I trusted him. But he never deserved that trust.

Raylan did. I wish I could scream for him, like I did outside the barn. I wish he could swoop in and save me. But he’s five hundred miles from here. I spent all damn day driving away from him.

I’ll have to save myself, if I want to survive.

“Pick it up,” Oran barks at me.

I pick up the pill bottle. It’s small and light. The white pills rattle around inside.

“Swallow them,” Oran hisses.

I shake a few pills into my palm. Then I swallow them down with a gulp of scotch.

The clock is ticking. I probably only have thirty minutes or so before these start to kick in.

“Take them all,” Oran orders.

It probably doesn’t matter how many I take. I’ll have to puke them all up anyway. Or Oran will shoot me—and the pills won’t matter for a completely different reason.

I swallow the rest of the pills with the remainder of the scotch.

Tik tok, tik tok.

“What now?” I say to Oran.

“Now you write your suicide note,” he says.

“I need paper.”

Oran rummages in his desk. He pulls out a sheet of thick, creamy parchment paper. Only the best for Uncle Oran.

“What do you want me to write?” I say.

Oran tilts his head back, eyes closed, as he thinks about what it should say. I lift his gold-plated pen off of its stand.

“Dear family,” he begins. “I’m so sorry to do this to you. But I think it’s for the best. I’m in so much pain. I just can’t take it anymore . . . ”

He continues to dictate, and I scribble nonsense on the paper, pretending to write it down word-for-word. His suggestions are dramatic and ridiculous—not at all what I would write. Not that I would write anything at all, because I’d never fucking kill myself. Cal would know that, and Nessa too. No matter what happens, they’re not going to believe this bullshit.

“Sign it, Love, Riona,” Oran orders.

I scribble a signature that looks nothing like my own.

“Is that what you wanted?” I say, sitting back so he can examine the paper.

Oran leans on the desk, bending over the page so he can read what I wrote. I see his eyes scanning, then angry color coming into his face.

“No!” he cries. “That’s not—”

I grab the letter opener and stab it down onto the back of his hand. The tiny medieval sword goes all the way through his hand, pinning it to the desk.

Oran howls and swings the gun toward my face, but I grab his wrist with both hands and shove it upward. He jerks the trigger, firing into the ceiling three times. Plaster dust rains down on our heads.

I stomp on his foot hard with my cowboy boot, and then I bring my knee up into his groin. Oran doubles over, groaning and swearing.

I wrench the gun out of his hand.