“When Slaughter dies, Greyson gets nothing so long as I got you,” Wyatt continues as he opens the elevator gate and shoves me into an abandoned loft, littered with old wood, dried-out paint cans. “Sit on that f**king chair or I shoot your legs.”

I drop down on the chair without question, clenching my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

“He’s dying right now. And I got you. Greyson loses. The list is incomplete and he loses. Even if he were to fight me for it, if he wants you back, he’s going to need to give it up in exchange for you, and I’m going to have to kill him. And you—you want to live, then give me a juicy little f**k and we’ll see.” He looks at me. “That’s right, Melanie. You see, I’ve been watching you lately too. All those videos he plays. I’ve been watching you. Your tits bouncing. You screaming, ‘Riptiiiiide!’ Yeah, my brother’s not the only one with a hard-on for you.”

Wyatt starts tying my arms behind my back with thick hemp rope.

Fear. It’s eating me alive now. I can hear the chatter of my teeth knocking.

The wind whistling outside.

He straps me down and I blink my eyes because, no, I don’t want this ass**le to see me crying.

“He’ll kill you when he finds you,” I rasp, hating the fear in my voice.

He laughs. “Darling, I’m already dead.” He leans over. “And he won’t. Kill me. See, that’s the thing about him. He doesn’t like to kill. He does it only when he has to. But I’m the only family he’ll have left. He still feels responsible for me. Bailing me out of my shit. He’ll feel, in that part of him that hates being a Slater, that it’s my father’s fault I’m like this too. He’ll let me live.”

He ties something around my mouth and leaves for a moment. Suddenly it’s so still, and the silence frightens me most of all.

My eyes burn from the need to cry.

My throat is raw, my tongue is dry and sticky under the cloth he wrapped around my mouth.

I may die today.

I failed myself, my sister, my parents. And it gives me no pleasure that the last time I saw the only man I’ve ever loved, I threw our love away. Oh god.

I told him how wrong he was for me, but never how right. He never knew that I was happy, blissfully happy—even if afraid—to be in love with him. I didn’t say that I think I fell from the moment he charged into the rain to spare me getting wet. I never told him that deep down I think it’s hot that he’s bad, and even hotter that he’s so good at being bad. I never told him that even after he lied, I trusted that he’d never, ever hurt me. I never told him any of that, only that I was scared. A f**king pu**y.

He will never know that I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that either by a cruel twist of fate or a blessing from heaven, he’s mine. And that I was his before he even touched me.

He is what I never knew I wanted and now all I need.

I believed it enough to come back to him. Enough to leave my fairy-tale land and follow him right into his exciting and frightening Underground.

He might never, ever know this.

Noises shuffle across an adjoining room and my stomach pulls and wrenches into knots as he approaches again.

Uncontrollable quavers seize me as I try edging my nails into the rope knot biting into my wrists. My hair is all over my face. I hate it. I. Hate. It. All my muscles are cramped as my blood rushes through me in an effort to make me move, to help me escape. The chair screeches beneath me and I wince at the sound.

Wyatt marches to a small, cracked window and peers outside, then he cants his head in my direction and stares at me, his eyes raking me on the chair.

The lust in his gaze is unmistakable, and it sends my fear spiraling out of control. Oh god, this can’t be happening!

A jolt of adrenaline kicks through me. Holding my breath, I press the inside of my wrists tight together and wedge my thumb in between the knot, using my nail to try to catch a tiny opening to get the knot to creak open. The rope loosens as I jam my thumb inside, followed by my other thumb, pulling it open on opposite sides, and I pretend to stretch and arch my back as I finally jerk one of my hands free, then wiggle the other one out.

In less than three seconds, he’s back on me. He grabs my hair with one fist and pulls me off the chair, then jerks me facedown on a rumpled makeshift mattress. “What are you trying to do? Huh? Escape?”

I’m scrambling, fighting to get free, but he flips me around and straddles me with his h*ps as he grabs my br**sts and squeezes. My blood pounds, my face growing hot with humiliation as I fight him.

“Don’t touch me, ass**le!” I cry as I buck and try using my knees.

He pins my arms above me and I turn my head and bite blindly, pulling out a chunk of meat.

He wails and I squirm free, panting as I get my bearings while my heart keeps pounding frantically in the middle of my throat.

He roars and lunges and I clip him with my heel, the gun clattering to the floor. Spitting out the blood from where I bit him, I grab the gun and swiftly turn when he kicks it away from me.

“Bitch.”

He smacks me.

The pain rips through me, then he grabs me by the throat and lifts me up in the air, and pain and the urgency for oxygen screams with every breath wheezing out of my throat. He grabs the gun and I kick in the air and raise my knee, ramming it in his nuts. “Ooof.”

He drops me.

I start running to the elevator, but when I spot the exit stairs just three steps away, I sprint over, grab the door handle, and jerk hard, trying to open it, yelling at it, “Come on, come on!” But it’s jammed, and I’m about to kick it open when I hear the elevator gate open and angry bellows behind me.

“Get over here, you f**king cunt!”

Which is when the door I’m struggling to open finally gives. It swings open, outward, and I’m so attached to the knob, I follow it, taking a giant step forward—only to find there are no stairs, only a five-story fall, my body plunging into nothingness as I hear the most blood-chilling, desperate call I’ve ever heard in my life—“NO! PRINCESS!”—and I crash into blackness.

TWENTY-FIVE

FALLEN

Greyson

My world bottoms out.

I watch Melanie disappear through the gaping hole of the open door. Something takes over me. I hear myself yelling one more time, “PRINCESS!” as I charge for the empty space. My brother lunges at me, tackling me against the wall, grabbing my arm where I’m holding my gun. I overpower him easily, slide my SIG between us and aim it right in the center of his rib cage.

BOOM!

He howls, and I drop his writhing body to the ground and drop the gun as I run to the empty doorway. My chest is tight. I can’t breathe. Five stories below, I see a pool of golden hair.

“MELANIE!”

No response.

Derek steps out of the elevator and is instantly by my side, unrolling a piece of rope as I bark, “Lower me, I don’t want to crush her.” I grab one end of the rope as he slowly lowers me one floor, and then two, until there’s no more rope, and from two stories up, I leap down, crashing to the ground with a curse. “Call an ambulance!” I yell at Derek.

“Princess.” I roll to the side and crawl over to her. “Princess.”

She’s pale and lifeless. Streaks of blood cover her cheeks, streaming from her lips and nose. She mumbles something unintelligible.

“Baby,” I say as I reach out to touch her neck for a pulse.

I feel it, fluttering faintly under my fingers. My heart hurts in my rib cage. It hurts so f**king bad. For the first time in my life, I feel impotent.

“Melanie, stay with me.” I sound like a pu**y. Begging. But holy shit, she can’t leave me. She can’t f**king leave me.

I check the back of her neck; it’s not broken, but I’m not moving her. I don’t dare. I simply cup her head in my hands because I thought I’d never see this f**king face again and I stare at it. And stare at it. Her eyes closed, her smile gone, the blood trailing from her lips. Before I know it I duck my head and press my lips to hers, kissing her bloodied lips, my voice roughening as it starts breaking, “Baby, I told you to stay away from me.”

She’s not moving. I can’t breathe.

The room closes in on us, sucking out the oxygen. I can’t f**king breathe. “Melanie, look at what I’ve done to you.” I brush her hair back with my gloved hands. I growl in anger then pull my gloves off, shoving them into the back of my jeans, then I take her hair, silk in my hands as I tug the strands into a braid so that she won’t have to worry about her hair on her face.

I feel like I’m losing control, like I’m about to snap and nothing will ever hold me together again.

“Stay with me,” I still beg, lifting her hand to my lips and kissing it, over and over. “Don’t leave me again. Stay with me.”

I want to see her eyes. Those save-me green eyes. Holy shit. I need to see her smile at me. Laugh at me. Call me an ass**le. Tell me she loves me.

When the basement elevator doors open, I’m shaking with rage as I look up to watch Derek shove my brother in my direction. My god, I’m going to f**king kill him.

I charge across the room to where Wyatt stands, arms tied behind him, stomach bleeding out. He’s hurt, but it does nothing to calm me. I want to grab all my knives and start cutting up his limbs, bit by bit. I want to hear him scream, I want to spill his blood, I want REVENGE FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO HER.

Raging in pain, I smash my fists into his face. “Why’d you take her? Why? You motherfucker, WHY HER?!”

“To f**k YOU!” he yells back, spitting out blood from his mouth.

“What did she say?” I shake him hard before I slam my knuckles into his jaw again. “Her last words before she fell, what did she say?”

He grins a bloodied grin, and I slam him with my knuckles, blood spurting from his mouth. “What did she say, ass**le?” I demand, the pain so deep I feel like an animal. Soulless. Lifeless. A killing machine, nothing more. A brutal rage beats through me.

I’m a raging maniac, stewing inside, hurting inside.

I’m inadequate for her but it can’t stop me.

She’s the soul I don’t have.

I thought I was dead before.

No.

I was only dormant.

She woke me up, but now, if anything happens to her, I’m dead. A walking corpse. He groans in pain when I slam him again.

“You make her beg? You make her beg you to let her go?”

Wyatt sucks in a breath. “Yeah, ass**le, I made her beg.”

“How’d she beg you? For how long?”

“Look, I was angry.”

“How long did she beg for her life? Did she say please? Did she?”

“Minutes. Only minutes!”

“Did she tell you I would kill you? Did she tell you I would skin you alive for harming so much as a hair on her head ?” I slam my fist again and he groans and rolls uncomfortably to the side, bringing the chair with him.

“Z, she fell on her own . . . !” he begs. “I was just keeping her to keep you from finishing the list!”

“You touched her, you f**king cunt, didn’t you?”

“YES! I grabbed her tits, I wanted to piss you off!”

I slam my fists into him, repeatedly, yelling, “Congratulations, I’m pissed. And now. You’re. DEAD!”

I pummel him, then curl an arm around his neck and start squeezing the life out of him.

Promise you won’t kill anyone. The words come back to haunt me. My eyes begin to sting as I remember the hope in her eyes that one night. Promise me you won’t kill anyone.

Growling in defeat, I let go, panting as I catch my breath and drag my arm across my wet eyes.

Promise me you won’t kill anyone . . .

“Zero,” I hear someone yelling. “The ambulance is here.”

I walk to my unconscious girl, still fallen in that same spot, and I drop to my knees, taking her hand in mine. “Remember when I told you I didn’t beg?” I whisper. “I’m begging you. Come back to me.”

♥ ♥ ♥

WHEN I WAS thirteen years old I lost the most precious thing in my life.

Then I built a fortress around myself so that I’d never again lose anything I cared about. Never again feel lost, betrayed, alone, or kidnapped.

I became as cold as ice and as calculating as a robot.

I let no one in.

Loved no one, not even my family.

And it all works out great until you let down your guard.

And you finally do let someone in.

A blonde, green-eyed girl who just laughs about everything.

Who loves everything and everyone.

Who connects with people like she was born to it.

And you start wishing in the deepest part of you that she’d connect with you.