We do as we’re told—exactly as we’re told, heading outside with Mr. Volli to find Justin’s limo waiting. Raúl looks annoyed as he holds the door open and ushers us inside. We pile in together and he slams the door, leaving us alone for the three second fucking ride back to the party.

It isn’t until I’m seated inside the luxury interior that I start to shake.

Parrish. We found him. But he isn’t with us. He isn’t with us.

“If he dies, I don’t think I’ll ever live a normal life,” Chasm whispers, staring down at his hands. He and Maxx are pressed close on either side of me. I reach down and take his hand in my right one, capturing Maxx’s in my left.

“Here’s what I think,” Maxx whispers, even though keeping his voice down is pointless. This entire car just has to be bugged. I don’t even need the bug detector to figure that out. “He’ll deliver on his promise, but he’s going to want something else in exchange. That’s the part that scares me.”

I glance toward X, and he looks over at me. As soon as he sees the expression on my face, he’s leaning forward and pressing his mouth to mine. His taste mingles with Parrish’s, and, for whatever reason, that soothes me. We kiss, slow and deep, exchanging so much more than physical affection; this is bone-deep, a kiss that cuts right to the core.

As soon as Maxx pulls away, I turn to Chasm, and I take his face in my hand the way Parrish did to me. I kiss him next, and at first, he tries to pull away.

“This isn’t fair to Parrish,” he murmurs, but then he’s grabbing the back of my head, digging his fingers into my hair and kissing me with all of his fear, all of his worry. Once again, his taste mingles with the other two, and a sense of rightness settles in my belly.

I don’t quite understand it in that moment, but that’s okay. It feels good; it calms me.

My initial urge is to panic, but Maxx is right.

I would never have found Parrish if Justin didn’t want me to find him. He gave me the key, and the book; he quoted it to me. This was all planned; I was led here. At any time, he could’ve gone to that house, slipped through the hidden door, and put a bullet in Parrish’s head.

He didn’t.

Because it isn’t Parrish that he wants. He wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t care for the boy either way. He truly doesn’t.

What Justin Prior wants is me, and he knows that if he kills Parrish, he will never have me. Never.

What he can do, however, is keep baiting me, keep me on a leash, convince me to do things that I would never do, like sleep with my sister’s ex-boyfriend. Or throw a typewriter into a car window. Maybe, if he plays his cards right, he could get me to hurt someone.

Perhaps … kill someone.

I exhale sharply, but I can’t stop thinking about what Maxx just said, about Justin needing additional leverage. So … who—or what—is that going to be?

We arrive back at the party, and the very first thing that Raúl does is give me back my pink heels.

Because nothing inside of Justin’s glittering world of shadows is allowed to be anything less than perfect.

The fancy party with all its glittering guests might as well be a gilded cage. I can barely breathe as I stand in that crowd, my arms entwined with both Maxx and Chasm as we watch Justin take the floor in front of the massive screens. He gives a quick presentation on Milk Carton, and then welcomes Seamus up beside him to discuss the merger.

“We’ll have direct access into the lives of every Fort Humboldt Security customer in the entire country,” Justin tells the crowd. From what I can see, it’s made up of people who are equal parts in awe and dripping with jealousy. “This adds more cameras, more raw data, more opportunities to protect our families.”

“More places to spy on people,” Maxx murmurs, but I can’t think about the terrible implications of this app, not right now.

Once Justin is finished with his speech, he approaches me and crooks a finger, drawing me into a tight hug.

“I am so proud of you, princess. So damn proud of you.” He pulls back and presses a warm kiss to my cheek. It almost, almost feels like a true fatherly kiss, like he really loves me the way a good-hearted man would care for his lost daughter. But then I remember that he’s proud of me for finding my lover that he stole and rage sweeps over me a violent wave. “As promised, Parrish is yours. Just stay calm, go home, and wait. You’ll see him soon; you’ll have him home tonight.”

Justin pulls away from me, reaching out to adjust my tiara, and then he heads off to do … whatever it is that the Seattle Slayer does.

I watch him go with a frown on my face, allowing Raúl to once again shepherd us into the limo. Chasm, at least, is able to come with us tonight. We head over to Tess’ together, climbing out and moving inside to find her waiting for us.

I do everything in my power to keep the emotions off my face.

If Parrish can stand inside that room and use a grimace to hold back crushing despair, I can do this. I can wait.

“I’m glad you’re home safe,” Tess tells me, studying me and then letting her gaze trail across the two boys. Her expression falls, and I just know she’s thinking about Parrish, about how handsome he’d look in a suit standing beside his friends.

Like, say, for prom.

Will Parrish really come back tonight? Could he, maybe, possibly, in some alternate universe go to prom with me? But then what about Chasm?

Ugh. Nope. Chasm warned me not to obsess over the romance, so I won’t.

I don’t give a shit about that in the scheme of things. If Parrish dumps me, I’ll be heartbroken, but it’ll be offset by the fact that he’s alive, that he’s safe, that I was able to fix what my horrible father broke in the first place.

“We’re exhausted,” Maxx offers up politely, taking over whenever Chasm and I are tongue-tied or, in this case, just too stressed to make small talk. “Is it cool if we go upstairs?”

Tess looks a bit worried as she crosses her arms, but she nods slightly, her eyes tracking me up the stairs. Next chance she gets, she’ll ask me all about the party, I’m sure of it.

The three of us end up sitting in Parrish’s room together.

I change into a pair of mismatched Chucks and cuddle GG, Chasm sits on the roof and chain-smokes, and Maxx paces the floor.

We barely talk. Time ticks by. Every minute feels like agony, like a rusty nail being shoved into my chest. Thump, thump. My heart beats, slow and even. Calm. I’m calm. I’m fucking calm.

We all pause at the sound of frantic footsteps, of screaming.

Someone is screaming.

For the briefest of seconds, I can’t ascertain who that person is and if they’re happy or emotionally destroyed.

He’s dead, I think in a sudden panic. Oh my god, we left him, and he’s fucking dead.

“They found him!” Tess is screaming. She throws the door open so hard that it smashes into the wall and scares the bunny. She’s shaking and crying, and she looks very similar to the way she did when I met her for the first time. “He’s alive; they found him. Get up!”

She turns and takes off as the three of us exchange looks.

There’s a flurry of activity as we scramble up, put the bunny away, and sprint down the hall, down the stairs. Kimber is at the bottom, shaking and crying as Paul wraps the littlest kids in their coats and Tess opens the door to the garage.

“You take the babies and follow me,” she barks out, not bothering to see if Paul heard her or not. She climbs into her Mercedes as I stumble over to the front passenger side, opening it and slipping in while the boys—and Kimber—squeeze into the backseat.

Tess is reversing out of the garage before the door is even fully open, whipping us around to face the gate in a jerky motion that reminds me of Parrish’s driving. I see now where he gets it, I think, curling my fingers around the edge of my seat and digging my nails into the leather.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Kimber asks, leaning between the two front seats and trying to look at Tess.

She is a woman possessed, her eyes fixated out the windshield, her foot pressing the gas pedal to the floor. She barely manages to avoid killing any of the bloodsucking paparazzi at the end of the street, rolling through the stop sign and skyrocketing down the road.

“Your brother is alive; they found him,” she whispers, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Milk Carton found him.”

I go completely still, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder at the boys.

“Between the traffic cam footage that was found this morning, and an image of him on the dark web …” She trails off. “They found him, that’s what matters.”

The dark web? That doesn’t sound good.

The dark web is like … like the pit toilet of the internet. It’s only accessible via an anonymizing browser, and almost sixty percent of the content found there is illegal, illicit, and totally fucked-up. Murderers for hire? Yep. Sex trafficking? Uh-huh. Buying bundles of other people’s credit numbers? You can do that. Counterfeit cash? Absolutely.

So, what was Parrish doing on the dark web? Why did Justin put him there?

Tess stays stone-still and silent as she drives, and the rest of us follow suit. The atmosphere is too thick with tension to make any sort of conversation feasible.

My mind spins with possibilities as I reconsider Maxx’s words over and over again. Justin will be looking for more leverage. But how long will it take him to get some? Who will that leverage be? My mind strays back to Maxine, back to my grandparents, to Saffron.

They’re all prime targets, right?

I think about what I might do when I see that Parrish really is here, that he’s truly okay. If I just open my mouth and scream that Justin Prior is the Seattle Slayer, that he was holding Parrish hostage in the house he’s just put an offer on, if I give the authorities the Maxine-phone … Could I end all of this now? Will I have an opportunity here to blow his cover?

I’m going to do it, I decide. No matter what. I’ll just do it. If I’m quick enough, clever enough, this is my chance. It might very well be the only chance that I’m going to get.

We turn down a long gravel drive, trundling over potholes at such high speeds that I keep bouncing up off of my seat. Not that it matters. I would run over here if I had to. I’d fucking crawl.

In the distance, I see several police cars with their lights flashing—and try my best not to think about the fact that a cop just held a gun on us at the Vasquez house. There’s an ambulance, too, and my heart starts to pound, my pulse racing. I take my seat belt off before we even come to a full stop.

As Tess slows the car down, I throw my door open, even as she lets out a small sound of surprise.

I hit the ground hard, stumbling as I catch myself, and then I take off running around the front of the ambulance toward the back, feet skidding in the gravel.

When I look up, I see him.

Parrish.

He’s limned in the white light from inside the ambulance, shirtless but wrapped in a blanket. As soon as he sees me, his eyes widen and he’s throwing himself off the ambulance’s bumper.

His arms wrap around my neck so tight that I can’t breathe, the blanket fluttering around us like wings. His smell overwhelms me, that clean linen and citrus and dewy clover scent. Tears prick at the edges of my eyes as I squeeze him back just as tightly, smearing blood from his chest across my body and not caring.

His lips move to press against my ear.

“Maxine is with Justin; don’t say anything.” Parrish’s words make my eyes go wide as he pulls back, looking down at me with so much love in his gaze that I can barely stand it. He blinks and it’s gone, turning his attention over to Tess as she scrabbles around the corner of the ambulance just like I did.

“Parrish!” she screams, and then she’s hugging him and I’m stumbling back, trying to process some horribly mixed emotions. Pure, unadulterated fear for Maxine. Endless, boundless joy and love for Parrish.

“Maxine is with Justin; stay quiet,” I whisper as Chasm and Maxx appear on either side of me, panting and quivering.

Kimber screams and launches herself at her brother, throwing her arms around his waist while Tess sobs and kisses him all over his face. The paramedics and police officers hang back to give them a moment.

“He what?” Maxx whispers, his face absolutely stricken when he looks at me. His eyes flick back to Parrish’s and warm slightly, but he can’t shake that bitter cold. “We just traded one hostage for another?”

“I don’t know yet,” I breathe, trying to reconcile two very different, very powerful emotions. “Go … go greet him, and I’ll … I’ll deal with this.” I slide my phone from my pocket—my Maxine-phone, actually—and hope that Tess is just too overwhelmed with Parrish to notice that it’s a Samsung and not an iPhone.

“We’ll be right back, okay?” Chasm chokes, and then he’s running forward and grabbing Parrish just as tightly as I did, squeezing him with an arm around the neck as Parrish wraps his own arms around Chasm’s waist.

Maxx is right behind them, and Chasm welcomes him under his other arm, dragging him into a three-person hug. I clutch the phone to my chest for a moment, watching them with tears in my eyes. I want nothing more than to be a part of that, but I have to put my sister first.

I dial Justin’s burner phone immediately (he has a real valid number, but this isn’t it), and wait with shaking hands for him to answer. He does, but it isn’t his face that I’m looking at. It’s the feed from a camera mounted near the ceiling of a large, formal dining room. Seamus McKenna’s house, probably. But Chas will know that.

I can see my sister tentatively walking in, her eyes sweeping up the towering walls toward the ceiling and the massive person-sized chandelier above the table. Justin is there, which is a new development. Not once, not fucking once , did he ever allow himself to appear in any of the previous videos.

An employee moves forward from the shadows to pull out Maxine’s chair for her. She seems surprised, but I can see her smile from here as she accepts the offer and sits down, allowing the person to push the chair back in as well. Another employee—this one has a maid uniform on that reminds me of the Vanguard house—brings a tray with a tea set in and sets it down on the corner of the table between Justin and Maxine.

Justin says something that I can’t hear—there’s no audio—and then removes his phone from his pocket. He types something out, and my own phone buzzes with incoming text messages.

Maxine is safe for now; she’s not my prisoner, but I am with her. Make sure you behave. So long as you follow the rules, she’ll have a splendid time. No harm will come to her.

Enjoy your reunion with Parrish.

That is not a request.

Justin ends the call, and I shove the phone back in my blazer pocket. I can barely breathe. I can barely think. I never agreed to trade Parrish for Maxine; that isn’t a bargain that I can live with.

So far, Justin has kept his word. Do I believe him now? What if I still tell on him? Would Maxine be dead before the authorities arrived? There was that cop tonight; I can’t forget that. Justin couldn’t possibly control everyone in the FBI though, could he? What is he doing right now with my sister? There are other people present; she appears to be there of her own free will.

What do I do? What the actual fuck do I do?!

My eyes meet Parrish’s as he finally gets a moment to himself, and I find my feet moving of their own accord. I close the distance between him and wrap my arms around his waist as he does the same to my neck, pulling my face against his chest.

Tess is right there, staring at us. So is Kimber. But … this could look like a stepbrotherly hug, couldn’t it?

Either way, I can’t resist. I can’t stay away from him. Physical distance is nearly painful at this point. The three of us risked and sacrificed so much to bring him back; I have to savor this moment while I can.

Because you never know when you might not get another.

More than once in the last few weeks, I’ve wondered if every conversation I had with Parrish would be the last. It makes me care a lot less that Tess is staring at us, that she might be wondering, that I could be upsetting Kimber.

“Don’t be scared; I’ve got this,” Parrish whispers, his voice so low that I’m sure only me and Maxx, who’s standing on my right, can hear him. Even Chasm, who’s just off to my left, probably can’t hear. “You don’t have to fight alone.”

Parrish releases me, standing up and catching the blanket as it slides down his shoulders, revealing all of that gorgeous ink. I see the dragon tattoo on his chest, the blue-green one that I scraped my teeth over once upon a time. His almond eyes narrow slightly as he drags them away from my gaze and over to Tess.

“I want him taken to the hospital,” she says, gesturing at one of the paramedics. Several more cars pulling down the length of the driveway draw my attention. One of them is Paul. The others are … FBI, maybe?

“I don’t want to go to a hospital,” Parrish declares, lifting his chin in that haughty way of his. “I’m fine.”

I’m not the only one who drops their gaze to his chest.

To the numerous slices ticked across his skin, counting the days.

There shouldn’t be so many; I should’ve found him sooner.

Parrish looks down and then frowns, reaching his fingers to one of the fresher wounds and swiping it through the blood. Then he glances at me, and his eyes widen slightly. I drop my gaze to my own chest, to the ruby red streaks across my pale skin and the soft pink of my princess dress.

Then I look up again and catch his attention.

“You need a hospital, Parrish,” Tess says, her voice so gentle and soft and tender that I don’t recognize her as anyone I’ve ever met. This is not the bio mom I know. She touches his shoulder, running her hand down his arm.

He tears his gaze from me to look at her again.

“They’re not that deep,” he argues, which is silly. The newer ones are bleeding; the older ones are scabbed. But none of them look pretty. “I want to go home.”

“Parrish!” Paul comes around the corner with Amelia’s hand clutched in one of his, Henry’s in the other. Ben is just ahead of them, his eyes lighting up as his glasses slide down his nose.

“Pear-Pear!” he shouts, and Parrish’s entire face brightens up.

“Don’t call me—” he starts, but then Ben is launching himself at his midsection and squeezing him so tightly that he just laughs. The twins break away from their father, grabbing onto their brother and clinging to him as Tess gently admonishes them.

“Is your sister okay?” Chasm asks, looking over at me. He drops his hand down to capture mine, curling our fingers together. Parrish is laughing and tousling our siblings’ hair, but then his eyes slide over, take note of our conjoined hands, and then flick away again. Chasm’s jaw tightens and he very carefully, very purposefully unhooks his fingers from mine.

“She’s okay,” I murmur back. “For now.”

I surreptitiously hand him the phone. Once he’s got it, he can just pretend it’s his, so he lifts it up, blatantly reading the text before handing it to Maxx.

“Wonder what’s going to be different this time,” he murmurs, putting the phone in the pocket of his white jacket.

I don’t have any answer for that.

Once again, the idea that I might have to kill the Seattle Slayer myself comes to mind.

This really is a never-ending cycle. I’m not surprised. I just … wish it didn’t have to be Maxine. She’s too sweet, too gentle, too trusting. She won’t last weeks in a dungeon with bloody wounds all over her chest; she just won’t.

“You need to be seen by a doctor,” Tess persuades again as Paul looks his son over with a physician’s eye, probably wondering if he can ‘fix’ the scars that Parrish will undoubtedly have after his wounds heal. He gives him a hug, even as Parrish stiffens up slightly, and then relaxes, putting one hand on his father’s back.

“Fine, I’ll go,” Parrish agrees, looking up as the two FBI agents I’m now familiar with approach. The dark-haired one, Itsumi Takahashi, is the first to speak.

“How are you doing, Parrish?” she asks, and I let out a long sigh as I close my eyes.

This is going to be a long night, that’s for damn sure.

I stand there, a dichotomy of hot and cold, happy and sad.

Makes sense, considering all that I know about Justin Prior.

Nothing that man ever does is singularly focused, is it?

I open my eyes again to see Tess, Paul, and Parrish begin a low conversation with the two women. Tess breaks away slightly, but she doesn’t move more than a foot past her son.

“Paul and I are going to ride with Agent Takahashi and meet the ambulance at the hospital. I hate to ask this, but could each of you drive one of the cars home? Dakota, you’ll be in charge of your brothers and sisters.” She holds out a pair of key fobs. Maxx takes one while Chas grabs the other.

Kimber moves up to stand beside us, arms crossed over her chest, eyes downcast, but she doesn’t argue.

“We’ve got this,” Chasm agrees, his eyes flicking to Parrish’s yet again. Parrish meets his friend’s gaze before looking over at Maxx, and then down at me. He maintains eye contact with me, dragging that tension out between us. I missed him so much, I think, realizing that the feeling is entirely mutual.

That beautiful energy we shared our first night together, when we reluctantly slipped away into our separate bedrooms, it’s still there. It’s there, and it’s poignant, and it fucking burns.

“I’ll see you three later then,” Parrish tells us, but then Tess is grabbing his arm and encouraging him to climb into the back of the ambulance.

“See you soon,” Maxx agrees, squeezing the key fob in his fist. He offers me a smile, but it isn’t much different than the one he’s been wearing for weeks.

Because Parrish is back, and my sister is now the one in trouble.