She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes, her curls tickling my ear. “Did Daddy really do that to the bad man’s daughter?”

My mind stutters back to Cam’s coerced confession, the heartlessness and money problems Sebastian dragged into the daylight, offenses that sometime in the past ten minutes I’ve already forgiven. There’s nothing like watching your firstborn daughter wielding a gun to illuminate the things that matter. Cam. The Bees. I can get past anything but losing one of them.

“I don’t know, baby. Maybe. But none of it matters without Bax. Let’s get him back first, and then we’ll think about how we fix our family.”

And I will fix this family. No matter what happens next, Cam and I will claw back the power Sebastian took from us when he stepped out of the shadows and forced his way into our home. Some things are impossible to put behind you, but this will not be one of them. If it’s the last thing I do, I will fix us.

Suddenly, there’s commotion at the front door. A cluster of bodies emerging, big and small. Tanya’s kids, the Montgomery twins from down the street, Cam with a Baxter-sized body balanced on an arm. My heart stops, and I squint into the darkness, unable to move.

And then a small voice, soft and scratchy and as familiar as my own pulse, the most beautiful sound in the world: “Whoa. How come there are so many cops?”

S E B A S T I A N

Ten Minutes Earlier

No money. A bullet in my shoulder. The whole house shaking from the cops busting in downstairs. This wasn’t exactly how I planned for things to go.

And all because of that sneaky little Beatrix, wriggling out of her bindings not once, but two times. She looked so cute when I fixed them a snack. An adorable little Houdini in a pink polka-dot shirt. It’s why I underestimated her, because she reminded me so much of my Gigi.

I shove my aching body to a stand, wincing at the sharp stab in my shoulder. Beatrix’s bullet ripped through muscles and tendons, I can tell, maybe nipped at a bone, but at least it missed my heart, and it shot all the way through. I know from the heavy wetness on the back of my shirt, the red smear I leave on the wall. The drips that fall from my elbow to the fancy carpet as I limp to the side table and my phone.

The screen is lit up with a million messages—no surprise there. Tanya and my sister, Hannah, blowing up my phone, the back-to-back calls and messages practically vibrating it off the table where I dumped it next to the gun. I ignore their messages and fire off a text to Hannah.