Page 101 of Beneath Your Beautiful

He didn’t hesitate, and for that, I was grateful. “Who? How many?”

“I don’t know.”

“Armed?”

“Yes.” It was a guess but probably a good one. “They said no cops.”

“I’m on my way. Wait for me. Don’t go in without me.”

I cut the call and turned onto Kent Avenue, listening for anything I could hear on Eden’s phone. The sound was muffled, but I heard her screaming. They’d gotten to her. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Please God, no, not her.

What have you done, Connor?

This was no time to think about the worst-case scenario or I’d lose my shit. I needed to stay focused. As much as I wanted to bust through the door on my own, Seamus was right. I needed to wait for him.

Thankfully, he wasn’t far behind me. When I climbed into the passenger seat of his black SUV and shut the door, I smelled the whiskey on his breath. Shit.

“Under your T-shirt,” he barked, handing me under armor.

The vest was lightweight, Kevlar I guessed. Vest on under my T-shirt, he handed me a Glock 17. “Remember how to use it?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I checked the safety before I tucked it into my back waistband while he barked out more instructions. It boiled down to following his lead and not losing my shit.

“Leave your emotions outside the door,” he said, and I briefly wondered if that was what he used to do when he came home at night all those years ago.

“If you help them, I’ll do anything you ask. Anything you want…I’ll do it.”

He didn’t answer until we were two doors down from my house. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice gruff.

I gave him a look. He was serious. I’d say anything right now, make a deal with the devil himself if it meant he’d help me. “Done.”

Seamus nodded once to indicate he’d heard me. I didn’t have time to think about what he’d asked of me or what I’d granted him. In the SUV, he said we were lucky—if the men had been smart, they would have taken Connor and Eden to a remote location. We still didn’t know what they wanted, but we both suspected it was drug-related, and whatever Connor had been doing in Florida, the trouble had followed him here.

These men might be idiots, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Eden

When I came to, I was lying on the living room floor, curled on my side, bound at the ankles, my arms behind my back and my wrists bound. My head was too heavy to lift off the floor. I tried to bring my eyes into focus. Everything was blurry.Connor. Oh my God. I wished I had stayed unconscious. He was bare-chested and tied to a kitchen chair, his face almost unrecognizable—pulpy flesh and so much blood. My stomach heaved, and I vomited on the floor. Nobody noticed. They were too busy meting out punishment to worry about me.

“Not so pretty anymore, pretty boy,” a man with dark hair and a goatee said. Another man with ginger hair stood behind Connor. “You know what we do to snitches? We carve them up and feed them to the fish.”

The man with the goatee flicked open a switchblade and made a cut in Connor’s chest. Oh my God, no.

Connor’s head lolled to the side. He didn’t make a sound as the man carved his chest with the blade of a knife. I prayed, for his sake, he’d lost consciousness and couldn’t feel the pain. I heard footsteps headed in my direction. I closed my eyes and feigned unconsciousness. I was lying in a pool of my own vomit.

“What are we gonna do with her?” a man’s voice asked. “She’s a pretty thing.”

“She’s got puke all over her. I hate puke,” the other man said. I recognized his voice. He was the one who kicked down the bathroom door.

“What did you do to her head?”

“I clocked her with the butt of my gun.”

“What’d you do that for? Nobody said nothing about a girl.”

“She fucking blinded me with deodorant and kicked me in the nuts.”