Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Then all hell broke loose. The second the door slammed open, and they hit open ground, Demingo’s men realized what was happening.
Gunfire exploded into the night. Bullets kicked up dirt, shattered windows, and splintered wood as they unleashed hell trying to get them back.
I did what I do best, I dropped the first one before he could even raise his rifle. Then the second. Then the third. Each shot was precise, silent, deadly. But it wasn’t enough, there were too many for me to deal with on my own. No matter how fast I worked, I couldn’t cover every angle.
I saw the moment it happened through my scope—Bo jerked, stumbling forward, a bloom of red spreading down her side. She’d been hit. My pulse spiked, my finger already squeezing the trigger, taking out the bastard who’d shot her.
But she didn’t stop, nor did she hesitate. She kept dragging Piper, moving toward the vehicle, focused on the mission. She’d gotten Piper out, but by the time we reached her Bo was gone. And Piper was in such bad shape we had no choice but to get her to the ER immediately.
Noah was barely holding it together. His eyes were hollow, and his breathing uneven.
He hadn’t spoken since Bo went missing, and no one blamed him. Bo had been inside Demingo’s operation for months, feeding us intel, risking her life every single day.
And now she was in enemy hands.
But we would get her back—no man or woman was ever left behind, and Noah knew that.
We all did but knowing it and living it were two different things.
The waiting room in the hospital was silent. In fact, it was too silent. A whole group of us, trained soldiers, mercenaries, fighters—just sitting there, waiting for word on Piper. Mainly for word that she was going to make it, reassurance that she was going to be okay.
Not a single one of us spoke. Not even a breath was wasted.
We had scrubbed the camouflage paint from our faces before stepping onto hospital grounds, making sure there was nothing to tie us to what had gone down. There were already going to be enough questions, we didn’t need to draw more attention to ourselves. If anyone—anyone—linked us to what had happened, the risk of the traffickers hunting us down skyrocketed. And we weren’t stupid. We had made sure that wouldn’t happen.
Now that we didn’t have that worry hanging over us, we stayed vigilant, but we were focused on Hunter’s woman, the mother of his son. And while we did that, we worked on our phones looking for Bo and for the assholes who were doing this.
Word had come in—Gia, Ava, and Scarlett were safe. Mace had them.
Relief hit like a punch to the gut, but it didn’t erase the tension still coiled in my chest. They were safe now but getting them out hadn’t been easy. Not by a long shot.
A friend of theirs had tracked them down, pinpointing their location just hours before our raid for Piper. Timing had been everything. While we fought our way through hell to get her back, Mace and his crew had made their move. But it hadn’t been clean.
One of the guards had been strapped with a suicide vest. One wrong move, one slip of the trigger, and the bastard would’ve taken everyone with him.
That’s why Mace had taken the sniper position.
High ground. Steady hands. A scope trained on a walking time bomb.
He had tracked him, waited, breath slow, heart steady. The guy hadn’t even known he was being hunted. Then, like some twisted stroke of fate, he had wandered into the woods to take a piss.
That was all it took. One clean shot. One problem down.
But this wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
We had them safe, but we still had a mess to clean up. And I had a feeling the next problems wouldn’t go down as easy as a lone guard in the woods.
The days crawled by, each hour stretching into an eternity.
Every second felt like a goddamn year.
Piper was still in the ICU, clinging to life, her body locked in a battle she hadn’t asked for. She hadn’t just been injured—she had been suffering.
A deep wound, carved into her skin by jagged glass days before her kidnapping, had festered unnoticed. Infection had spread through her system like wildfire, unchecked and relentless. The filth she had been kept in, the lack of care, the sheer cruelty of it all had turned a manageable wound into something life-threatening. Septicemia had sunk its claws into her, dragging her down into fevered nightmares and whispered prayers.
She was so fucking sick, but she was fighting.
For days we watched as Hunter visited her and held her hand, until finally she was turning a corner.
The beeping of machines still filled the room, the rhythmic hiss of the ventilator reminding me with every breath she took just how close he had come to losing her. But today, there was something different in the air. The doctors had hope in their voices. The fever had broken. Her vitals had stabilized. The war inside her body was shifting, and for the first time in what felt like forever, the tide was in her favor.