Page 145 of Savage Surrender

His good hand closes over my throat. He slams the back of my head into the beam once, then again. The warehouse blinks in and out around him.

“Once she really sees who you are,” he pants, “she’ll leave. No one wants you.”

His thumb presses into the side of my neck. “There’s nothing in that head worth staying for.”

Bianca rolling her eyes at me. Bianca naked in the nest, fighting mad, telling me exactly where I fucked up. Bianca yanking my arm into place around her while she sleeps. Bianca looking at every ugly part of me and moving closer anyway.

She already sees me.

I hook my leg behind his and put him on the floor. He hits hard enough to bounce. I go down with him and get my forearm across his throat.

Vincent bucks beneath me. His face darkens, but he turns his chin and steals half a breath. I shift higher.

Weller is close now.

My father claws at my face. One finger catches inside my swollen eye, and pain rips through my skull.

I hold on.

The van door closes on Bianca’s face again, and I’m still telling myself Freddie can keep her safe.

My father drags in another breath beneath my arm.

If he breathes again, he comes for her.

His heels stop hammering the concrete.

His fingers slide from my shoulder.

Then there is nothing beneath me but weight.

“He’s gone,” Ezra says.

The words take a second to reach me.

I push myself off my father. My arms barely hold. Weller catches the back of my shirt before I fall sideways, and I tear away.

“I need to get to her. Right now.”

“We are.” Weller’s voice is rough. Blood has soaked one knee of his pants where he knelt beside William. “Can you stand?”

I stand. The room takes a second to settle.

Tristan is braced against the worktable, one arm wrapped around his ribs. Alexander lies at his feet with his eyes open and nothing moving behind them. Ezra has pulled the knife out of Vincent’s arm and wiped it once on his own pants.

“They’ll come back,” Ezra says. “We need to leave.”

Weller glances toward the vehicles visible through the gap beneath the roll-up door.

“No,” Ezra says. “Anything out there leads straight back here. They could be tracking all of them.”

“Then we get out of here and call for a ride.”

Ezra finds his phone among the shit dumped beside the worktable. We leave everything else.

The glass is cracked, but the map loads.

“We’re outside Emerald Hills.” He turns the phone so Weller can see. “County road is half a mile east. Tree cover most of the way.”