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Clapping fills the air, startling me, my eyes widening as Roger steps from the shadows. He wears a sinister grin on his face, one that makes me shift with unease. Each clap of his hands is deafening, echoing around the large, cavernous room as shock and fear course through my body.
Chuckling, he stops and holds up a card between two fingers, letting it catch the light.
A joker.
He called us here.
“Hello, wife,” he purrs. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Chapter
Fifty-One
My blood runs cold at his words and the gleam I see blazing in his cruel eyes. For a moment, a shudder of fear passes through me as I stare at my husband. Roger is completely at ease despite the fact we outnumber him. That’s what makes me realize he must be planning something. Roger would never be so sure of himself otherwise.
“It’s a trap,” I whisper, my voice shaking a little. I’m proud that it doesn’t tremble more, that I’m able to fight against my fear. I’m not alone here. I’m not facing my monster by myself.
Diamond stands tall at my side, his eyes as dark as his soul as they focus on the man before us. “How clever of you,” Diamond purrs. “Did you take his card before or after he died?”
Roger sneers at Diamond, distaste dripping from his expression as his wicked eyes run down Diamond’s body. “Does it matter, freak? You weren’t so hard to track down. You ran like you thought you had a chance of escaping me.” He looks at me. “As if she could ever get away from me.”
“I don’t belong to you,” I declare. This time, there’s no shake in my voice as I raise my chin in defiance, letting him see the truth in my eyes.
Roger meets my gaze. “Yes,” he says, a smirk pulling at his lips, “you do.”
He snaps his fingers, and more movement comes from the darkness around us. People I’ve never seen before step out of the shadows, advancing toward us. Each of them is armed with various weapons—baseball bats, lead pipe, a machete. They all stare at us with hatred, as if we did something wrong to these strangers.
They don’t hate us because of what we do.
They hate us because of what we are.
Not a single one of them could ever understand that there aren’t any freaks in this world. There are only humans. Those of us who are willing to admit there’s darkness and learn to live with it are stronger, and they don’t like that.
Now, we stand before them in our masks, and I know they’ll murder us if given the opportunity. We kill to protect and save, but they’ll kill us out of jealousy and desperation.
Which of us are the real monsters?
Spade tenses at my side, but there’s no other outward sign that my men are uncomfortable. They look around at the dozen men surrounding us, sizing them up. They have the numbers, but there’s one thing they’ve forgotten in this trap.
We’ve accepted the darkness.
We are the darkness.
We are their nightmares.
Diamond grins. “It’s a nice attempt, Roger,” he says. “I’ll give you that.”
Roger scowls at Diamond’s use of his name. “This is where you die, freak.”
Diamond’s grin widens. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “But it could be where you do.”
He moves without warning. Between one blink and the next, Diamond lunges toward the nearest stranger. He grabs the man before he can so much as raise his machete and snaps his neck with a resounding crack before the man drops to the floor, lifeless.
Everything is silent for a moment as Diamond meets Roger’s widening eyes, and then all hell breaks loose.
Heart leaps to the right, a knife I never saw him pull in his hand. Diamond picks up the lost machete and starts hacking at those who surround him. Spade uncoils his whip and lashes out, wrapping it around an attacker’s neck and yanking him over to his waiting blade. Club pulls out his own knife, but he stays beside me instead of leaping forward. I hoist my bat up, prepared to smash in any motherfucker’s skull who gets too close. What I expect to be a quick fight is anything but. When one of the men rush forward, something flashes at his hip, something on his belt. When I swing and get slammed backward by his shoulders, I realize what it is—a police badge.
Roger brought fucking off duty cops with him.
