Rein In (Willow Bay Stables #3)(39)

There had been nothing wrong with the truck.

Glitch had been the one to grab me.

He had been the one to put the chloroform over my mouth.

I knew it then.

The underbelly of Rhys’s world had crossed over with mine and I was scared. More scared than I had been in my entire life.

“Do you know this place?” Hyde bent down in front of me, his elbows resting on his knees.

I shook my head.

“This is the place where he gave me these scars.” He dragged a crowbar along the side of his face. “I look like a monster now.”

Every time he spoke, I felt a little part of my heart shrink away.

“Don’t be scared, pet,” he hissed. “I’ll tell you a secret.”

I closed my eyes, terrified of the world I could see, and felt his lips against my cheek.

“I am a monster,” he whispered. “But he will come for you.”

It felt like a promise and my world shattered.

“And when he does, I’m going to kill him.”

My body bucked with a sob against the gag in my mouth.

“There, there, pet.” Hyde kissed my forehead. “I’ll let you watch.”





GRANT AND THE ONE-TON had been in my rear-view mirror for over an hour. Every time I accelerated, he did too and every turn I made, he followed.

My heart couldn’t have cared less—it was breaking, breaking into a thousand pieces.

How could I have been so ignorant? How could I have believed that two people who I had so much history with both could have buried their revenge?

Mine had taken years to simmer and burn, but with her, I never felt it. She had taken so much of the dark away, and now it had stolen her from me.

With every moment that we grew closer to the southeast corner of the city, my anxiety grew wilder.

I knew where they would be, I knew where he would have taken her, but I guessed that had been the point.

It wasn’t about her. It was about us. It was about me.

Hyde wanted an eye for an eye.

He wanted to beat my head in with a cast iron pipe, and I would let him. I would let him if it meant that she could go back to the light.

Rage rippled, burned, and broke on every rib her initials were carved into.

I felt my veins purge themselves of fear and the steel forge in my spine.

The shadows were my comfort zone, and the man who used to love it there was banging against the crate in my soul.

He was ready.

The trigger had been pulled.

It would end.

The tires on Grant’s pickup truck lifted on the right side as I took the corner too fast. Maybe someone else would have been afraid it would roll, I wasn’t. Even if it did, I would crawl bloody and mangled to the Hounds of Hell and offer my broken body for hers.

Nothing would stop in the way of returning an angel to her world. I only hoped that perhaps being loved by her meant they would allow me into heaven when the time came.

The wheels crashed down on the ground and spun out when my foot hit the gas pedal.

It took too long.

It took too long for the gravel to fly under my tires as I slammed the truck in park under the so familiar neon lights.

My hands curled into firsts around the wheel, and I called all the fury in me to the surface.

I’m coming, angel, I promised her. Just hold on tight.

My eyes closed and the door to the driver’s side was yanked open.

“You f*cking idiot,” Grant roared and hauled me by the collar onto the ground.

I shoved at his chest and my top lip curled as I growled, “Move.”

My body lurched forward, and he slammed me into the side of the pickup.

“They’ll be waiting for you,” he chastised. “You know that.”

The light at the edge of my vision dulled, and I begged for release into the barking sound of hell.

“I know,” I sneered.

His hands fisted in the front of my shirt. “They will kill you.”

The love in my bones readied itself.

“I know,” I promised him.

Someone had to pay.

I expected that someone would be me.

His face fell.

“Move, Grant,” I barked. “I’ll hit you to get to her.”

He dropped his hands and my Harley boots raided the ground underneath me.

I passed the bricks on the ground below me.

There would be no weapons tonight.

There would be no adjusting to the weight of steel in my knuckles.

I would put up no fight.

For her, they could have me.

The Harley boot met with the wood of the bar door and I sent it flying inward, splintering against the wall.

My nostrils flared. There was that same stench of stale beer and desperation in the floorboards, but this time, the bar was nearly empty.

“I knew you’d come,” Hyde hissed from where he sat at the same back table I’d nearly killed him in front of eight years ago.

I didn’t answer.

“Petty, romantic idiot.” His voice was full of disdain for the protégée who refused to bow to him.

My heart rattled my rib cage and it called out to her.

There was no answer.

I felt my eyes sting as they ripped through the room, searching for her.

Glitch.

Betrayal ran thick in my heart when I saw him standing there, appearing thick as thieves in a sea of leather.