Page 88 of Dual Surrender

“Here he is now,” she said. “Right on schedule.”

Footsteps thudded up the stairs and a man I didn’t recognize appeared, out of breath with blond hair flying around his head like he’d just run a marathon. He was in a suit and had a gun in his hand that looked to match hers. He raised it and I tried to absorb my body into the wall, not sure which of them needed my attention.

“I’m gonna….” I pointed toward the stairs, even though there was no way I wanted to go toward the stranger with the gun who was apparently her murderous ex-husband. I was truly fucking trapped.

“No.” Carmen steadied the gun and pointed it at me.

I closed my eyes, terrified and angry all at the same time. I didn’t want to get shot. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to go home and see Ronan and tell him how much I loved him. I wanted to marry him in the summer and redecorate the condo together. I wanted to get a dog. There was so much I had left to do.

“I’m right here, Carmen,” the man at the top of the stairs said, taking a step toward us. He couldn’t see her, since she was still in the bedroom. He could only hear her voice. I tried to take the fact he hadn’t shot me yet as a good sign and the fact she hadn’t shot me yet as a better one.

Maybe I’d have Foster teach me how to shoot.

That was a silly idea. Even if I knew how to shoot, I wouldn’t just carry a gun around with me. It wouldn’t do me any good.

Nothing would do me any good.

“I knew you’d come Alistair,” she said, voice raised and directed toward the stranger.

“Let Kevin go,” he said.

I looked toward him, surprised the man knew my name. He had slowly started to make his way down the hall, shoulder dragging against the wall opposite me. He watched me, eyes flicking toward the stairs he’d just come from, but my stare drifted back into the bedroom where Carmen still had a gun leveled right at my chest.

“I don’t want to,” she said.

“You know better than to play with your food.”

“You’re trying to take the fun out of things again,” she accused.

He stepped closer, now almost halfway from the stairs to the bedroom. “I am not.”

“You are.” She shoved her painted red lips into a pout. “It’s about you, but not everything isallabout you.”

“You tried to go for Foster and you got it all wrong.”

At the sound of Foster’s name, my heart stopped.

“I tried to go for the Italian,” she corrected. “The Rosetti son.”

Sage.

What the fuck was happening?

This woman knew about or had been behind the attack on Sage that had roped Ronan and I into the mess in the first place?

Hope left me.

For the first time since I’d seen the gun, I had the sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to make it out of this house alive. I closed my eyes, a tear slicking down my cheek. I traced my thumb over the gold band on my ring finger and waited.

“You hired a fool,” the man—Alistair—said.

“I hired Foster Golden!” she shouted.

What.

The.

Fuck.