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My face colors, but it’s too late to back out, so I nod. “Yeah.”

Cade huffs out a breath, his expression unreadable, before casually reaching over to my plate. Without a word, he takes my untouched French toast and eats it.

“Hey,” I protest, my stomach growling despite the nerves twisting it into knots. “I wanted that.”

Cade’s eyes flash, and his voice drops to a dangerously quiet tone. “No, you don’t.”

“Why not?”

He wipes his mouth with a napkin, then stands, his steps unhurried, as he moves toward the two men. “Because it’ll just come back up. After I do this.”

Before I can process what he means, Cade grabs one of the men by the hair and jerks his head to the side violently. A sickening crack echoes in the room as the man’s lifeless body slumps to the side, his head in a grotesque angle.

A scream works its way up, only to get stuck in my throat. Time slows, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

The second man doesn’t even have a chance to register his friend’s death before Cade’s forearm wraps around his neck, too. With a sudden, brutal twist, Cade snaps his neck just as easily.

The room plunges into an eerie, suffocating silence as Cade moves back to his seat, picking up his glass of juice as if nothing’s happened. As if he didn’t just kill two men with his bare hands in front of me. He takes a sip, his expression calm, almost bored, like the violence was a mere afterthought.

My stomach churns violently, the bile rising too fast to control this time. I push back from the table, about to bolt for the bathroom when Cade’s voice stops me.

“Luciana.”

His use of my name wraps around my throat like barbed wire and I turn on trembling legs to meet his eyes.

“Don’t fucking piss me off again.” Dark promise edges every word. “Make up your mind. Do you trust me or not?”

The question hits like a sledgehammer. Trust him? Afterthat?

Bile wins. I barely make the bathroom before my stomach empties itself. My body shakes as reality sinks in with each heave.

Cade Quinn isn’t just dangerous. He’s deranged.

I walked into his world with my eyes open. And now I have no idea how to get out.

31

Luna

Do you trust me or not?

The rhythmiczip-zipof my new, knee-high Louboutin boots echoes in the silence of the truck. I’ve been fiddling with the zipper for hours, the small metal tab going up and down like a thousand-dollar nervous tic. It’s the only thing keeping me tethered to reality. That, and those words gnawing at me like an itch I can’t scratch.

Saint didn’t need to destroy my shoe to teach me about priorities. Turns out, being trapped with an avenging killer beats being sold off as a sex slave—or harvested for organs. Especially when that killer looks at you the way Cade looked at me.

Because that’s what it all comes down to. The look in his eyes when he asked if I trusted him. It wasn’t the cold indifference I’m used to, or the calculated violence I’ve come to accept.

It was hurt.

Andthat terrifies me more than any threat he could ever make. Because I’m not supposed to be able to wound a man like Cade Quinn.

The road keeps climbing higher, green and golden hills unfolding outside my window like a postcard—but it might as well be static on a dead TV screen. My mind is too full to appreciate the view.

Cade’s voice breaks through the fog in my head. “It’s . . . beautiful up here,” He says gruffly. “Want to stop, stretch your legs?”

I catch his reflection in my window—the raw intensity in his eyes—and I know he deliberately chose this route to show me the scenery.

I resist the fist squeezing my heart and shrug. “Sure.”