Devil's Pass (The Harlequin Crew #.5) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,52

and the door was slammed shut, securing my fate. I dragged in heavy breaths, trying to make my lungs work, but they wouldn't. I couldn't breathe, my head was spinning as my world caved in and I lost everything in one fell swoop.

Rogue was gone. My life was over. And I swore I'd get revenge for this. I would make it my life's mission when I got free. I would come back. I would fucking kill Luther and make him pay for everything he'd done. One day, somehow, I would find my girl. And no one would ever take her from me again.

Four Months Later…

T hey aren't coming. I knew it that first day when I woke up locked in a room in a strange house and realised I must have been carried from the trunk of the car into this place. The last thing I remembered about being in that trunk was giving up on trying to fight my way out after kicking and screaming until my throat was rubbed raw and I was just left quietly sobbing with so many tears on my cheeks that they were red and sore from them, my eyes puffy and painful.

But I hadn't cried since I'd woken up that day. I hadn't spoken for a week either and then I'd had to because the witch running this place stopped feeding me until I would. Sandra made Mary Beth look like a saint. The kids who lived here weren't allowed in the main part of the house, only the designated rooms built onto the side of the building like some freaking shanty town which practically cooked us alive in the summer heat.

And now she wanted me to start selling drugs to the kids at the sorry excuse for a school I was forced to attend. She wanted to put me in the firing line for dealing and no doubt let me take the fall for it if I was caught. No fucking way.

That was it. I was done. Four months without a word from the boys I'd once called mine. Not a note, a phone call, or even an email sent to my account which I'd managed to access again in the school library. They knew where I was. I'd given them the benefit of the doubt, waited to see if there was some long game being played here.

But the only one who'd been played was me.

They made me believe I meant something to them. They made me think I mattered. They made me think they loved me.

And I sure as hell had loved them. But that love had been betrayed, rejected, cast aside. Just like I had. I guessed some lessons had to be learned the hard way because I would never give my heart to anyone ever again after them. I'd never cry over anyone and I'd never care for anyone like that either. I was done, broken beyond repair and sick of waiting on this half hope based on nothing that made me think they might be coming for me. They weren't coming. They'd forgotten me. And as much as I wished that didn't kill me, I died a little bit more every day when they didn't show up.

Tonight I was taking the few clothes I owned and leaving this shitty place. I would get on the first bus to arrive at the station and figure it out from there. If they didn't know where I was then I didn't have to face the agony of kidding myself into believing they were going to show up one day.

I was turning my back on all of it. All of them.

It didn't matter anymore anyway.

But one thing was for certain. My love for them had rotted in these past four months, decaying inside me until it felt like my heart was withering and all the love it held had festered into hate. And I hated the Harlequin boys unlike I'd ever hated anything in my entire life. They were a poison that had infected my veins and destroyed any good parts there were of me. If I never saw them again it would be too soon.

But if I did, if fate ever put me in their paths, then I was going to make them suffer for what they'd done to me.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and all that. And I'd been burned four times over.

I breathed my hate for them.

I drowned in my hate for them.

And I'd bleed my