Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 189782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 949(@200wpm)___ 759(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 189782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 949(@200wpm)___ 759(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
Every word hammers a nail into my heart. I slide down the bars to the cold floor, burying my face in my hands.
“She’ll forgive us.” My throat closes with regret.
He doesn’t respond immediately. Lowering to the floor beside me, he taps his foot against mine. “She loves us. Love means you’ll always have my forgiveness. Remember when she said that?”
We were in the sauna. She said it to Wolf after he scared her in the kitchen with Denver.
My mind drifts back to the hills, to the nights when she lay between us like a whisper of moonlight, lifting the darkness from our tortured lives. Those nights feel like a lifetime ago, a dream we can never return to.
Not that I ever want to go back there. But sometimes, I miss the simplicity of living off the land and ending each day between her legs.
“She’s already forgiven us,” he says. “Doesn’t change the fact that we’re behind bars, and she’s with him.”
I close my eyes.
The future feels like a vast, dark ocean filled with unseen dangers and uncertain shores. I don’t know what lies ahead for us. The only thing I know is the pain in my chest.
The hours pass slowly. I can’t sleep, can’t find peace in this cold place without her.
Is she thinking of us? Missing us? Or has Monty weaved his way back into her heart?
Leo shifts beside me, his back against the wall, the fire in his eyes dimming to a smolder. We sit in silence, two broken men in a cage, each lost in our torment.
My fear is crippling. Fear of losing her, fear of her choosing Monty over us, fear of being left behind in this desolate, cold cell.
“He took her,” Leo growls, more to himself than to me. “He fucking took her, and we’re stuck here like goddamn animals.”
“We did this to ourselves.” I slump against the bars, my voice hollow. “We have to believe in her. Trust in her love for us.”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “Belief isn’t going to get us out of here.”
We’re trapped, both physically and emotionally, bound by our mistakes and the chains of our past.
I want to scream, to fight, to tear down these bars with my bare hands. But I’m powerless.
Leo’s voice cuts through the silence, rough and raw. “Do you remember the first time we saw her?”
I remember my anger. Denver had done it again, taken another innocent and thrown her into our hell. But this time, it felt different. There was something about her that made my blood run cold.
I remember the icy air biting at my skin, the sky a dull gray blanket overhead, and Wolf’s excitement as he unloaded markers and cigarettes from the plane.
I watched from the front porch, hidden in the shadows, as she slipped an ax inside her coat.
That was the moment I knew she was different. Different from all the others. She wasn’t another victim. She was made of fire and fight. The kind that fucked shit up.
Then she emerged from the plane.
Even from a distance, her beauty shocked the breath from my lungs. Long wavy red hair around a flawless porcelain face. And small. So fucking small and breakable. But her size diminished none of the steel in her emerald gaze.
It’s a memory I’ve replayed countless times—her legs swinging out of the plane, boots hitting the ground with a resolute thud, her heartbeat nearly audible in the frigid silence. She walked with her head held high despite the terror I knew she felt. The odds were stacked against her, yet she refused to let fear dictate her actions.
“I remember everything.” I shut my eyes, reliving it. “My anger at Denver for bringing her there. Fear for what she might do. Shock at her stunning, impossible beauty. And something else—a strange, unbidden respect for her will to survive. She was different, and I knew that difference would change everything.”
She altered the course of our lives. I don’t know how it will all unfold, but one thing is certain. Frankie is not a victim. She wasn’t then, and she isn’t now. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and I can’t deny the impact she’s had on me since that first unforgettable encounter.
“We don’t deserve her,” Leo says. “After everything we’ve done, everything we’ve put her through.”
“Doesn’t mean we stop fighting for her.”
“And if she chooses him?”
The question hovers, a torment unanswered.
The thought of losing her, of her choosing Monty, is a pain too deep to fathom.
32
Monty
—
The yacht knifes through the ink-black water, returning us to the island’s safety. Standing at the helm, I endure Frankie’s scalding silence, a penance for my behavior.
I came on too strong, unable to stop myself. I usually have better control. But it’s been 314 days since I’ve had her alone.
314 days of hell.
Putting my hands all over her, however, isn’t how I earn back her trust.