The second he entered the bedroom, the marble statue of his woman energized him and focused him, and he rushed forward, falling to his knees in front of it. Cupping the perfect marble face, he felt his palms warm the cool stone.

And that was when the bargain came back to him, word for word.

The voice of the woman from the cab echoed through his head: For a small price, you can have exactly what you want. I can tell you what you have to do to get her and keep her. And I protect what is mine. I won’t let anything happen to you. Forever.

You can have exactly what you want.

Kill her and she’s yours.

“Yes,” he said to the statue. “Yes…my love.”

All he had to do was go over to that house of hers and get inside. He had to find a way to get close enough to Marie-Terese to—

The sound of a window shattering brought his head up. As the glass exploded out of the house next door, it was broken with such force that it pelted Saul’s place, pinging off the aluminum siding in a ra-ti-ta-ta.

In the aftermath, and with contrasting silent grace, the drapery billowed out of the hole that was left behind as if the pressure inside were greater than outdoors—

His beloved was revealed to him.

In the illumination of a ceiling light, Marie-Terese’s perfect face was drawn in lines of horror and fear as she looked at where the window had been. Her hair and her clothes were wet and there was no color in her cheeks—which made her look even more like the statue.

As he stared in wonder and joy, he didn’t worry about being seen by her. As he was in darkness, he was invisible to her, and to the other two men who were with her.

Interesting…one of them was from that hideous club. He’d been in that hallway beating up the pair of college boys Saul had killed back in the alley.

No time to waste. Go…go…

Saul jumped to his feet, jogged out of the bedroom and down the stairs—all the while marveling at the woman from his cab.

She had power. True power.

It was the work of a moment to dip into the taxi and get the gun from under the driver’s seat.

Marie-Terese wrapped the duvet around Vin and pulled him into her arms. His body was an ice cube, nothing but a static object that threw off cold. And as she rubbed him, trying to get heat into his body, he wasn’t helping. He was agitated—twitchy and jerking, almost as if he didn’t know where he was or couldn’t understand what had happened.

“Shh…I’m right here,” she said to him.

Evidently, the sound of her voice was exactly what he needed to hear, and he calmed down.