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T
his is it
. I’ve really done it this time. One last job and I managed to fuck it all up. Now my last living relative will pay the price.

Part of me knows she will understand. Part of me has known this was coming for a long time. “Living,” after all, is a strong word for what she’s been doing for the last two years that Aaron has held me under his thumb.

But still. I can’t help it. In spite of what I know I need to do, where I know I need to go, I make one last detour. After all, this may be the last errand I ever perform on this earth. I’m about to go to the Revel alone, no Sloan, and tell Aaron that she escaped.

He will not take that kindly. Especially not after I told him I’ve attracted police attention in the process. But I see no other option. I cannot actually bring her there. Not knowing what he’ll do to her.

On the way, though, I pull aside at the hospital on the outskirts of town. The woman at the desk, Clarice, waves me through without so much as a glance at my ID. We’re friends by now. Hospital friends, the kind who don’t ask too many unnecessary questions.

I walk the corridors by memory, the way I have for years now. On holidays, on weekends, any quiet day I can get away. I pause outside her room and take a deep breath. Then I step into the dim, private suite where my mother lives.

Or, continues to breathe, I should say.

I take a seat beside her tiny form. She’s even smaller now than she was two years ago when she finally drifted into this sleep. Her hand is light as bird bones in mine, when I cup it gently.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. When I agreed to work for Aaron, it was because he said he could help her. Pay for the medical care to fix her.

The disease had other plans.

For the first couple of years I worked for him, she received regular treatments, treatments she thought were provided by an anonymous benefactor, some kind Christian soul who had met her somewhere in the world and taken pity on her condition. She talked all the time about the nice man or woman, bless their soul. She prayed for them every day.

The irony of that bites deep. She thought Aaron was a saint. She had no idea the kind of depravity he’d hired me to carry out in his name, dangling her life before me like bait on a hook, blackmail for any time I got squeamish.

We’d agreed I would work for him for five years. My time will be up in a little less than a month. This should have been my last job for him. After this, he promised, he would keep everything the way it is now. He’d continue to pay for the private room, the life support, the doctors and nurses who massage her limbs every day to keep bed sores from creeping in, who monitor her all the time for changes in her comatose state.

Part of me knows she’s been all but gone for a long time.

But part of me remembers her strong faith, the way she always told me about miracle cases, people who woke up from comas after years in them. Her living will says that she wants anything possible done to keep her alive, and I have tried to honor that. She believes in miracles, so I tried to buy her one by selling my soul.

The miracle isn’t coming. I know that now. I think she does, too. She would understand, if I let her go now. She would understand that I’m doing it for Sloan, for an innocent girl with a whole life ahead of her to live. My mother would want me to save Sloan, the way she herself could not be saved.

Aaron may be a devil, may have dragged me toward hell with him, but I can still be a saint for the woman I love. I can save her.

“I’m so sorry, Mom.” I bend over to kiss her forehead gently. Her body is warm, her breathing steady and mechanical, her pulse the same it’s been for two years. But she’s no longer in there. I have to accept that now.

“I’ll try to make you proud,” I murmur. I squeeze her hand one last time. Then I turn from the room, and I don’t look back.

It takes me less than half an hour to make the drive to the Revel. As I pull up in the parking lot, I notice more cars than usual. All gaudy SUV types. Some kind of meeting? Backup for Freddie’s arrival tomorrow? Or for mine, right now?

I wonder how much Aaron has already guessed. I wonder how quickly he’ll kill me. Maybe, in light of my years of dedicated service, he will be merciful. One quick blow to the back of the skull, or a single slice to the throat, and we can end this once and for all.

* * *

T
he entrance
of the Revel is still under heavy construction. Beams everywhere now, and enormous packages full of slot machine parts, gambling tables waiting to be assembled, god knows what else. I tiptoe through the wreckage and march up the steps toward the office. The same place I met Aaron what feels like a few minutes ago, and yet also a totally different lifetime.

I reach the door, find it unlocked. Turn the knob and let it swing open to reveal Aaron surrounded by his men.

To my surprise, his face breaks into a wide smile when he sees me. My whole body tenses, on alert for whatever trick he’s pulling now.

But he only spreads his arms wide in welcome. “Ah, the man of the hour. I didn’t think you had it in you, Hunter Gage.”

I have to swallow before I can form a reply, and even then my voice comes out throaty and scratched. “Had what in me?”

Then one of the men in the corner shifts to the side, and my whole world spirals to a halt.

On the couch, where I watched Aaron get a foot job just a day ago, her hands bound behind her back and a gag wrapped around her perfectly shaped lips, is Sloan.

Fuck.

They’re all staring at me, but I can’t form a sentence right now. It feels like someone just sucker-punched me. I can’t catch my wind.

Luckily Aaron cuts in, since he can never keep his mouth shut for long. “Smart move, Gage. Having the girl come alone. I don’t know what you said to make her do it, but it seems to have thrown the police off your trail. So thanks. Knew I could count on you,” he adds with a slick, toothy smile, as if he was some benevolent friend who trusted me to get the job done all alone, and not the fucking asshole who was threatening my mother’s life on the phone less than a few hours ago.

Sloan’s eyes lock onto mine, and she’s all I can look at. The one person I swore to protect. The one person I would do anything to save. The woman I’ve just led to her doom. Her eyes widen, her mouth tightens at the edges, and though she can’t mouth anything to me now, with the gag in her mouth, I know what she’s trying to say.

I’m sorry.

She came here for me, I realize. She heard me on the phone this morning. She knew something would happen if I didn’t bring her in. She’s here for her brother, yes, but for me too, and I can’t ignore that. This is my fault. Whatever happens to her now—and sickeningly, horrifyingly, I have a pretty good idea of what could happen—it’s on my head.

“What else do you need from me?” I hear myself asking, though I still can’t tear my eyes from her, and it’s killing me that I can’t just run across this office, wrench her off that couch, cut her ties, strangle every last man in here who put her into that position. But I know Aaron by now. The second he realizes I actually care about Sloan, she’ll be in even more danger than she already is. He would have his idiot brigade kill her before I got halfway through beating up anyone in the office.

I have to play this cool. Play it smart. I rip my gaze from Sloan and look at Aaron instead, my expression passive. Calm. Annoyed, almost. “I did what you asked,” I say.

“That you did.” He purses his lips, studying me. I don’t let my gaze waver, not by an inch. Let him believe I’m completely unfazed by this. Let him think I don’t give a shit about her. “Out of curiosity,” he says, and my heart sinks into my stomach, “how did you convince the girl to come to us? I’m just wondering. For posterity, you know.” He smiles, and it’s all edges and knives. He knows he’s cutting me.

Or he thinks he knows. Luckily I’m a better liar than Aaron O’Malley will ever be. “I let her think I’d fallen in love with her,” I reply simply, and that does it. He and his goonies all crack up in laughter, Topknot in the corner actually tearing up he’s laughing so hard.

Sloan’s eyes glitter too, catching in the light of the overhead, though she refuses to let any of the tears fall. I can’t make myself look at her for long. Can’t think about what I’m doing right now. I need to convince two people in this room of two very different things. I need Aaron to believe I don’t give a shit about Sloan, and I need Sloan to believe she should hate me. If she believes that, she won’t give up. She won’t surrender to captivity or torture or whatever worse fates Aaron might have planned for her. If she’s angry, if she hates me, she will fight to escape this place. And that’s what I need her to be right now.

Angry Sloan. Vengeful Sloan. The Sloan who won’t let herself get tied up in Aaron’s web easily.

One more glance at her hot, burning eyes, and I’m pretty sure I’ve accomplished that.

“Who knew love could make such a sweet weapon,” Aaron finally says, wiping his eyes. They go hard again almost immediately, any laughter they had an instant ago vanishing. “Right. Well, I think you’ve more than earned your keep here, Gage. As you know, our contract is due to end in a couple of weeks. But I think it’s fair, after your performance today, to call it quits a little bit early. Don’t you?”

Panic lights in my gut. No. He’s supposed to keep me around. Give me some job to do tonight or tomorrow, some reason to hang in the area. “You don’t need help with the drop tomorrow?” I ask, before I realize my mistake. Shit. He didn’t tell me about changing the date, did he?

Aaron’s eyes darken. “Tomorrow?”

I bob my head toward Sloan without a glance at her. “The girl’s brother told her. She relayed it to me. The drop date changed?”

“Yes, well. I caught wind of some reasons our site on Saturday wouldn’t have worked. But that’s not your concern any longer, Gage.”

“Right. Of course not.” It would look suspicious as hell if I begged him to let me stay on this job. Not when I’ve spent years making it perfectly clear exactly how little I think of him, or how ready I am to throw this job and his fucking insanity behind me. “I just want to make sure you mean it,” I say. “That you’re not going to pull me into anything last-minute, unprepared, because you’ve changed your mind. Our deal still stands, does it not?”

You won’t kill my mother, will you?
Pull the plug on her after all these years. Leave her to gasp out her last breath alone, because this motherfucker sure as hell wouldn’t tell me when he planned to cut funding.

“Our deal stands, Hunter.” He offers me his hand. “Thank you for your service.”

I never thought this day would come. I never thought that when it did, the last thing in the world I would want to do would be to walk out of this office once and for all. But I have no other choice right now. I grasp his offered hand, shake once, hard, and force myself not to look at Sloan as I turn and leave her behind.

I
can’t believe
what I’m watching. I sit on the couch, my hands wrenched unceremoniously behind me, this fucking foul-tasting rag stuffed in my mouth and bound around my face, making it hard to even swallow, and I watch the fucking bastard I thought I loved shake hands with my captor.

This was such a huge mistake.
I realize that now, too late. After I’ve already set this whole thing in motion. I stole the wire Freddie had in his car from the FBI guys, hid it inside the wiring of my bra, and marched down here to the location Gage had unwittingly given me himself earlier on the phone.

I thought I was saving them both. My brother, yes, but also him. Aaron would have killed him if he didn’t capture me. Aaron would have done something terrible to . . .  whoever it was he was holding over Gage’s head right now.

If you want me to keep her alive
, I can still hear Aaron saying over the phone, and I can still see Gage’s shocked expression, before he laid eyes on me and schooled his face into anger instead.

Who is she?

Probably his girlfriend
, the sarcastic, hurt part of my brain tells me.
The woman he really loves, since he clearly never really cared about you.

And like an idiot, I walked right in here to save him and her and Freddie, and now I’ll die for Gage’s betrayal.

At least I’ve saved my brother, I tell myself. At least there’s that.

I left the audio box recording this whole thing out in the parking lot, in my brother’s car, where he’ll find it as soon as he finds me missing, because he knows me. He’ll be able to guess what I’ve done. And hopefully, when he finds that recording, by then I’ll have convinced this creepfest Aaron to confess to something bad. Maybe if they get a recording of him murdering me on tape, the FBI will just arrest him here and now, no need for my brother to step in in my place.

A girl can dream, right? Hah.

I think all this, but I can’t help the churn in my gut as the door shuts behind Gage, and I’m left alone with these thugs. Four of them plus their boss, a short, muscular-bordering-on-fat man with greasy dark hair slicked over a balding plate. When the door closes, he turns to me, his fat tongue wetting his already damp lips, a sick sparkle in his eye, and my whole body clenches in anticipation.

It doesn’t help that I already feel more broken than anything this man could do to me. Hearing Gage say he used me, made me love him, so I would do this. Watching him leave without so much as a single look in my direction. It feels like having my already-busted heart torn out of my chest and stomped on.

I have only myself to blame. Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, well, I should have fucking seen that coming.

I swallow hard as Aaron approaches the couch. Time to face the music. He rips the cloth from my mouth, and I can’t help but gasp in a grateful breath of untainted air.

He laughs. “How are you feeling, my dear? Comfortable?” He nods at one of the men standing around, who bends over at the gesture and grabs the rope binding my hands. A few rough jerks later and it falls away.

I grit my teeth and resist the urge to spit out the rest of the bad taste in my mouth. Preferably straight into his face. “I told you when I came in here, I’m surrendering of my own free will.” Which I did. I let him know that Gage had kidnapped me, but that he’d made me see sense, and realize I needed to turn myself in to save my brother.

At the time, I thought I was saving Gage too. Now the betrayal stings.

“Oh, I know you did, doll.” His gaze wanders over my body as he says that, taking his time to linger on my chest, my legs. I suppress a shudder, because I don’t want to let him know much I hate him. And definitely not how much he scares me.

“Thank you for doing that, Ms. Casey,” he continues, his eyes not quite making it back up to my face, locked on my chest instead. “I’m glad that you, at least, see sense. I’ve told your brother a dozen times by now; all I need is my money back, and we can all move on our separate ways. There’s no need for this situation to get ugly.”

“You mean any uglier than it already is?” I can’t help but mutter, in spite of my fear.

His teeth bare in a wide smile. “Now, Sloan.”

I repress a shudder. Somehow, I hadn’t thought this creep would actually bother to learn my name. Him knowing even that much about me suddenly makes this all feel so much more real.
What the hell do I think I’m doing here?

“Would you call this ugly?” He spreads his arms wide at the office. Monotone wine-red carpet, black leather couch that feels far too sweat-slick beneath me, this short, balding ass, and his tall, leering goonies, each of their faces as blank and nondescript as the next, they’re so out-of-touch with the world. They might as well be robots hulking in the corners waiting to attack at their master’s command. Dogs on a leash.

“For one thing, the company isn’t my first choice,” I say, keeping my voice purposefully even. I’m surprised I can manage it. Who knew I’d turn out to be decently cool under pressure?

But there’s something almost freeing about this. I’d been afraid of this all coming to a head for days now. Now, I’m the one who took the leap. I stepped off the cliff toward certain doom, and I might be falling, but at least I’m not stuck up there staring at the drop, afraid I’ll be pushed.

“Ah. I see your point there.” Aaron snaps thick, meaty fingers, and the bodyguards all snap to attention, eyes locked on him, awaiting orders. “Leave us,” he says, and one by one they file out of the room, no questions asked, not an instant of hesitation in any of them.

Is this how Gage acts around Aaron? Mindless and groveling? Somehow I can’t picture that. Even earlier, when he was stabbing the knife in my back, twisting it in deep, he sounded defiant still. Disdainful of Aaron. He might not care about me, but he doesn’t give a shit about his boss, either.

I’ll take whatever crumbs of reassurance I can scrounge at this point.

“Better?” he asks with that same leer on his skinny, pale lips.

“Not much,” I reply.

His eyes narrow. “Sloan, have I not treated you well?”

“You tied me up and gagged me on a couch the minute I got here,” I point out.

He spreads his hands wide, shaking his head. “Details. I needed to be certain of where someone else’s loyalties laid.”

Gage. He was using me as bait for Gage. My stomach does all kinds of strange things then. Turning itself inside-out. I ignore it, and the wrench of chest pain that comes along with it.

Doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all in the past now. This will all be over soon, one way or another. Probably not well for me. The least I can do is go down with my head held high. “Well, you’ll forgive me if it didn’t put me in the most charitable mood.”

He barks out a laugh. “You know, I like you, Sloan. You’re nothing like your brother. I’m sorry that you’ve been saddled with a family like that. A woman like you . . .  you deserve better. You deserve to be treated right, by someone who knows how to do such things.” He steps closer, and I fight the urge to cringe back against the couch. It takes all my willpower to sit still as he leans over me. His scent makes me cringe. I swallow hard against a sudden gag reflex.

“Tell me, Sloan, did my boy Hunter treat you right?” He leans over me, and I keep my eyes locked on his, so that I don’t have to look too closely at his unbuttoned shirt collar, the black wiry hairs that spring out from his pale chest, or the stereotypical-to-the-point-of-ridiculous fat gold chain around his neck.

“Using someone to blackmail their sibling is hardly treating them right, wouldn’t you agree?” I reply.

“Fair point. But, you know, Sloan.” His hand touches the top of my head, and I can’t help it—my entire body flinches in shock. He runs his fingers through my hair slowly, almost gently, his rings catching and snagging in my hair. He breathes in deep, and I can practically hear the drool accumulating in his breath.

Fuck
. I should’ve seen this coming. I knew he was awful, Gage warned me. But I expected an interrogation, maybe to be shoved around or hit a few times. This is somehow so much worse. I swallow again, but my throat’s gone dry as the desert.

“You know, business and pleasure don’t need to be separate things. You can mix them together. Our night together, waiting for your brother’s arrival tomorrow, it needn’t be a waste.”

“I’d rather waste it, if it’s all the same to you.”

That gentle hand clenches hard around my hair. Wrenches me back against the couch, so his whole body looms over me now. I can’t help but glance down, and I grit my teeth at the sight of the hard bulge in his pants.

Shit shit shit.

“I’m trying to be nice to you, Sloan. I’m trying to offer you pleasure rather than pain. And this is how you treat my offer? With disdain?”

“It’s hardly an offer if I can’t refuse it.” I jut my chin out, lock eyes with him. “It’s just another threat painted in nicer words.”

To my surprise, this makes his face crack into another smile. “I understand your point, Ms. Casey. See? I’m not an unreasonable man.” In direct contradiction to this, though he lets go of my hair, he starts to unbuckle his jeans as well.

I cast my eyes around the room. I could slide sideways on the couch, make a break for the door . . . . Would his men be on the other side of it, though? All four of them waiting to jump me? Probably.

Maybe if I could hit him with something first. But there’s nothing on the walls, no paintings, just cheap faux-wood paneling. No bookshelves, an empty desk with a single leather briefcase beside it. Unless that briefcase has a brick in it, it wouldn’t be hard enough to do any damage if swung at someone’s face.

Aaron unzips his fly and draws his cock out. Short, fat, veined and bulbous, it looks like a mushroom. An unwashed mushroom, as a fresh wave of his personal stench hits me straight in the gut.

Never mind running away. I’m going to incapacitate myself with vomiting first. I clench my fists so hard my nails dig into my palms, as he leans closer, his cock inches from my stomach.

“I will give you a choice, then,” he says, his face close to mine, his breath reeking of day-old meat. “Service me here, now, with no one watching. Fifteen minutes of your time. And you can have this whole office to yourself until tomorrow. I won’t even tie you up when we meet your brother. You can walk freely over to him and explain that you’ve been good to me. You’ve treated me well, and he can breathe easy now. He’ll give me my money, and we’ll all go our separate ways.”

“What’s the other option?” I reply in a deadpan voice, my eyes fluttering shut.

There’s a long pause. I don’t look at him, but I can imagine how he’s reacting. How angry he is that I don’t want to take him up on his
generosity
.

“The other option is I tie you up again, shove the gag so far down your throat you’ll probably choke on it in the night, and my guards will escort you to the basement. There are no pleasant leather couches there, I can assure you. Concrete floor. Stone walls. No heat. No water or food for the night. We’ll see if, come the morning, I forgive you enough to let your brother see you one last time before he pays me what I’m owed.”

Some choice
, I think. Because really it isn’t. Not at all. I only need one thing from him, and it’s not comfort or care. “What are you going to do to Freddie, in that case?”

“That depends on what he brings me. All five hundred thousand that he owes me, plus an extra hundred thousand interest, and we’ll be fine. We’ll be square.”

“An extra hundred?” I gape. “You didn’t tell him—”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about the math, Sloan. You’ve heard your options, I’ve given you a fair chance. So what do you choose?”

I clench my jaw hard. “I’ll take the dungeon, thanks,” I spit.

I keep my eyes shut, so I don’t see it when he hits the wall. But I can hear it, the smack of his flesh on the boards. I can feel it, the floor vibrating around me as he stomps away again. By the time I open my eyes, he’s already zipped himself up, and he’s wrenching the office door open.

“Get this slut out of here,” he shouts at the nearest guard, and next thing I know there’s two of them on either side of me, dragging me off the couch.

Shit.

I struggle, then. Try to wrench myself free from their muscular hands, but it’s no use. One of them alone could overpower me. Two? I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.

This time it’s not ropes that wrap around my wrists. Cold hard steel clicks around them. Handcuffs.

They lock them tight. My elbows can barely flex, my arms pinioned behind my back the way they are. On the far side of the room, I hear Aaron talking to the other two. “Take her down the back exit. Basement level.”

“But sir, we’ve got men posted there for tomorrow in case—”

“Just take her. It’ll be fine. We’ll be disposing of her and her brother long before they can make any trouble down that route anyway.”

My heart beats faster in my chest, even as the bodyguards attending me stuff the dirty sock-flavored gag into my mouth again. For once, it’s not beating from fear this time. I expected him to dispose of Freddie and I all along. It’s hardly a shock to hear him admit as much out loud.

No, my brain has snagged on another line of his speech.

Back entrance.

Men posted there in case . . . in case what?

In case someone tries to bust in here tomorrow?

My head reels. I double over, pretending to thrash against the guards again, and screech in the general direction of the wire embedded in my bra. I can only hope it picked up those words, and that whoever’s listening to this will hear it and realize.

That could be our saving grace.