I made a mistake after Jericho left for work, but I wouldn’t realize it until well after I’d made it.
I showered and tried not to cry as I went over the documents the estate lawyer had sent me. Turned out, Mom had a lot of secrets. I flipped through the bank statements, my veins burning with the fury of all she’d kept from me.
Aris had given us the house, so there was no mortgage. I thought I’d been paying into an account set to auto bill, but Mom had been taking it and saving it. I had over thirty thousand in one account and another hundred and fifty thousand in another. She had multiple life insurance policies that I didn’t know about, on top of stocks and bonds and… Jesus Christ. I had more than enough to set myself up for life.
Mom had set me up for life.
I’d been camming to make ends meet, and she’d been hoarding money away like a squirrel. The whole thing infuriated me, and there was no one to be angry with but myself.
A knock at my door caused me to look up.
When I went to the entry, I recognized Ru through the peephole, so I put in the code for the alarm, swinging the entry open so she could step inside. I shut it, turned the deadbolt, and put my arms around her when she hugged me.
“Hey.” She gave me a warm smile. “I know I’m early.”
We had plans to do lunch in about an hour, but I didn’t mind her company, so I waved her into the dining room. We had a lot to talk about.
“Please. No worries.” I put the documents back into a pile and sat it at the other end of the table. “How are you?”
She shrugged. “Okay. How are you?”
I sighed. “I’ve been better.”
“No doubt.” She glanced at where my mother’s hospital bed used to be and back to me. “You wanna talk about it?”
“God no.” I headed to the kitchen, pulling out the things I’d planned to make for lunch. Sandwiches. Chips. Finger foods. “What’d you bring me?”
She held up the binders and sat them on the table. “My complete business plan, including rebranding, expansion, and—”
“Expansion?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Yeah,” she said. “You could produce. You’ve got the setup.” She gestured to my whole house. “You could get at least… three or four other cam girls in here. Maybe a few couples.”
I laughed. “Wait… what? Who the hell is going to do that?”
“I would.” She shrugged. “If I didn’t have to show my face.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it beats slinging beers to assholes at the strip club.” Ru put her hands in her back pockets. “I’m just saying. You’re not thinking big enough.” She got this dreamy, wistful look in her eye. “When I hear Aurora Dawn, I picture beautiful biker babes owning their own sexualities and making their own money. I see a place for strong, powerful women to work for someone who won’t take advantage of them.” Then she settled those blue eyes on me again. “You give them the platform. They give you a cut. It’s a good business model.”
She held the binder out for me to take.
“Check it out. Let me know what you think.”
I flipped through the first few pages. “You don’t think this is weird, do you?” I cleared my throat, shifting anxiously on my feet. “Now that we’re sisters.”
She shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. “I could be mad at you, I guess. I could resent you. Maybe you could resent me. But where does that lead us?”
I liked Ru. A lot. She had an old soul for such a young age.
“I’d rather get to know you. I always wanted a sister.”
I smiled. “Yeah, me too.”
“Then it’s settled. You’ll be my sister, I’ll be yours, and that’s it.” She pushed upright when I held out her plate, taking it into the dining room. “I’ll find us a different editor. Someone I trust. Nowhere near as good as me, of course. But almost as good.”
Which made me laugh. The conversation flowed easily between us, and I appreciated having her there. We had a lot in common despite not having grown up together, and when she laughed, I heard echoes of my own in the pattern.
We’d just gotten to the point of cleaning up when a loud pop echoed from the woods behind the house. I launched out of my seat.
“Was that a gunshot?” I went for the nine Jericho had stashed next to the fridge, switching off the safety and checking it was loaded the way he’d shown me. Ru, likewise, had drawn a pistol from her purse, holding it out in front of her.
Trojan burst through my front door, and I nearly shot him in the head, seeing the SR cut at the last second and lowering my gun.
“It’s him.” He nodded toward the back of the house, hustling us to go first.
“Fuck!” Ru scrambled around the table, grabbing my arm to lead me along with her.
As soon as she opened the back door, we froze.
Standing on the step with a rifle in his hands and a smirk on his face was a taller, older version of my mother. Darker eyes. Grayer hair. But undoubtedly related to her.
Benito.
“Greetings,” he said. God, he looked the part. He had on an expensive suit with shiny black loafers, his hair slicked back, and a bodyguard on either side of him.
I held up my gun to shoot him, but one of his henchmen aimed at Trojan and fired. I ducked, my entire world going dark with the deafening shot. My eardrums burst. Gunpowder burned my cheeks and my shoulders. Something warm and sticky hit my back.
I had to run. I had to get out of here, but my feet wouldn’t respond to my brain. Move, it shouted. Move! Go! But all I did was pick at the slime in my hair, widening my eyes when my fingers came back bloody.
Trojan!
No!
There was no time. Ru yanked me to my feet, and I took two steps before strong arms wrapped around my torso like a vice grip and a hood blackened the world.
I kicked, my heart pounding blood to all my extremities. I thrashed my arms. I scratched and clawed, making it as difficult as possible for them to take me.
Ru’s scream cut through my terror.
“Stop it. Leave her alone!” I squirmed harder. “It’s me you want. Let her go!”
“If I only wanted you, Alba,” Benito snarled, “I would only take you.”
Horror coated my veins. He wanted both of Aris’s children, and he’d killed four Roses to do it. My heart broke for Trojan, who was surely dead based on the amount of blood I’d seen. I refocused on the present, struggling and yanking at my blindfold.
Then cold, bony hands gripped my upper arm.
“Listen to me, you little Rose bitch. If you don’t stop fighting, I’m gonna bend your sister over and shoot her head off in front of you. You want that?”
I sobbed and sagged into his hold, giving into his threat.
“That’s what you think, motherfuc—” Ru started to say, but then a grunt and a muffled son of a bitch told me they’d hit her to shut her up.
“Put them in the truck,” Benito said.
The guys who had ahold of me weren’t gentle. They lifted me into the back of a vehicle, and I banged my shins on the metal bummer, making me hiss as I tumbled forward. My hands were tied behind my back, so I caught my fall with my face. My nose busted, and splintering fire ricocheted through my skull and down my spine. I felt it in my toes.
“Goddamn it!” I rolled over and sucked back blood, spitting it out into the mask. “I broke my nose.”
“Shit, are you okay?” Ru said.
“Shut the fuck up!” someone shouted from the front.
The truck started, and we jerked backward.
Oh, God.
We were being taken, actually fucking taken. We were so fucking screwed.
My sister moved next to me, shifting her weight so we were shoulder to shoulder. My face throbbed and warm, sticky blood dribbled down over my mouth and chin, onto my chest. A lot of it. I tasted it in my mouth and my throat and stomach, nearly making me gag.
“Listen,” Ru whispered, so low I could barely hear her. “Whatever they do. Whatever they say. Don’t tell them anything, you understand? I’m not going to talk to save you. Don’t do it for me.”
That only amped up my panic. This was going to be terrible.
“The Roses will come for us.”
“What if they don’t know where to look? What if—”
“There’s no way our father will let that happen. There’s no way KC would let that happen.”
I wanted to believe her. I had to believe her. Because if I didn’t, I’d sink into a blind hole of hopelessness. That helped no one.
But it was only a few seconds later I realized my mistake, my one fatal error.
I’d never reset the alarm after Ru arrived.
No one even knew we were in trouble.