SARAH I hear the heavy metal door open—or does it close? It’s impossible to tell with my eyes shut from sheer exhaustion. Even my slow breaths take a lot of energy from me. My tongue feels heavy and dry in my mouth, almost crispy. Most importantly, I smell and feel like shit. The footsteps draw closer and closer. When they finally stop in front of me, the pungent smell of his aftershave fills my nostrils. Someone has taken a shower. Lucky him. This means he doesn’t live too far from here. Did this motherfucker lock me in his fucking garage? That would explain the metal door. “You might want to eat something.” He says, stepping into the light. I know because I can see his shadow with my eyes closed. Weird, I know. In the course of how many hours I’ve been here, I’ve developed different abilities to stop myself from going crazy. I’ve gone from freezing cold, to burning hot. Now, my skin feels an odd mixture of the both, internally and externally. My eyelids part slowly, to reveal his freshly shaven jaw as he stares down at me. He’s a tall man, much like his foster sons. That, and those cold blue eyes of his are the only things he shares in common with Ronan. Hands clench into fists by my sides at the thought of him, of them. My mouth is sour all over again. I blink hard, fighting back the painful urge I have to cry. He pulls his stool from the darkness, into the little light above my head. It illuminates only a small circle around me. I watch him sit down and place a tray on his thighs. “I’ll feed you,” he starts to speak, lifting the spoon and stirring the rice with a sauce that smells a lot like beef curry. My intestines twist into a tight knot in my stomach. “You need all the energy you can get.” He continues. I angle my head to the left, right brow raised. What about me makes him believe I would eat from his fucking hands? “Open up.” he stretches the spoon to my mouth. My gaze drops to it. A scowl stretches across the corners of my face as I look up at him. “I would die of starvation before I eat anything from you.” “Relax,” he rolls his eyes. Luke withdraws the spoon from me, and puts it into his mouth. He licks the rice straight off the spoon, closes his eyes to savor the taste with a smile on his face. “See?” His eyes twinkle with amusement. “No poison.” “Go to hell.” Luke heaves a tired sigh and places the tray on the ground. “You won’t survive for very long if you don’t eat.” I laugh. It’s as hollow as the hole the brothers dug in my fucking chest. “Why the fuck do you care about that? I have less than six hours, don’t I?” He leans backwards just a little, folding his arms across his chest. “You don’t look too scared of death. You seem almost excited to die.” His jaw clenches. I see the rage that lights up his face. “You really think they’ll come to your rescue, don’t you?” My heart skips five beats at once. Inhale. Exhale. Again and again, until I can mask the whirlwind of emotions knocking me about. Until I can mask the confidence I still have in them, the faith that they would do exactly as they’ve said: give me the chance to put a bullet in his damn throat. But I don’t hide it well enough. Next thing I know, Luke tries to hold himself back from rolling over his stool in laughter. “Jesus Christ! You’re more stupid than I thought!” Yes. I know that. I fell in love with three blood sucking vampires, and I had no idea. Hell. I even liked to call one a golden retriever who could never hurt anyone. THEY HAVE A KILL COUNT OF A HUNDRED! Do you know what it takes to kill a hundred men? Because I do. One. Lack of a conscience. Two. Lack of a heart. How can three men without a heart claim to be in love with me? “I don’t care if they come or not. Honestly, I would rather never see any of your faces again. So can you please just let me be?” His laughter dissolves almost immediately, and so does his wry smile. “I have to keep you alive, Sarah Wellspring. You’re the only hold I have over them. They seem to care about you more than anything else. I have to admit…” he rises to his feet and begins to circle around me. “…you made things easier for me. I had thought I would be forced to hire a private investigator and dig deep into their background to bring them to their knees. But…” I flinch when he taps the back of my chair. His rough fingers trace the skin of my neck as he leans in. I don’t breathe. “I was lucky enough to meet you on the first night of my confrontation. I didn’t think too much of it at first, of course. You could have been a random hookup. Still, I noticed Malachi was a tad bit too expressive,” My eyes close as the memory of that night flashes in my mind. Malachi had opened the door and asked me to leave. I should have listened. “I hadn’t seen them in fifteen years, of course. So I had to do a bit of research. Watched all the interviews I could watch. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Malachi’s face remained calm and stoic. His eyes never twitched no matter what he was asked. That night, however, I saw something I had never seen in any of them before…” Goosebumps swell on the surface of my skin as he leans in further, close enough to brush my earlobe with the tip of his nose. “Fear.” He spits out. “Just like I can sense in you now.” I press my eyelids tighter against each other, hating how close he is to me, hating how I cannot reach for his neck and squeeze the life out of him no matter how hard I want to. “I’m not scared of you.” I bite back at him. “You are nothing for me to be scared of.” “Oh yeah?” His fingers dig into the center of my head. A loud scream rips through my throat as he drags a handful of my hair, pulling me backwards, forcing my neck to bend against the chair. There’s nowhere else to look besides at his wretched face. “You should be fucking scared of me, Sarah wellspring.” Something about my courage makes him breathe through his mouth. “I’m their biggest nightmare. Try as they might, they won’t be able to save you or themselves from me.” He pauses to laugh. “They can’t even find me. And they won’t go to the police either. Men like them know they cannot afford to have any business with law enforcement authorities. They’ve done too much.” Between his sentences and his mocking laughter, I grow more and more irritated. I swallow hard, mustering the strength to speak. There’s no way in hell I would let him have the final say. The brothers might have lied to me and deceived me for so long, but they would keep to their promise this one time. They owe it to me. “Ronan promised he would give me a bullet to put in your throat. He would do it.” Luke spits on my face. Nausea claws up my throat as bile burns the back of my mouth. When I freeze, it’s not out of fear, but a raging fury. A burning sensation crawls up the skin of my neck, it clogs my throat, suffocates me, but I don’t back down. I force myself to keep looking at him even as his saliva scorches my pupils. I let him see the fire he’s ignited. It sends him spiraling even further. “You know what? I should cut your fucking tongue out right now. Oh. I would enjoy cutting you into pieces for them to watch. Fuck keeping you alive. I’m going to put on a little show for them.” He stands in front of me and takes my phone out of his pocket. He places the screen in front of me, and my face automatically unlocks it. Beads of sweat rush down the folds of his forehead. His shaky fingers struggle to hold my phone as he swipes through. “You think I’m a fucking joke, don’t you?” He breathes out. “I didn’t spend fifteen years planning my revenge just to be made fun of! I have tools! I would gut you with a screwdriver and make them watch. They love you. That’s punishment enough for them.” My whole body tenses like I’ve been electrocuted, breath locking in my chest. I want to scream at him, to spit in his face, to remind him I hate them, that I meant every word when I said it. But my heart betrays me before my mouth can. A tremble rolls through me, and my vision blurs as tears form in my eyes. They do love me. And I still love them. I wish I didn’t. God, I wish I could scrub the feeling from my veins like dirt under my nails. The image of them watching helplessly as I’m hurt…it makes my stomach turn. It’ll ruin them for life. Whatever bit of humanity they felt while loving me will automatically disappear. I can’t let that happen. Luke replaces the stool in front of me with an iron chair, and he puts the phone on it, just like before. It’s ringing. Once they pick, it’s over. They won’t only kill him, they’ll burn everything and everyone to the ground. “You don’t want to do this.” I plead with him. “If there’s any part of you that wants to get out of this alive, don’t do this. I’m begging you.” It’s still ringing as he scrambles with his tool box in the darkness. I can tell from the weird metal sounds. It’s hard to see him, so I follow the sounds with my eyes. “They would lose all desire to fight once you’re dead. And striking would be easier for me.” He steps into the light with a screwdriver in his right hand, and the most gigantic pair of scissors I have ever seen in his left. “Perhaps I was wrong. You might be of more use to me dead than alive.” He stands beside me. My heart is racing at an alarming rate. Someone finally answers the call. “Sarah?” That does it. Ronan’s voice cuts the thin thread holding my tears back. And his face? Oh God. “Her six hours are almost up,” Luke calls out. “I thought I’ll give you the pleasure of seeing her one last time as I kill her slowly.” Ronan’s eyes darken with rage. “You motherfucker! Don’t you dare…” The screen shifts from him to a man I do not recognize. Dark eyes, and grey hair almost too shiny. Like silver. But Luke’s tools slip from his hand to the ground. The man’s lips thin into a wry smile. “Hello, Luke. Long time, no see.”