Whatever they’d given me still blazed in my veins, stealing control of my body and fucking with my ability to protect her. The situation pressed on me like a thick slab of steel. My head felt woozy from whatever concoction they’d pumped into me, and my limbs were as useless as the tentacles of a jellyfish. I knew the odds weren’t in our favor. We were about to face off a group of men intending to…fuck, I didn’t know what they wanted, but I doubted they’d taken us to shoot the breeze.

The explosion on my father’s island was a continuous echo in my ears, but thinking about the flames that ate away at my childhood memories, turning them to ash, would get us nowhere. I couldn’t control what had happened. I could only control now, this moment and the next to come, and I’d be damned if I let Alex suffer without putting up the fight from hell.

The trunk popped open, and Alex clung to me with desperate hands, her face buried in my shoulder as she breathed, “Oh God,” against my skin. Her terror raged through me, her tiny frame shaking in my arms.

Yet I knew she was stronger than me.

She had to be, to have survived so much and still have a heartbeat. I cursed God, fate, the universe—even the ball of dirt gravity glued us to—for dropping her into another horrifying situation. Had she not been through enough?

“Promise me,” I whispered again, the plea lost in her hair, though I knew she heard because she held on tighter.

And that’s when I knew. She wasn’t going to run.

Because she was strong. Stubborn. Loyal.

Because she loved me.

The lid of the trunk creaked and cool air hit my back an instant before the barrel of what I assumed was a gun pressed into my spine.

“Get out slow and no one will get hurt.”

The guy at the other end of the weapon backed off, and someone snorted, barely covering their muttered, “yet.”

Reluctantly, I freed Alex from the cage of my arms and turned in the confined space. Trees obscured the moon, and shadows hid the men’s features, though their hatred poisoned the atmosphere and spiraled around me like a tangible entity. Only one held a gun, and he had it locked on me with relentless force.

Had I miscalculated the number of men on the island?

“Don’t have all night, Mason. Get out.”

I grasped the edge of the opening and hefted myself up, biceps flexing under the strain, and crawled from the trunk. One foot then the other touched the ground, and rough earth gouged the soles of my feet. A chilly breeze whispered through the trees. Even July brought cold nights with it.

“Hands up.”