I’d lost the right to be loved by her.
No amount of revenge would make her absolve my crimes.
I would never stop living with one step in hell. I had to accept that.
You won’t be granted redemption.
I held her tighter, holding my brightly inked Buttercup with arms that shook with mourning.
Her warm form sent my heart hammering with both love and grief. She was still the same girl from my past, only scarred by flames and painted by ink. She’d grown even more beautiful, more unique.
And I’d never fucking deserve her.
Who knew how much longer I’d be permitted to hold her before she remembered.
And she would remember.
It was only a matter of time.
I swallowed hard as my worst memory took my mind hostage.
A gasp sounded behind me.
Shit!
Spinning around, I aimed the gun at the apparition in the doorway.
There was no one there.
But I’d seen her.
I’d recognized the shape of her body I fantasized about every night. I’d recognized the small sound of horror falling from her lips.
She’d seen me.
I was so consumed with memories and melancholy, I didn’t hear the noise that heralded the end of my world.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.
I saw the shadow.
I ordered my body to move. To protect. To kill.
I raised an arm to fight.
But it was too late.
The bat whistled through the darkness, striking the side of my head before I’d untangled myself from Cleo.
My last thought as a diabolical headache shot me into unconsciousness was Not her. Kill me but leave her the fuck alone.
But my mouth was no longer in my control.
My eyes closed.
My world ended.
I abandoned her to monsters all over again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Out of every scenario I could’ve envisioned for my future…
This was not it.
This wasn’t allowed to fucking happen.
How was I supposed to stay human when they’d taken her from me, not once, but twice?
How was I supposed to stay rational and follow my plan when they’d left me destitute?
The answer was scarily simple.
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
There was only one path left for me. One target. One goal.
I wanted their screams.
They would pay for their sins.
I embraced the madness and bloodlust in my soul.
It was time to end this.
Once and for fucking all.
—Kill
I woke up.
I went to scream.
A hand planted over my mouth.
A weapon sailed through the air, striking Arthur in the temple.
Tears burst from my eyes as he crumbled into unconsciousness beside me.
I fought. Fuck, I fought.
But it wasn’t enough.
Something pricked my arm.
Ice stole through my veins.
My eyes flew wide as something foul slapped against my mouth. The painful prick spread listless lethargy through my blood.
Clouds fogged my brain.
The glint of a needle in the moonlight told me the truth even as tendrils of vapors swam faster through my veins.
They’d found me.
They knew who I was.
I looked into the gaze of Alligator/Lighter Boy—the hazel-eyed man who played with fire—the same man who’d stolen me the first time.
Now he would steal me again. Captured and taken as if I’d never existed.
I forced my heavy head to loll to the side, more tears streaking down my cheeks.
Arthur!
He was unconscious, a trickle of blood coming from his mouth. Another biker stood over him with a bat.
“No!” I screamed, but it came out as a whispered sob behind Lighter Boy’s palm.
“Got a date, pretty Dagger. Got a date with fucking destiny.”
I floated away, falling faster and faster into an abyss as the drugs stole my lucidity.
The last thing I remembered was his rancid lips on mine as the shutters in my head slammed closed and I disappeared into the void.
I woke up for the second time.
Pain.
Horrendous pain lived inside my head.
Smacking my lips, I tried to lubricate my dry mouth. My body was a throbbing, screaming mess, refusing to resemble the woman I’d been before.
I searched my mind for that terrifying wall locking my past away. Please don’t let my amnesia protect me again.
I didn’t care it was a self-preservation thing. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if everything I’d fought so hard to remember was… gone.
Tentatively, I prodded and pushed my mind, testing the darkness—making sure it wasn’t padlocked and chained.
But something was different.
Memories swarmed—recent and terrifying.
“Take her.”
“I’m not taking her.”
I groaned, my cheek squashed against the hotel carpet. My head rang from being cuffed and nausea took my stomach hostage, threatening to evict the room service I’d ordered only an hour before. “What—what do you want with me?” I slurred, trying uselessly to push myself upright.
The carpet was comfortable. My only friend. I would stay there for a little while.
The men stopped arguing.
One squatted beside my face, his horrible fingers brushing aside my hair. “We’ve found you. After all this fucking time. Didn’t believe him when he said it was true. But here you are.”
“Here I am?”
The man with hazel eyes chuckled. “Here you are. A girl who should’ve stayed away.”
Why was I there? I couldn’t remember. Then, in a flash of remembrance, I said, “A letter. I received a letter.”
The cold chuckle came again. “Yes, a letter from him. He said you’d come. I didn’t think you would. You owe me a hundred dollars for betting wrong.”
With a kick to my stomach, he rolled me over so I lay staring at the light shade above. My eyes tried to focus on the two men looming above but couldn’t—they were blurs.
“Take her. We’ll keep her separate from the other shipment. Kill will never know.”
“Why don’t we just kill her? He wants to ruin him. This would do it.”
The other man, in a deeper voice that rumbled with rocks and tar, said, “It’s not enough. She needs to be seen. Doubt needs to be planted before we can get rid of her. Besides, I want the money that her sweet little body will bring.”
A boot pressed against my breast. I cringed away.
Cold fingers wrapped around my forearm. “What’s it going to be, Cleo? Fire or persuasion?”
Cleo?
My nose wrinkled. “You’ve got the wrong girl. My name is Sarah.”
For some reason they both laughed. “This is just getting better and better.”
The deep-voiced man said, “Do it. If he’s right, then it will solve our issues. He’s been right about everything else.”
I cried out as a knife rang in the sparsely decorated Dancing Dolphins hotel room, slicing efficiently through my cardigan.
Fight filled my limbs and I lashed out. I went to scream but a large hand clamped over my mouth.
“Do it. Now.”
The flick of a lighter and whiff of fire sent my heart tripping over itself in terror.
Fire.
My nemesis. The one thing I was petrified of. I couldn’t light a stovetop or go near a barbeque. Fire. I hated it. Hated!
“No!” I screamed behind the hand—the sound remained muffled and useless.
Lighter Boy moved closer, waving the naked flame by my arm. “Ready, Cleo?”
My name is Sarah!
I hated that everything they did was to the wrong person. I pitied this Cleo person but I wanted her to take whatever repercussions her life had brought upon herself—not me. I wasn’t her. I didn’t deserve to be burned. Couldn’t they see my body was full of scars? Hadn’t I suffered enough?
The first singe of flame on flesh made my body snap and shudder. The man holding my mouth moved, planting his knees on my shoulders and pinning me to the floor.
I couldn’t scream.
I couldn’t move.
The lighter moved closer, the merrily orange flame stealing more than just my sanity and pain but the past eight years of my life, too.
I snapped out of the memory, breathing hard.
All along, I hadn’t seen the truth.
I suffered two layers of amnesia—seemingly two events triggered by fire, but all along they’d been linked. All along I’d been Cleo Price and Sarah Jones—joined by a tragic history.
My mind had learned that protection came from forgetting and it had once again tried to save me.
I lay on a bed that was decorated with buttercups and daisies, staring at a ceiling.
A horrible blanket of terror covered me.
No… this can’t be.
My eyes drank in the cursive quote from The Princess Bride on the ceiling.
“As You Wish.”
I gasped.
This was my room.
My childhood room at the Dagger Rose compound. But that can’t be—it burned down.
“Ah, you’re awake, Buttercup.”
I shot upright, huddling into the corner on the bed. Everywhere around me rested familiarity and home. From the frilly yellow bedside light to the macaroni-and-glue photo frame holding a photograph of Arthur and me at our favorite swimming hole.
Although… the photo that’d been in that frame before was of us baking with his mom, all covered in flour, not swimming. And the light shade had been bigger.
“Do you like it?”