There’s a reason she’s supposed to be mine.

Everyone will pay.

This world will burn if they hurt her.

Cody

“Tell me again what happened,” Skov asks me. Again. The fucker doesn’t know when to give up.

“They were already dead,” I tell him. My tone is menacing and I pray to God for more control than I currently have while staring at the half-wit across the steel table from me. Every so often his left eye twitches. The dumb fuck can’t control himself or his nerves.

“You’re wasting time looking in the wrong direction and meanwhile, she’s gone!”

“This isn’t the first time she’s been hiding out—”

Rage is unbecoming. Marcus told me that once. He cautioned me to contain it, but the worst bits of it boil over as I listen to this incapable fool imply that Delilah, my Delilah, left of her own free will.

“She was taken.” The back of my teeth grind all while the words spill out. “Someone went to her sister’s home, and took her.”

“And the men there when we arrived? Did someone else kill them too?

“You just happened to be at the scene, your girlfriend missing, men dead on site …” The dumb fuck who has it all wrong leans forward on the steel table, inching his face closer to mine.

The skin around my knuckles is tight as I clench my fist with the unbearable need to slam it into his smirk as he adds, “And you just happened to arrive after everything went down.”

“There would be evidence,” I grit out, although my vision blurs and I swear I see red. “Gunshot residue on my hands, perhaps, if I’d fired a fucking gun!” The words claw up my throat, each one raising the intensity as I stare him down. I stand up straight, throwing the metal chair back and listening to it clang as I scream at him. “Do your fucking job!”

The snide look on his face vanishes, fear flashing in his gaze as he backs away slowly. My shoulders hunch, my breathing coming and going as if I’ve just chased down the man responsible for all of this. Everything is tight and suffocating.

“I think it’s best you calm down, Special Agent Walsh.”

The statement isn’t uttered with contempt, not with anything other than innate concern as he takes another step back.

Everything is so hot; I’m nothing but a caged animal in here. “I need to help find her.” I barely get out the words before inhaling deep and slow. My head spins. “This can’t be happening.”

Where the fuck was he? Marcus killed them, but what about the woman he claims to love so much. Where the hell was he when she needed him?

With both hands behind my head, I turn my back to the interrogator. “I don’t have time for this. I didn’t do it and she’s out there.” The statement is simple and accurate.

“You just happened to get there … and Miss Jones? She was already gone?” He repeats the same question but without the doubt and thinly veiled sarcasm. As if he’s only double-checking facts.