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I’d like to think happy thoughts, be an optimist, but the realist within me tells me that, without her, life will be empty.
Bleak, fucking empty.
But it’ll be my empty.
And a chance to start over.
There’s almost a smile on my face as I approach the partially open office door. Revenge can be a hell of a mood-booster. In my mind, the yellow light spilling forth takes on a reddish hue, like a sunrise greeting a new day. I clutch my gun in the ready position, pull the breath that I’ll exhale as I put a round through the head of Rafael Reyes.
Tonight will be a good night.
And tomorrow, even better.
I push the door open with the barrel of my gun. The office is too still, too quiet, a stark contrast to the chaos we've unleashed throughout the rest of the house. My eyes dart to every corner of the room, hunting for Rafael Reyes, but he's nowhere to be seen.
It's then that I notice it: a small camera mounted in the room's corner, its red light blinking steadily. It's pointed directly at me — no, at the doorway where any intruder would appear. The setup is too professional for an impromptu installation; this has been here a while. A heavy feeling settles in my gut as I realize Reyes knew we were coming.
And he was prepared.
I'm exposed, caught in the camera’s unblinking gaze.
On instinct, I raise my gun and shoot it out. The red light winks out with a spray of plastic shards. Quiet returns, but now laden with a new tension. Shouts call out from below. It’s Ghost, and I answer that the room’s clear. If this is a trap, I won’t risk bringing anyone else from the MC in here. If this is a trap, I die alone.
Before I can step deeper into the room and search for any signs of Reyes or where he might have fled to, the shrill ring of an old landline phone slices through the silence. It's coming from Reyes' desk — the one piled with papers and files and family photos.
I pick it up. A deep breath steels me, and I answer with a curt, “Yeah?”
The voice on the other end is terrified and shakes me to my core. “Dixon?”
Alexandra.
My heart surges in ways that I thought that dead organ never could.
“What is it?”
It’s hard to speak; combining those three words, three syllables, and eight letters, into something coherent involves wrestling with fear, with rage, with heartache, with desire, with the urge to bash the fucking receiver of this old, piece-of-shit phone to pieces and fire a dozen rounds into the wall, cursing whatever god exists out there that I have to hear her voice and experience the agony of losing her all over again.
“I need you, Dixon.”
“Need me? What do you mean?”
“I need you to come to me.” When I pause, she continues, her voice quicker, more urgent. “You were right, OK? You were right, and I realize that now. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble, and the only way I can get out of it is if you come and get me. Please, help me. I love you, Dixon.”
Those words hit me like a bullet and my voice fails me. There’s a soul-shaking ache in my chest that may be my heart starting again. I know in that instant that, despite all the pain she’s caused me, despite all the things we’ve said to each other, simply hearing her voice and the way she sounds — the fear, the need, the helplessness — stirs a pull in me that makes clear to me that, despite everything I’ve told myself, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep her safe.
For those four words — I love you, Dixon — I would do anything, go anywhere.
Even step into a trap.
“I love you, too,” I say, my voice hoarse, jagged, like shattered pieces of a puzzle forced back together. “Tell me when and where you need me. I’ll be there.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Alexandra
The dimly lit, steel-and-concrete room in which my father and Mateo are keeping me prisoner smells like a rat died in a paper bag of dogshit and someone microwaved it. Except it’s not a bag with a rat carcass and dog feces, it’s an old storage shed attached to an abandoned factory far outside of Sacramento. I’m tied to a chair, and unable to even do the basic, life-saving maneuver of pulling my shirt up to cover my nose. Instead, I’m forced to inhale, unfiltered, the moldy, noxious air and exhale it as a hacking cough that makes me feel like, in another hour or two, an MRI of my lungs would be an identical match for a coal miner’s unfortunate organs.
There is only one moment where my coughing and the fear and outrage swirling in my gut subside: when my dad gets some alert on his phone and then shoves that phone in my face. His voice is a rough command. “Talk, or you’ll fucking regret it.”
