“Wanna share?” he asks, offering it, and the spoon, up to me. I smile as I take it, feeling Vic’s eyes burn into my back as my fingers tangle with Hael’s. We stare at each other as I scoop out some chocolate ice cream and suck it off in the slowest, most sensual way possible.

“Listen,” Coraleigh continues, glaring at us as if we’ve invaded her private space. I wonder if she thinks about the girls she sells off, and how violated they must feel. Probably not, huh? “Marcus and I are respected members of the community. If we go missing, somebody will notice.”

“I mean, once we leak the information we have about your child sex-trafficking ring, nobody will look very hard.” Vic pauses, thinks for a moment, readjusts his statement. “Nobody will care.” He lets his mouth curl up into a sneer. “Like Epstein, and his mysterious suicide. Only, you’re much smaller potatoes, and you don’t have billionaires, politicians, and royalty as clients.”

“We have friends coming over,” Leigh continues as her husband whimpers from his location on her right, eyes closed, face wet with tears. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“Oh dear,” Oscar says, finally deigning to look up from his tablet. “I certainly hope not. I’d hate to have to shoot them and then, by consequence of your being witness, I’d then have to shoot you, too.”

I hop up on the counter beside Callum, our arms close enough to touch, and I enjoy that calm confidence of his. It seeps into my skin like a balm, reminding me of our conversation on the roof and the way he’d purred the word Yet back at me when I’d mentioned we hadn’t slept together.

He glances over at me and I look back at him, sucking chocolate ice cream off my spoon.

“There’s no need to resort to violence here,” Coraleigh says, still yammering along in that way of hers. “We don’t molest children. We don’t rape girls. We’re just two normal people trying to make it in a world that isn’t fair. You can understand that, right? You’re doing the same thing here tonight.”

“Why are they still alive and talking?” I ask, finally wrenching my gaze away from Cal to look at my social worker. Number three on my list and just as culpable as Eric in my opinion. If she actually looked out for the children under her care, maybe they wouldn’t keep disappearing into the netherworld?

It only takes one person to speak up and encourage others, to let them know you see darkness so they can see it, too. There are monsters hiding all around us, but if we each shine our light into that abyss, we can see them, we can find them, we can hunt them the way they hunt us.

I take another bite of ice cream. Its sinful decadence melts across my tongue, destroying my taste buds in the worst possible way. A pleasured groan escapes me, and Cal chuckles.

“You’re behaving remarkably well, considering the circumstances,” he whispers in that gorgeous voice of his, the one that sounds the way this double dark chocolate espresso ice cream tastes. I pretend like I’m not affected by his presence and shrug. It was Aaron who told me to try to find happiness in every, single moment. I’m really trying here. Oh, and besides, I’m starting to realize that I’m one seriously messed-up bitch who enjoys adrenaline rushes.

I, Bernadette Savannah Blackbird, am an adrenaline junkie.

“Your victim mentality crap is driving me nuts,” I tell Leigh, taking over the conversation, much to Hael’s pleasure. He’s just howling with laughter in that usual way of his, all reckless abandon and corrupted youth. He should be just a fun-loving kid, but the world has turned him into this cackling beast with a hard body and a perfect cock. I almost smile again, but then, I haven’t quite reached that level of creepy. “There’s nothing worse than someone who acts like they’re being bullied when, in reality, they are the bully themselves. It takes away from those who actually are being abused.” I point at the Vincents with my spoon. “You are not victims. You chose to exploit your position of power and trust in the community to bring harm to others solely for the purpose of, what, having a motherfucking undercounter freezer for your organic ice cream?” I feel myself getting growly and pause to wet my lips.

Leigh just keeps looking at me, her face nearly the same as the last time I saw it, six years ago. She’s had a nose job though, I’m pretty sure. And likely something with her tits, too. They were small and saggy last time we met up, but that wouldn’t have mattered if she was a good person. Alas, she is not, and I’m going to drag her looks through the mud, too.

“What do you want us to do?” she asks, finally getting the big picture.

Either she cooperates or, very likely, she dies and goes the way of the Kushners.

“First off, we’d like to double back on the idea of your on-the-way friends,” Oscar purrs, his gray eyes the same color as the ocean beyond the glass. As the afternoon’s worn on, the sun has started to hide behind the clouds, like she knows this isn’t her month or season to shine. “I’m curious as to how many holes we’ll have to dig to accommodate them.”

“Nobody’s coming,” Marcus Vincent says, finally finding his balls and speaking up. He glances over at his wife’s wide eyes and pursed lips. “It’s just us here until we go back to work on Monday.”

Wow. What a fucking moron.

“Excellent,” Oscar says, setting aside his tablet. “Now that I’ve disabled your security system, we can speak more freely.” He crosses his legs in front of him and then bands his hands around his knee, fingers intertwined together. “Tell us: what do you know that you think is worth trading for your life.”

“What?” Marcus chokes out, glancing over at his wife again. His hand must be killing him, broken and now bound behind his back. “You said this wouldn’t come back on us. Why is this happening, Leigh?”

“If I tell you what I know,” Coraleigh begins, flicking her eyes to me before turning them back to Oscar. She glances briefly at Vic, but then quickly switches to me and Oscar again. She’s decided that Victor isn’t a threat. Funny that, considering I’m quite sure he’s the most dangerous person in this room. After all, look at what a nightmare Oscar is; Victor controls that nightmare. I take another bite of my ice cream, tapping my heels against the front of the white cabinets. “Then you’ll kill me.”

“If you don’t tell us,” Oscar says right away, giving a hideous smile. “We’ll just have to torture it out of you then kill you.” He reaches up long fingers to rub at the demon hands tattooed on his throat. The way he holds his chin up like that, a smirk ribboned across his lips, he looks like an aristocrat born into the wrong life. “Your choice. We have some possible uses for keeping you alive, so there is hope, however slim.”

The Vincents exchange a long, studying sort of look, like they’re actually debating their options. What choice do they really think they have here?

“You said you didn’t remember me, but that you’d heard of me,” I begin, drawing Coraleigh’s attention back around. “Want to explain that for me?”

Hael hops onto the counter on my other side, sitting as close to me as I am to Callum. All the places we touch burn, and when I breathe in, I smell coconut and motor oil—even though we’ve been staying in a hotel for three days straight. That scent must just be a part of who he is now. He steals the ice cream from me, and I stab him in the side with an elbow. May as well jab at a goddamn rock for all the good that does. Hael Harbin is hard and fit and he knows exactly how to undulate that pelvis of his.