Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 140940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
“You cannot.” Valentina shook her head.
“I want to see if my mouse still wants to go to this dinner on neutral ground.”
Valentina scowled. “It will not be safe.”
“It will. The Butcher is hosting the dinner.”
She stilled.
While we all picked at the French and called them pansies, we knew the Butcher was still the Butcher.
“The Perfumed Pansies are not just sweet-smelling little dandies.” I shrugged. “Jean-Pierre will make sure that no one comes with weapons and no one violates his rules. And I am sure that he has precautions in place for those that do.”
I looked off in the distance. “But it will be up to my mouse if we attend. For now, wait for my signal to push things along.”
Tisha bobbed his head. “And when you give the signal, Kazimir, what do you want to happen first?”
“The Hunter goes. Take their hope away from them. Then, we strike them where it hurts most. Their operations, their homes, their sense of security. . .by the time we are done, Sinaloa will be nothing but a whisper of fear. A legend about a forgotten group of nobodies that made the Lion roar.”
Chapter thirty-six
A Numbing Haze
Emily
The ride from the hospital was a numb haze, the world outside the car window, a blur of passing lights and shadowy buildings.
All meaningless.
All distant.
Even the car’s motion felt surreal, as if I were floating in a void between reality and a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
Kaz held me in his huge, muscular arms, and his presence beside me—the warmth of his body, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat—was the only anchor keeping me tethered to the present.
Yet, it still wasn’t enough to stop all the memories of Max flooding my mind, each one a sharp stab to my heart, triggering waves of pain, of suffering.
Max’s laughter, his teasing, the way his eyes lit up.
I saw Max and me sprawled on X’s living room floor, arguing about which rapper was number one—Tupac, Biggie, or Jay-Z—and always when I brought up Lauryn Hill he would be ready to storm out of the apartment altogether.
And then the scene shifted to the night I first met Kaz, and Max gave me advice in the alleyway, telling me to be sexy, to flirt just enough with the Russian.
You have to wake up.
During our time in New York, Max’s protective presence always lurked in the background—even as he harbored my dark serial killer secrets.
It was a cruel irony, the way the most significant moments of our lives were intertwined with secrets and lies yet bound by an unbreakable bond of love and loyalty.
All the things you have done for me. . .I could never pay you back. . .
I closed my eyes to shut the memories away.
It didn’t help.
The darkness behind my lids was no refuge.
Instead, it was filled with visions of our time in Prague, the eerie silence of Uncle Igor’s castle, the strange adventures that seemed so thrilling at the time but now felt like haunting premonitions of the fragility of our existence.
And I saw us walking through Uncle Igor’s odd castle, sneaking around in a secret passageway. Max hadn’t wanted to be in Prague at all or even behind those damn walls of that bugged-out castle, but he went because he loved me, because he would always be there.
Max. . .don’t leave me.
Sadness shivered through my body.
Hours later in Prague, X died and side-by-side Max and me chased after masked men, our hands steady as we took aim.
The sharp crack of our gunfire echoing in the air.
Another memory unfolded in my head.
We sat together on Max’s bed, in his room in Italy, bathed in the warm glow of the bedside lamp with the smooth melodies of jazz filling the room. Only Lemonisha served as a witness, but I touched Max’s hand, and he almost had a heart attack.
Shit. . .I almost had a heart attack too.
The memory of touching his hand, the electric shock of connection that we had ran from most of our lives—how could something that felt so vibrant, so alive, be so close to slipping away into the void?
Max. . .don’t go. Please. . .I love you.
Those precious moments we shared were the threads that bound us together.
The love and laughter endured long after the pain faded.
However, those memories were also now shards of glass, piercing through the fabric of my reality, leaving trails of pain. The thought that I might never experience those moments again, that all I would have left were these fragments of the past, was unbearable.
Wrong.
Fucked up in the cruelest ways.
I would rather die first, than to live without you.
As the car hummed along, the cold fear of losing Max, the possibility of his light being snuffed out, wrapped around my heart like ice.
He was more than a friend.
He was my brother.
Part of my soul.