Saint (A Dark Mafia Romance)(62)

I’ll only destroy her, and there’ll be no fixing things after that. But right there, sitting against the side of the lighthouse I used to explore as a kid, I know what the fix is here. As much as it fucking digs at me, and as much as it claws at something inside of me, I know what the fix is to this problem.

Letting her go.

If I want to protect her, and if I want to save her from the thunderstorm of my life that’ll only twist and drown her, I have to cut her loose.

And that fucking burns.

I say goodbye to my brother as I head back to the car. I pull my boots on over sandy feet - the city-boy armor going back on. I drive more like a normal person back to the house - less squealing tires and wild speeds this time. The kitchen light is still on as I pull in and shut off the engine, stepping from the car and heading for the porch.

There’s a tightness in my chest, but I know what I have to do.

I kick sand from my boots as I climb the stairs to the porch and head for the kitchen door, when I suddenly stop, frowning.

The door’s ajar.

I know it’s nothing - I know it’s just that Sierra doesn’t have the same shit as me where closing and locking a door just becomes second nature, even if it is a completely safe beach house way out on the dunes like this. But it doesn’t stop that tingling sensation at the back of my neck, or the fact that I’m suddenly on edge.

I step inside, glancing around.

“Sierra?”

She might be asleep, which somehow irks me even more that she’s got the door ajar. I take a step towards the stairs when my eyes land on the kitchen floor.

And something turns cold inside of me.

There’s shattered glass on the floor, and water pooling across the linoleum.

Water tinged pink.

With blood.

There’s a blinding pain inside, like a bullet moving in slow motion through my chest, tearing its way through me and leaving a gaping wound in its wake. I glance wildly around the small living room, as if I’ve somehow missed her, sitting in a corner or something, or waiting for me on the couch. Something tugs at the corners of my vision, blinding me, and there’s a feeling of weight pushing down on me.

I can’t breathe.

“Sierra!” I roar, thundering through the rest of the downstairs, kicking open closets and almost tearing the bathroom door off it’s goddamn hinges. I storm upstairs and do the same, bellowing her name, but I already know I’m not going to find anything.

Part of me wants to hope she’s just left. Part of me wants to hope that she’s gotten tired of this shit, or that I pushed her too hard about the fucking phone. Or that she’s just decided on her own what I was going to tell her myself when I got back here: that this life is no place for her, and being near me is only going to get her hurt.

I want to believe all that, but I know there’s no truth to it.

The ajar door says otherwise.

The glass shattered on the ground reminds me that’s bullshit.

The blood is a fist to the gut, telling me exactly how fucking wrong I am.

I grab the guns I’ve stashed behind the vacuum cleaner in the hallway closet and stagger outside to the porch. That ripping feeling is still tearing at my chest, making me work to suck in a breath of air as I look wildly around as if still trying to spot her.

But she’s gone, and I think I’ve got a real good fucking idea who’s taken her from me.

And just like that, everything I’ve just been saying to myself, and to Liam over the phone just fucking shatters like the flimsy bullshit it always was. All my huffing and puffing about “letting her go” and “keeping her away from me” goes up like fucking smoke.

Because someone’s taken what’s mine away from me. Someone’s taken away the one good thing I’ve felt in fucking years.

My eyes narrow, my pulse thunders, and my hand grips the cold metal of the gun in my hands tight.

Anton’s stepped over the line, and taken what belongs to me.

And now it’s time to start a war.

Now it’s time to act.

Now it’s time to move heaven and hell to get her back.

Because she’s mine, and I’m not ready to let her go.

I’m about to storm off for the car when my eyes land on something black and metal on the sand by the steps to the porch.

The fucking burner phone.

I glare at it, every intention of putting the heel of my boot through the top of it when I suddenly freeze. The bag drops to my feet, and I grab the goddamn thing out of the sand, flip it open, and scroll to the one damn number programmed.

I push the call button.

“Agent Marlow,” I growl when the line picks up. “I heard you’ve got a little crush on me.”

There’s a frozen second before he clears his throat.