“Let me go,” I try to say, but the words drown under her lips.
I fight.
I fucking fight.
But the dream is stronger. The darkness wraps around me again, suffocating.
“The next twenty-four hours will be touch and go, but there’s nothing more I can do,” Sean says, his voice dragging me up from the void like a rusty hook in my chest. Each word cuts through the fog.
“Who cares?” Roman is next, cold, careless, like I’m already rotting. “He served his purpose.”
I want to lunge at him. Tear his fucking throat out. But I can’t move. Can’t speak. I stay still, breathing slow and measured, eyes closed.
Just a corpse with a pulse.
“She’s not coming.” Bryn slices through the room.
“She’ll let him die?” Roman sounds genuinely surprised. Don’t tell me he didn’t think Aspen had in her to leave Dante behind, the girl lived alone for years.
“Knox won’t let her,” she says. “And Aspen’s not stupid, Roman. She knows the price.”
Footsteps. Light. Controlled.
She’s close.
Her presence slides over me like silk soaked in poison.
“This one’s stubborn,” she purrs, and her fingers glide into my hair as if she owns me. Like she’s petting a wild thing she thinks she’s tamed.
“But I can bendhim.”
Bend me?
My teeth ache with the urge to bite her goddamn fingers off. Right to the bone.
Fucking bitch.
“We need to let him rest. I’ll check on him in an hour,” Sean mutters, and a moment later, the door shuts behind him with a dullclickof the lock.
I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding, every inch of my chest burning as I drag air back into my lungs.
The room is empty.
But she’s here.
Aspen.
Her scent clings to the air like a memory I can’t shake. It stabs straight through the fog, rips me back into the worst place possible. This is where Knox kept her when she tried to escape. This fucking room.
Everything hurts. My limbs are heavy, my veins are ice, and I can’t move without feeling like something inside me is tearing apart. But I have to keep thinking. I can’t let the blood loss, or the lies take me down.
What the fuck happened?
Ethan betrayed us. Sold us out to Roman. That part makes sense. He was always a coward. But Bryn? She betrayed us… and him?
I close my eyes, trying to string the madness together. Bryn met with Roman through Ethan? And then… what? She made another deal behind Ethan’s back? Let him die?
Pretended to be dead?
