She pushed some of my hair back off my forehead and kissed me again. “I’m gonna go upstairs and work on a few things Race asked me to look over. Something is off with the girls at the massage parlor. He told me they’ve seen a slight drop in business lately and he wanted me to poke around and find out why. Just yell if you need me, okay?”

I didn’t even have enough juice left to answer her before drugged sleep pulled me under.

I had no idea how much time had passed when I felt soft lips pressing on mine. It made me smile, especially when I felt light fingers drifting under the collar of my shirt to skim along all the gauze and tape covering me up. It was a nice way to wake up—at least I thought it was until I realized the lips were wrong, the touch was off, and there was also something cold and sharp pressed up against the side of my neck.

My eyes snapped open and locked with a midnight pair that had equal parts insanity and love floating around in their dark depths. Bayla was a small woman but the knife she had in her hand was anything but, and in my current condition, tossing her off of me without getting my throat sliced open might prove easier said than done.

“Bayla. What are you doing?” I tried to keep my voice low and level. Key was still somewhere in the house and I didn’t want her to appear suddenly and have Bayla get agitated and crazy with that blade or, even worse, turn her homicidal attention on my lady.

“I’ve been waiting forever for you to come so I could see you. I missed you so much. I knew she was going to ruin you. Look at this mess. This never happened before her. You were the one making men bleed not the man bleeding.” She climbed up on top of me and I tried not to scream in pain as her knee dug into the side with the shattered clavicle. That hurt like a son of a bitch. “She broke you.” She sounded furious and sad at the same time.

The knife skipped right over my jugular and I swallowed at the scrape of it across my skin.

“This was my fault. I did this. The choices I made, the things I did, all led me to right here, Bayla. Key has nothing to do with it. I was always damaged. I was born that way.”

She bent forward and I forced myself to stay absolutely still as she licked the side of my face. The edge of the knife dug into the skin below my jaw and I felt the warm trickle of blood start to run down my neck and into the fabric of my shirt.

“We aren’t born broken, Nassir. Bad people get their hands on us and do things to us and that’s what breaks us.”

I gulped as my mind raced to figure out a way to disarm her and get her off of me with minimal damage to either of us.

“You’re right; we were born into the hands of bad people, but I made the choice to be like them, Bayla. I made the choice to make my home and build my life in a place with just as much discord and suffering as where we come from.”

That had her jerking upright so she was sitting on my waist with her hand right over the still raw and healing center of my chest. Between the painkillers and the pain of her weight on me, I was about to black out. I groaned before I could stop myself and I heard noise from upstairs as Key called my name.

“Are you up? Do you need anything?”

I saw Bayla’s eyes widen in shock at the sound of Key’s voice and she immediately scrambled off of me.

“Her car wasn’t here. I thought we were alone.”

“Wait!” I bellowed the word out as the dark-haired woman scrambled off me and headed in the direction of the stairs. The knife looked huge in her hand and she looked deranged as she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me while I struggled with everything I had in me to get to my feet and go after her to keep Key safe.

“You should love me. I was made for you, Nassir. We’re the same.”

I rolled off the couch with a thud and heard Key call my name again. This time her voice was closer and filled with concern.

I swore and fought to get to my feet. It wasn’t easy with the room spinning and only having one working side, not to mention that I felt like I was going to throw up from the pain.

“Bayla!” I barked her name as I finally got my feet under me. I had to reach out and grab on to the couch for balance, but she stopped her movement toward the stairs when I said her name.

“I’ve never loved myself and I hate everything about where I’m from, so how on earth do you think I could love anyone even remotely like me?”

That made her waver but she obviously thought the obstacle to our eternal happiness together was the woman I had moved in right under her nose and proceeded to hand over everything I had to. She was going to go after Key and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

I bellowed Key’s name and started the slow shuffle toward the stairs after the armed woman. “Bayla has a knife! You need to get out of here!” I wasn’t sure any of it was making sense. I sounded and felt crazy. My body was my own enemy and it was making me more frustrated than I had ever been in my life.

Bayla was silent as a shadow as she hit the stairs. All I could see was that lethal blade in her hand and it made everything inside of me panic. I couldn’t let anything happen to Key. She couldn’t be one of those consequences I had just started to give a shit about.

“Didn’t I fire you?” Key’s voice was hard but didn’t sound at all surprised. I shuffled across the floor but only got close enough that I could see the bottom part of her legs before I had to take a second to catch my breath. The firing was news to me, but then again, I had been preoccupied trying not to die.

“I’m going to kill you.” Bayla said it with such conviction and certainty that it made my injured heart kick hard in my chest.

Key laughed and I was stunned. She didn’t sound scared or worried at all. She sounded genuinely amused and slightly annoyed, nothing more.

“You already tried that once before. Remember how well it worked out for you? You need to leave, Bayla. Nassir’s new thing is giving people choices, so I’m letting you have one. Go away or take me up on my offer to go somewhere else and start over. He’s mine. This life is mine and there is no room for you in it. There never will be.”

I saw the blade flash and Bayla’s tawny skin flush an angry beet red. She wasn’t going to listen to reason. Much like Tyler French, Bayla had gone too far to return from the edge of insanity.

She gave a war cry and started to rush up the steps. I swore and screamed Key’s name while limping forward, but all of that got drowned out as a gun fired and filled the interior of my home with noise and the pungent smell of gunpowder. I saw the knife fall and clatter down the steps and Bayla grab her shoulder and fold into a little ball as blood pushed out through her fingers. Key’s bare feet and long legs padded down the rest of the steps and my eyes widened when I saw the black pistol she held in her hand. She squatted down in front of the other woman and reached out to pull her face up by her chin.