locked in a tower, kind of like that Disney Princess Rapunzel, only there isn’t any magic to free me. I am trapped, and that is exactly how Kendrick wants me. I don’t understand men like him. He wants to hold power over me, for me to fear him, and it worked. I do fear him, but I don’t understand what made him want to control me. Kendrick has no feelings for me, that much is clear, so why am I so important to him?