“Working with him how?” he asked, loosening his hold on my hair.

He wanted the information more than he wanted to hurt me.

I could work with that.

“This is my place.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he roared. “This is Soren’s club.”

“It’s our club.”

There was a pause then before he tugged my hair, forcing me to turn to face him.

“You’re his partner?”

“Silent. Yes.”

“Hmm,” he said, watching me with unnervingly keen hazel eyes.

Then, without giving me a single clue what he was going to do, he cocked back and punched me in the face.

I felt consciousness wobble as the copper taste slid into my mouth from my nose.

By the time I fought back the urge to pass out, the man had already dragged me over toward the tools, yanked my arms behind my back, and wrapped my wrists in duct tape.

Great.

That was just great.

My heartbeat hammered in my chest as the man slapped tape over my mouth, then grabbed my arm and dragged me across the club and onto the stage.

Only then did he reach for his phone.

And I got to hear the one-sided conversation with this lunatic. And Soren.

Soren, who he was clearly familiar with.

Soren, who had just as clearly been keeping just as many secrets from me as I’d been from him.

I wish I’d found a way to get a warning to him before the man hung up. To tell him to get in touch with Bastian. To urge him not to come down here himself.

While we waited, the man ranted and raved, dragging me around with him as he paced the stage, occasionally dropping random threats about what he was going to do to me if Soren didn’t show up in time.

I didn’t know this guy, but everything about him screamed that he was some sort of criminal.

What did that say about Soren? A man that I’d been so sure was morally white, who walked on the right side of the law, who didn’t keep such giant secrets from me?

Was it hypocritical of me to be upset with him for doing to me what I was also doing to him? Sure.

I guess I just… didn’t want to believe in any darkness in Soren. The man who’d shown me nothing but goodness.

“Get back here,” the man snarled, fingers digging into my arm so hard I couldn’t help but wince.

But it was right then that the door opened.

Relief and worry muddled into a heady cocktail in me as he looked at the man. And I watched him.

If I hadn’t been looking so closely, I never would have seen it.

A flash of metal in the waistband of his pants.

A gun.

Soren had a gun.

That was a thought I never thought would cross my mind.

But he did.