Now I’m sure I didn’t imagine it. There’s a strain in her voice, fear or panic or something.
“Help you with what?” I press again.
“Shut up!” Her voice is loud and harsh in my ear, and she turns toward me more fully, her lips curling back. “I told you to shut the fuck up!”
It’s only a small shift in her stance.
A small opening.
But Marcus takes it.
He moves so fast it’s like a blur of motion, sprinting toward us and throwing himself at Victoria. I dive to the side as his body collides with hers, a gunshot ringing out so close to my head it makes my ears ring painfully. The bullet grazes my cheek, and I land with a heavy thud on the floor, unable to get my good arm around to brace my fall.
Marcus pins Victoria, his larger body holding her down as the other two men rush forward. Even Dominic hobbles toward us, still bound at the ankles and wrists.
Victoria lets out a sharp scream as she grapples for the gun, throwing all her weight into the struggle. But Marcus wrests it from her hands, straddling her waist as he expertly flips the weapon in his grip, bracing the butt in one palm as he aims at her head.
With a shock, I realize he’s about to pull the trigger.
“No!”
I throw myself toward them, shoving Marcus’s arms to the side just as the shot fires. The ringing in my ears intensifies, and I’m sure Victoria’s are ringing just as loudly. But the bullet misses her face, penetrating the heavy wood of the floor
next to her head.
“What the fuck?” Marcus looks up sharply at me, something almost like anger on his face.
He once promised me he’d kill Victoria before he ever had to marry her, and he’s probably wondering why I just robbed him of that chance. He fixes the gun on her again, still pinning her with the weight of his body, sitting on her to keep her in place.
Theo and Ryland both have their weapons trained on her too, and all three of them look at me as Marcus growls, “We need to take care of her, Ayla. It’s the only way.”
“Wait,” I say again, repeating the same plea I made when Victoria was about to shoot me.
Marcus’s entire body radiates a feral, dangerous rage, but he clenches his jaw and does as I ask, resting his finger on the trigger as he glares down at the woman beneath him.
My gaze lands on her too. Unlike us, she’s changed since the party at Luca’s. She’s no longer wearing the show-stopping dress she had on earlier, but a pair of dark pants and a dark long-sleeved shirt.
Her hair auburn hair is tied back in a tight ponytail, and she stares up at Marcus, meeting his gaze unflinchingly.
There’s something in her eyes that makes my stomach tighten. Something dull and lifeless, a willingness to accept death. To embrace it, even.
I step closer, standing close to Ryland as I look down at her.
“Are you gonna answer my question now?” I ask evenly. “Because if you don’t, I don’t know how much longer I can keep one of these guys from putting a bullet between your eyes. I don’t know how much longer I’ll even try. But I want to know. What’s in it for you if you win? Why are you so fucking desperate for it? Is it just for the power?”
Her green eyes dart sideways quickly as she looks at me. Ignoring the gun that still hovers a few inches from her face, she holds my gaze.
“I want the power,” she says quietly. “It’s the only way I can save him.”
“Who?”
Her jaw clenches like she’s trying to bite back the answer, but this time, I don’t press her. I know she can feel the threat emanating from all of the men, and since she answered my first question, I have a feeling she’ll keep talking.
“Jaden and I knew each other before my family ever had money,” she finally says. “We fell in love after my dad got rich, but I didn’t fucking care that he didn’t have what I had. We had each other. That was enough.”
Tears gather in her eyes as she speaks, but her voice stays steady, her expression hard—like someone who long ago learned to function through pain and grief.
“He always had a side hustle selling drugs. Just a small client list, nothing big. But he stepped on Luca’s territory, and Luca has a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.”