“Why? What do you want with her? She didn’t do anything!” my father argued, taking slow steps toward us. “You want your revenge against me for not saving your wife, then take it but Serafina has nothing to do with this and you know it.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong, Frankie! She has everything to do with this. I’ve been looking forward to this day for years. I thought I’d be happy knowing you were dead, and I was, but it faded. I’ve tried recreating that high for years now. Years! Nothing’s worked. And I know there’s only one thing that will! Finally killing you isn’t enough. I need something more! An eye for a fucking eye, Frankie!” he screeched out in a shrill voice.

“You already killed my wife! Let Serafina go and take me! Then we’re even!”

“No! As long as she’s still alive, we’ll never be even! Did I forget to mention that my wife, the love of my fucking life, was pregnant? I will never have peace in this world unless I do this,” he said, the blade pushing into me even harder, drawing blood.

“You won’t be able to walk away from this,” my dad said, trying to rationalize with him, but I knew it was useless. Richard was mad, completely irrational.

“I don’t care about that! I don’t want to walk away from this! I should have died in that forest, but I was sentenced to live a life without my soul mate instead! I welcome death at this point. But, first, I need to make this right! I need to restore the natural order of things!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him raise the knife. Fear washed over me as it closed in on me once more. Time passed in slow motion and my entire body trembled, the blade growing closer with each drawn-out second.

I met my father’s eyes, wanting the last thing I saw to be one of love. “Lo siento,” he whispered as a loud gunshot echoed.

Stunned, I looked down to see blood streaming down my chest as I fell to the ground.

Tyler

“WHERE IS HE?” I hissed, pressing my gun against Ranko’s throat as Eli drove through the streets toward the hotel Richard ran. I still couldn’t believe he was behind it. I had done background checks on the guy and came up empty. He was clean… A little too clean, which should have been a giant red flag. Instead, I chose to believe he was simply a man who had never done anything to bring attention to himself. It was eating me up that this had gone on for months when the answer was right under our noses.

“What makes you think I’m going to tell you?” he spat out in a thick accent, his blue eyes narrowed on me in a malicious way. “Go ahead and report me to immigration! I know people who have been waiting for their hearing for years! You don’t scare me!”

“You’re absolutely right. Deportation is one thing. You could sit in a holding cell for months, maybe even years, while your removal hearing is pending. So threatening deportation won’t really work, will it? But imagine if you get a visit from Emil Kovac, your old boss, who you stole… How much was it, Eli?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder as Eli continued to drive.

“My sources say it was over a hundred million.”

I whistled, smiling coyly at Ranko. “That’s a lot of green. I’m sure Kovac is just itching to get his hands on you. From what I’ve heard, he’s a bit of a sadistic fuck, isn’t he, Eli?”

“Sure is. I heard he hooks up electrodes to his victims’ testicles. He likes to watch them suffer, usually for days, before finally killing them.”

“Days…” I shook my head. “That’s a long time to have to suffer through that kind of torture, don’t you think?” I sighed. “So, what’s it going to be? You can tell me where your buddy, Viktor, is. Or you get to enjoy a few hundred volts of electricity running through your balls. Your choice.”

Sweat dotted his brow and his body began to quiver. “Hibiscus,” he said softly.

“What was that?”

“He owns a vacation rental on Hibiscus. He asked me to meet him there this afternoon, said it was very important.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he answered quickly. “He doesn’t fill me in on any of the details. He just tells me where I need to be and when, and what he expects me to do. All I know is he was planning something big today.”

“Something big? Like what?”

“He said this was the end game.”

“Shit,” I muttered just as my phone vibrated in my pocket. “Eli. Step on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Keeping my gun trained on Ranko, I fished my cell out of my pocket, a number I didn’t recognize flashing on the screen.

“Burnham here,” I answered curtly.

“Tyler?” Jenna’s small voice sobbed out. My face immediately paled, knowing Mackenzie was supposed to be having coffee with her at this precise moment. I hated that I had insisted they get together at her place, the home she shared with Richard, instead of somewhere else. I convinced her to go right into the lion’s den.

“Jenna, are you okay?”

“No! Richard, he…”

“What happened? Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” she choked out. “I was getting ready to go into the restaurant this afternoon, and he was crazed. Manic. I had never seen him like that before. I tried to get away, but…” Her voice became strained, her cries growing louder. “He attacked me. I thought he was going to kill me. The last thing I remember was him slamming me against the wall in our bedroom. The next thing I knew, I was being woken up by the head of housekeeping. It’s Wednesday, and she cleans our condo every Wednesday. God knows how long I would have been locked in there if she didn’t come. I didn’t know where else to go so I went to Brayden’s, but he’s still at work. I’m just really scared to be alone right now.”

“Jenna, did you text Mackenzie today and ask her to meet you for coffee?”

“What?” she asked, sounding confused. “No. Why?”

I let out a long breath and tried to control my nerves. “Don’t worry about it. Have you gone to the police?”

“Not yet. I didn’t know what to do so I called you first.”

“Good. I’m going to text Martin to come get you. He’ll bring you to my place and make sure nothing happens to you.”

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“No,” I said dejectedly. “I don’t think so.”

Eli turned onto Hibiscus and Richard’s car, as well as a dark sedan, came into view, parked a block ahead of us.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said quickly, then hung up.

Pinning my gun against Ranko’s temple one more time, I growled, “Stay here!” Jumping out of the car, Eli following, I tread carefully on the gravel driveway leading up to the simple one-story beach house Ranko said he was to meet Richard this afternoon.

Every crunch of rock seemed to be amplified ten-fold as I listened to two distinct male voices reverberating from inside the house, one with a thick eastern European accent that had to be Richard. I chambered a round and gingerly walked up the wooden steps and onto the porch, my feet light.

I peered into the window and my heart dropped when I saw Richard holding Mackenzie, a knife at her throat. I tried to see who Richard was talking to, but was unable. I feared the worst would happen if we went in through the front door. Richard would be able to see us and react before we could even get off a shot. Meeting Eli’s eyes, I signaled that we would head around the wrap-around porch and enter through the back door. Nodding, he followed.

My heart echoed in my ears as I turned the knob of the door, hoping the low click didn’t alert anyone to our presence. Before I could make sense of what was going on, a gunshot sounded and I snapped my head up to see Colonel Francis Galloway, Mackenzie’s flesh and blood, holding a smoking gun, both Mackenzie and Richard falling to the ground in a heap.