I tried to shove my aching body off the floor. My head spun, bright lights popping before my eyes. The white tiles swam back into my vision, but this time, they were painted with a growing crimson pool. Something hot and wet coated my cheek.
I tried to get upright, desperation clawing at my insides. My limbs wouldn’t obey my commands. Smoke seared my insides, smothering me with a fresh layer of agony.
A decade of nightmares jumbled in my mind, visions of my mother’s horrific death playing like a loop in my brain.
You think it’s your fault that she died because you didn’t run back into that fire to save her. But there was nothing you could’ve done. She was already dead.
Max’s terrible revelation echoed in my ears. My mother had been murdered by his family.
Just like his cousins were killing me.
The crimson pool around my head grew, and even the flames dimmed into utter darkness.
CHAPTER 6
Max
I swallowed a snarl, and my fingers flexed around my phone almost hard enough to crack the glass screen. Allie had sent her last message asking me to pick her up from work half an hour ago. But she hadn’t been waiting for me when I arrived. And she wasn’t answering my texts.
The cab moved through the city far too slowly as we made our way toward her house. It was the first place I could think to look for her, even though she’d told me she was afraid to be there on her own. I’d left my place to pick her up from work when I got the text, so it didn’t make sense that she would’ve returned there without me escorting her. Maybe she’d taken one of her friends home with her to watch her back.
But then why wasn’t she answering my messages begging to know where she was?
My heart hammered against my ribs, adrenaline spiking. I needed to punch something.
I needed Allie’s tender touch to soothe away my mounting aggression.
We rounded the corner to her house, and my stomach dropped. A small crowd of people were gathered on the pavement in front of her place, a few of them gesticulating wildly as they spoke into their phones.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
I launched myself out of the cab and raced to her house. My feet became concrete blocks when I saw the flames through her bay window. The sight of the roaring fire and thick haze of smoke hit me like a gut punch. Sweat beaded on my brow, as though I could feel the searing heat on my ruined face.
In an instant, I knew who was responsible. My cousins had threatened her. They were tormenting her, scaring her.
But they’d been ordered to stay away. They wouldn’t dare…
My heart dropped to the pavement as reality hit me like a sledgehammer. They would do something like this. I’d told my father they were little more than rabid dogs, and I’d been right. Even his orders hadn’t been enough to rein in their sadistic urges.
The flames surged, and something shattered inside the house. One of the onlookers cried out in shock.
I rounded on them, quickly searching the small crowd. Allie wasn’t among them.
No. She couldn’t be inside. She couldn’t.
But she hadn’t answered any of my messages. And my cousins were surely involved in setting this fire. If they would defy my father and burn down her house, then they might just be unhinged enough to go after her again.
Sweat broke out over my entire body despite the chill that frosted my skin. Nausea rolled through me in waves, and everything inside me screamed at the prospect of going into the fire.
But Allie might be inside. I couldn’t risk it.
The sirens were growing louder, but not loud enough. They couldn’t get here fast enough. Not when her life was on the line.
I sucked in a fortifying breath and gritted my teeth. Without pausing to think about the terror that clawed at my soul, I surged toward her front door, slamming my body against the wood. It splintered, and a wave of heat slapped my cheeks.
“Allie!” My desperate shout was drowned by the crackle of hungry flames. Smoke billowed toward me, and I drew in one final breath before I forced myself to press forward.
The smoke grew thicker as I rushed through the foyer and into her living room, where the fire was just starting to lick the ornate mantle and singe the couch where she’d let me explore her body for the first time. Gray plumes ghosted toward the high ceiling, where they gathered into a roiling cloud that descended with every second I searched for her.