Game(54)

“Don’t f*cking try a thing.”



~



Zander had me.

That was my initial thought.

Zander had come again, found me again, and now he had won.

Two men in suits and black masks raced by me. They went right by the truck. My eyes went wide and I hoped to see Finn make his move. He was a master at it.

Finn didn’t move. He remained hidden under the truck.

The two men charged into the rubble of the cabin. They then both stopped at the same time. They looked at me - at the man behind me - and they gave thumbs up.

“Confirmation?” the man holding me yelled.

“Yes!” one of the men said. “There’s not much left, obviously. But it’s him.”

“You got lucky,” the man whispered into my ear. “You came out just when we needed you to do so. We were going to call you, Shayna. Lure you out. What the f*ck were you doing out here?”

The hand slid off my mouth. I took a few breaths, hoping for Finn…

“Wait,” I whispered. “What’s happening?”

“Ah, you’re in shock,” the man said. “Let’s go for a ride then.”

The two men waved their hands from the rubble. “Want us to bring a souvenir?” one of them yelled.

“No,” the man behind me yelled back. “You’ve got confirmation. Finn is dead. That’s all we need.”

Reality crashed down on me. It was like a boulder to my gut. I hunched forward and felt ready to throw up.

Finn wasn’t dead. Finn was under the truck, hiding.

Finn wasn’t in the cabin when it blew up.

Cormac was.

That meant…

Cormac was dead.



~



The door opened to the SUV and I froze. My knees locked tight as though my kneecaps disappeared. I stared at the man in the back of the SUV.

It was supposed to be Zander, right? He was the one after me. He wanted to get me, hurt me, probably kill me even. After all, I had taken an engagement ring from him. He had offered his own sick version of protection. I had really f*cked him over by leaving, by ending up with Finn, and not to mention everything was a giant lie. My intuition had been to find my sister and save her.

“Hello, Shayna.”

“Fiore,” I whispered.

“Climb in. We need to talk.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

I felt the gun press against my ribs.

“No, you don’t,” Fiore said. “Get in the f*cking vehicle.”

I climbed into the back of the SUV. I sat there and stared forward at the remains of the cabin.

My eyes filled with tears.

Not for Finn, no. But for Cormac. The poor guy was dead. For what? For nothing. He didn’t deserve that kind of death. He had come to the cabin, drunk, to be with his best friend. To be with a man he considered a brother. He had been sleeping on the couch, sleeping off the booze.

Now he was dead.

Just. Like. That.

I wiped tears away and took a shaky breath.

“It’s okay,” Fiore said. “It was all meant to be like this.”

“No,” I whispered. “It wasn’t.”

All the men returned to the SUV. The driver had been the guy who grabbed me. The two men who surveyed the rubble sat in the passenger seat and crammed next to me, respectively.

“I can’t trust a man like Finn,” Fiore said. “He was a great fighter and he’ll be hard to replace. But what he finally gave me is what I’ll remember him by.” Fiore then reached a hand and touched my stomach. “Right? Do you still feel it?”

That was my saving grace, for the moment.

So I nodded.

Fiore had no idea the wrong man was killed. He had no idea that Finn was still alive and hiding.

“Good. Good, Shayna.”

“What are we doing now?” I asked.

Fiore smiled big. “First, we’re going to go make a lot of money. Do you know how?”

“No,” I said.

“I booked a fight for Finn. And there’s way too much opportunity to bet for him to win. But I put a lot of money on him not winning. No matter what. And since a dead man can’t fight…”

My stomach felt sick. “Oh.”

“And once we’re done making all that money, Shayna, we’re going to go visit someone.”

“Who?”

Fiore smiled even bigger. And he gave away something I never saw coming.

“We’re going to visit Zander.”





39.


(Finn)



I hated to do it, but I couldn’t f*cking move. For a second I thought about pushing back and climbing out from under the truck at the front. Then I was going to crouch down and make my attack when the guys came by. But then I heard one of them say something about finding the body.

I was the body.

They were looking for me in the rubble of the cabin.

So I stayed under the truck.

When the two guys made the discovery, they assumed it was me.

My heart was ripped from my f*cking chest. I stared at the two men as they gave thumbs up, waved, made confirmation that I was dead. They weren’t f*cking looking at me though, were they? They were looking at Cormac. My brother. My boy. My best damn friend in the world.