Page 49 of Tough Luck

I hunkered down behind a large crate and held my breath as he passed a few feet in front of me. I realized he’d made his way backwards and was now blocking the only exit. He was pacing back and forth, stalking the aisles like a predator, keeping watch on the only way to freedom.

I pressed my back against a massive wooden crate, my chest heaving as I tried to swallow the sound of my own frantic breathing. The temperature in the warehouse was freezing, but sweat was trickling down the back of my neck from the effort of my escape.

I could hear him talking to himself just one aisle over—a stream of erratic, crazy mutterings about how I had stolen his life and how he was going to make sure that I paid.

I waited, freezing in place until the heavy crunch of his boots began to drift toward the far end of the aisle. Slithering on my hands and knees, I moved deeper into the shadows, desperately trying to find a clear path toward the front of the building or another exit.

I lost track of time. Of how many close calls I had, with Leonard feet away from my hiding spots. Slowly, I crept away from him, hoping, praying that Rick would come to save me.

Then, a distant, heavy thud of a door slamming echoed through the facility.

“Leonard!”

My heart leaped straight into my throat when I heard Rick’s voice echo through the building. I wanted to cry out to Rick, but I could see Leonard’s dark shadow just feet from my hiding spot. If I called out now, he would find me. If he had me, he held all the power, and I didn’t want to think of what Rick would agree to in order to protect me. So I remained quiet and still, even though it killed me to do so.

Besides, Rick’s voice was too far away, as if he was in a whole different part of the building. How big was this place anyway? I tried to remember the blueprints that had been in the brewery’s folder.

This was the area we had planned on turning into the speakeasy. Portions of it connected to the main facility that was currently in use.

Roughly five thousand square feet hadn’t been touched when Marcus and his partner had purchased the defunct bottling facility a few years back. Then I remembered the area where Rick had created the digital hidden doorway from the main building into this area. The very spot we had planned on making the entrance into the speakeasy. Glancing around, I found the spot. If I could just get there, I could escape.

I watched Leonard’s shadow disappear. Taking a chance, I sprinted toward the door.

“Sofia!” Rick’s baritone voice boomed through the darkness, laced with a raw, terrifying panic that broke my heart.

I opened my mouth to scream for him, to tell him where I was, but a sudden shadow shifted just a few feet away.

I froze, locking my jaw shut. Leonard was standing right at the edge of my aisle, his silhouette framed by a distant beam of light. His gun was clenched in his right hand. I tucked my body between a few barrels and watched as I held my breath.

If I made a single sound, he would be on me before Rick could ever reach us.

I began to back away from him, keeping my eyes locked on his shadow. I stepped blindly into a narrow, unlit doorway that led into a large, pitch-black storage room. I took one more cautious step backward⁠—

Clink.

My heel caught a stray crate of empty glass beer bottles. The sudden, sharp clatter of glass echoing through the empty room sounded like a gunshot.

A second later, I heard Marcus’s voice calling out saying something about finding footprints. They were in here. They were looking for me. Marcus called out from the hallway just outside the storage room, his flashlight beam cutting across the ceiling.

I saw Marcus round the corner, his phone light illuminating the corridor. Relief flooded my veins. I stood up, preparing to rush out to him⁠—

But Leonard was faster.

He materialized from the blind spot behind the door frame like a nightmare. Before Marcus could even turn his head, Leonard swung the gun up and then down, hitting Marcus just over his ear. There was a sickening, wet thud as it connected with the side of Marcus’s head.

Marcus let out a breathless grunt, his phone spinning out of his hand and clattering across the concrete floor as he collapsed against a rusted support beam, slipping into unconsciousness.

A gasp caught in my throat, and I instinctively threw myself behind a stack of heavy plastic pallets, pulling my knees to my chest. My body was trembling so violently I had to clamp both hands over my mouth.

“Leonard!” Rick’s voice roared from the corridor, closer now, dripping with a lethal, unadulterated fury that shook the metal rafters. “This isn’t going to end well for you! Let Sofia go!”

I crouched low in the pitch-black storage room, tears finally stinging my eyes as my chest tightened with a crushing wave of emotion. Hearing Rick’s voice so raw, so filled with a terror I had never heard from him before, shattered something inside me. For the past month, I had been so hurt by the distance he’d kept, so discouraged by the corporate walls he had put back up between us. But hearing him right now, I realized how incredibly stupid I had been.

He didn’t care about the board. He didn’t care about the lawyers. He was here, risking his life in a blinding blizzard to find me.

And the thought of losing him—the terrifying realization that a bitter, unhinged man like Leonard could steal our entire future before I ever got the chance to tell Rick that I loved him—fueled a sudden, fierce spark of determination. I wasn’t going to let Leonard win. I wasn’t going to let him take away the life we were supposed to build together.

I tried to think.