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"What do you want me to do?" Heathcote asked.

I squeezed my eyes shut and images of Alice flooded my mind.

Teenage Alice with her long, blonde hair flowing behind her as she twirled in a field of daisies, with the sun making her dress just the right amount of see-through that I could see her long legs.

Alice lying in the fresh dirt, her skin gray and dull, with the bunch of her favorite roses across her chest.

How dare they dig up my precious Alice! She’d suffered enough when she was alive.

Those fucking Foster triplet brothers were going to die for that.

Clenching my fist, I jammed the phone to my ear. "Cooper, I need you to get to Angelsong and kill those fucking brothers."

He whistled. "That's a big ask. What's in it for me?"

I wanted to say that I would let him fucking live.

That I wouldn't rip his tongue out with a pair of pliers.

That I wouldn't kill his wife and kids and make him watch them slowly die before I slit his throat.

But I curbed that rage. I needed Cooper Heathcoat, and he fucking knew it.

Besides, once my plans were done, I was getting the fuck away from this hellhole, and B, the queen of Scorpion Industries, would be nothing but a ghost story in this fucking town.

I unclenched my jaw. "You'll get ten grand once you confirm the kills."

"Ten grand." He scoffed. "These are cops you're asking me to?—"

Greedy fucker. "Fine. Make it fifty, and their bodies need to vanish."

He chuckled, pleased with himself like he'd just drawn a royal flush. "What about the body in the ground?"

"Don't you touch her!" The words ripped from my throat.

"Ooh, sounds like she meant something to you."

"Shut the fuck up." I wanted to launch through the phone and rip out his fucking throat.

"I want sixty grand," he said, his voice steadier than it had any right to be.

"Done."

"And I want off your books for good."

I'd been blackmailing him for six years. It was amazing what a few quality photos of men and their dirty little secrets could buy.

"Deal," I said, forcing the word through clenched teeth, swallowing the rage that clawed at my chest.

"And the photos?" His voice wavered, a pathetic note of hope clinging to the edge of his desperation.

His fear was justified. Few men survived demands like that. And those who did never stayed gone for long. The money had a way of sinking its claws into them. Once they tasted it, going back to nothing was unbearable. Sooner or later, they always came crawling back to me.

"I'll destroy the photos," I said, glancing over my shoulder. Hughes sat frozen, hanging on every word, probably calculating his odds of survival. Dumb fuck. There was no chance for him. "But, Cooper, if you breathe a word of this to anyone?—"

"I know, I know. You'll kill me." He paused. "When do you need this done?"

"Now!" Christ, I was surrounded by fucking idiots. "Before they move that body. And, Cooper, I want photo evidence when you're done."

"Always do."

I ended the call and stood there letting the silence settle for a moment. The warehouse creaked, a hollow sound that matched the emptiness in my chest.

They’d found Alice. Cooper better get there before that fucker Whitney chops her up, like they did to my boys.

The chains clinked behind me, and Hughes whimpered .

"I won't say anything." His voice trembled. "About the call. Or Cooper. Or any of this."

I turned slowly, my fingers itching to wrap those chains around his scrawny neck. But I couldn’t. Not yet. The sniveling accountant was worth more to me alive. For now. "No, Grant. You won’t."

Above us, more pigeons burst into the air like they'd sensed a predator swooping in for the kill. That was what I was—an eagle, sharp-eyed and deadly, crushing my enemies one by one.

Grant's gaze drifted upward to the hoist system on the pillars. His eyes lingered, narrowing. Had he noticed my trap?

I stepped close enough to him to smell his sweat.

His eyes widened, and the chains rattled against the floorboards like wind chimes.

"Please," he whispered, the word hanging in the air like smoke. "Look at me, I'm useless."

"That's where you're wrong, Grant Hughes. You're the best bait I could have asked for."

"Bait?" His eyes flew so wide the whites gleamed in the dim light.

"Aria and her fucking Alpha Tactical Ops team want you alive for interrogation."

His brows furrowed, confusion warring with terror on his face.

"You're going to bring the whole damn lot of them straight to me."

Something clicked behind his eyes.

"Okay. Yes." He nodded frantically. "I'll get them here for you. I'll do that."

I laughed, the sound echoing off the warehouse walls. "Yes. You will."

It had taken me three days and a lot of sweat to weave the fuse wire around the pillars, thread it up to the rafters, and snake it down into the floorboards to connect to the detonator.

Three painstaking days to rig enough C4 to turn this warehouse and everyone in it into a smoking crater.

Those Alpha Tactical bastards were not walking away this time.

They hadn’t just killed my boys. They’d done worse.

They’d pumped bullets into them, and not a single one had been a kill shot.

That wasn’t incompetence. It was a message.

Cruel. Deliberate. Calculated. Alpha Tactical didn’t miss.

Every member of that team was a trained marksman.

Especially Maya. That blonde bitch could drop a man with a single shot, clean and precise.

But not with my boys.

No, Thomas and Fraser had been left to bleed out. Left to scream. The previous coroner told me they’d lived long enough to talk. Probably long enough for that sadistic fuck, Blade, to get what he wanted before their bodies gave out.

I clenched my jaw until the pain radiated through my skull. Blade wouldn’t walk out of here.

None of them will.

The detonator rested in my purse, a small, unassuming device that held the power to obliterate Blade and his team. One press of the button, and the explosion would reduce them to pulp, their bodies shredded and scattered like ash in the dirt.

This wouldn’t be clean. No, this was something far more fitting: brutal, efficient, and poetic in its destruction. It was exactly what my boys deserved.

If I had one regret, it was that I wouldn’t witness the deaths of those military bastards with my own eyes.

The satisfaction of seeing their fear, their pain, until the precise moment they realized they had lost would have been exquisite.

Instead, I’d made do with rigging cameras around the warehouse to capture every grisly detail.

There was a silver lining, though. I could watch their deaths over and over again. Relive the moment as many times as I needed to dull the hollow ache inside me. Or until I convinced myself it had dulled.

My gaze drifted to the tiny camera nestled above Grant’s head, hidden in plain sight.

Fraser would have admired the precision of my setup.

He’d always been fascinated by surveillance equipment, tinkering with wires and lenses like a boy with his first toy.

If he were alive to see my handiwork, he would be impressed.

But Fraser wasn’t alive. Neither was Thomas. My two boys. I’d raised them like they were my own. Molded them, loved them. They’d been frail little orphan kids when I was first ordered to look after them. And though I’d told myself to remain detached, to keep them at arm’s length, I couldn’t.

How could I ?

I’d been an orphan too. I’d been just hours old, wrapped in a tattered dog blanket, when I was abandoned on the cold, concrete steps of Angelsong Orphanage. No name. No note. No trace of who had brought me into this world, only the quiet certainty that nobody wanted me.

No one ever came forward to claim me. I have no idea who my mother was, though if I found her, I would make sure that bitch who threw me away like garbage would die slowly and painfully. And she would know exactly who was making her suffer.

I’d spent my life with the bitter knowledge that I was unwanted and unloved. No one ever cared for me.

No one, except Alice.

Alice had been my one and only true love. The one person who’d seen me, who’d understood me, who’d made me feel like I mattered. And now she needed me again.

But my boys were different. I hadn’t just cared for them; I’d loved them. Loved them as if they’d been my own flesh and blood. I’d fought for them, bled for them, and now they were gone. Stolen from me.

And revenge was the only thing keeping me alive.

I tore my gaze from the camera and let it settle on Hughes. My lip twitched with disdain. I hated that I needed him. His slimy, self-serving demeanor made my skin crawl. But he had a role to play, and he’d better damn well play it.

I didn’t have a backup plan.

And I was running out of time.

Alice needed me. Again.

I would do anything for her.

I was even prepared to die for her . . . once all the killing was done.