I stab using the heel, my hand gripping the shoe. I drive it into his chest and neck, and as he turns his head to look at me with wide eyes, I drive it into his eye. It sticks from the socket as he screams. The car whips from side to side.

“Grab her,” I hear them yelling from the front.

Reaching across the guy who’s trying to pull the heel free, I grab his gun and knife and unclick his seat belt. I kick open his door and push him out. He screams as he hits the pavement, and I blow him a kiss before spinning to see the two men in the front.

The one in the passenger seat swears as he tries to get a needle ready while reaching back for me. Fuck that. I fumble with the gun and accidentally pull the trigger, gazing with wide eyes as the man in the front seat screams as it hits his leg.

“Oops, sorry,” I offer, as I grab his head and, using the knife, slice it across his throat. I don’t give myself time to think on what I’m doing. I’m in survival mode, it’s me or them. In this life I now live, blood was bound to cover my hands. You either get dirty or you die.

Only the driver is left now. He swears as he pulls his gun, done with me, one hand on the wheel. Looking out the front window, I see we’re on a dual carriageway, and it’s busy, which helps, because we have to go slow. Probably thirty miles per hour. Shit, this is going to hurt.

Grabbing the gun, I point it at his head and fire. He slumps forward, the ringing loud in my ears from the shot going off in such close proximity. Groaning, I slide between the seats and clutch the wheel, leaning over his body to try and swerve us around the other cars, but I can’t get the angle right. We catch the end of a van, and it spins us. Screaming, I hold on as we spin and spin, my stomach revolting, and then we stop.

It’s all quiet for a moment as I fall into the backseat until it’s not. A car hits us from the side and plows us into the middle barrier. We hit it and flip. It happens in mere seconds, but it feels like a lifetime as I roll around in the car. I manage to grab the seat, and when we finally land on the roof, I drop onto it with a crunch.

Groaning, I look down at my body. Holy fucking shit.

I’m okay! Fucking hell, that was goddamn lucky. The back door is warped and won’t open, so I kick at it, bracing myself on the roof and giving it all my strength. After the fourth kick, it opens, and I crawl out onto the broken glass of the road, cutting my hands and arms. Staggering to my feet, I lean against the car. This side of the road isn’t that busy, and the people who are passing are gawking at me. One even stops. But I can’t hear anything.

My ears are ringing, my body is in agony, and my head is pounding so hard, I have to turn and vomit. Fuck, I’m worse than I thought. Stumbling forward, away from the car in case it explodes or some shit, I walk into the lanes, but my body is done. I can’t help but fall to my knees. Whether it be shock or injury, I don’t know, but it refuses to listen, and my vision is swimming.

Move, Roxy, move!

But I can’t.

Panic winds through me, pushing back some of the numbness that’s threatening to swallow me whole, but it’s not enough. A noise catches my attention through the haze, and I turn my head. Two black cars have stopped near our wrecked one. Men pour from it, heading straight to me.

There are more than I’ll ever be able to handle, but that doesn’t mean I’m going down without a fight. I stumble to my feet, my fingers numb as I grab a piece of broken glass, the closest thing I have to a weapon. “Bring it, assholes!” I don’t know if I scream it out loud or in my head, but they do.

They come right for me.

I try to stab with the glass, but it’s slow, my body too goddamn sluggish. They knock my arm away, and my fingers spasm, making me drop the glass. I kick, I punch, but it’s like my movements are listless, too slow to make contact, and there are too goddamn many of them.

This is going to hurt a lot. I know it. So I brace for it, waiting for the pain, but it’s a quick one, barely a pinch, and when I turn my head, I see the needle they are pulling away. The bastards cheated.

At least they didn’t hit me in the face again.

Chapter Forty-Four

RYDER

“We should look at the numbers and compare them—” I zone out of the meeting, wondering what Roxy is up to. I promised her one hour, but it’s been an hour and a half. I’ll have to find a way to make it up to her. I almost smirk, thinking of all the ways I could, each of them involving her naked and coming beneath my tongue.

My phone vibrates for the hundredth time, so I turn my chair and discreetly check it. This meeting is important, and if it goes well, we’re expanding into other cities, both legitimately and otherwise.

Unknown: Roxy is gone.

Unknown: They got her, Ry.

Two texts, two fucking texts, and they destroy my world. Fury like I’ve never felt before flows through me. That ice I have cultivated around me for so long cracks, and the lava flows through, burning everything in its path.

They took my girl?

Our girl?

I stand, ignoring the questions fired at me, and storm from the conference room, my phone already to my ear. “Tell me everything,” I snap. I listen as Garrett explains, his voice tight and angry. I hear Diesel in the background screaming at someone, and then gunfire.

“We followed the trail of bodies to a car park and saw the tire tracks. They must have grabbed her there.” He goes quiet for a moment as I leap down the stairs of the building, taking them two at a time. “Ry, fuck, she put up a real fight, there are bodies everywhere.”

“Garrett,” Diesel snarls, and there’s a moment of silence before Garrett swears.

“What?” I demand.

“Watch what I’m sending you,” he growls.

I pull my phone away and stop on the stairs, my hand gripping the railing as the video loads. I watch it once, then twice. That pit in my stomach grows, those demons escaping until I’m nothing but a man possessed.

They hurt her.

I watch her crawl from the wreck of the car, the CCTV from the highway zooming in on her. She stumbles away with blood dripping from her head, her hands, and her arms. She only has one shoe on, and her face is pale, her eyes fuzzy as she falls to her knees. I watch again as they come at her, she still fights, trying to take them down. That’s my fucking girl, a fighter to the end, but she doesn’t see the needle coming.

I watch her fall, and this time, they catch her and carry her back to the cars. Then, they are gone. Breathing heavily, my muscles shaking with the need to kill people, I put the phone to my ear. “Track the cars.”

“Diesel’s new friend is already on it.” He pulls the phone away from his mouth. “D, he can’t work if you keep stabbing him,” he snaps, and then comes back. “I can’t get a hold of Kenzo, he gets no signal in the basement of Diamonds. Get him?”

“On it,” I snarl, and the line goes quiet. “Garrett, we kill them.”

“Too fucking right,” he retorts. “Anyone who touched her dies horrifically, and the Triad? We are going to fucking burn them alive for taking our girl.”

I hang up and send a message to my driver and the guards downstairs, so when I make it into the lobby, they are there. The car is idling outside, and I get in quickly. “Diamonds, now,” I demand.