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“What do you think I’m here for, baby?”

I tremble as he slowly rises to his full height, hefting the sledgehammer in his hands and turning toward Caleb.

Then my hand snaps out and grips his wrist tightly, my fingers tightening around his bloodied sleeve. I look down at Caleb. Then back at my husband. Then I feel the thing inside me snarl.

“Make it last.”

38

BELLA

“Hey, pass me that half-inch socket?”

My dad is half-swallowed by the engine bay of the black '69 Mustang Boss 429 as his voice echoes from under the hood. I dig through the tool bag and slap the wrench he’s asking for into his outstretched hand.

“Thanks, Bells.”

This honestly might be one of my favorite places in the world. Well, anywhere that I can hang out with my dad while he tinkers with cars is one of my favorite places. But the huge mechanics garage here at Twin Pines Airfield is extra sweet.

Dad bought the abandoned twin-runway airstrip about an hour north of the city when I was two, and I’ve been coming here with him ever since.

Some rich people buy vineyards or vacation homes. Hades Drakos bought several hundred acres of crumbling asphalt and a rapidly encroaching forest so he could race cars, work on engines, and blow shit up without freaking out the neighbors back in Brooklyn.

I grin as I hear him whistling under the hood of the truly sexy John Wick Mustang, then turn to let my gaze slide over the rest of the garage space built into an old airplane hangar. Dad’s a huge car guy and engine junkie, so he kitted the place out with six vehicle bays, hydraulic lifts, and a wall of tools arranged more neatly that literally anything else he owns.

There’s also evidence of his other…hobbies. The chain-link cage stacked with crates of fireworks and even more regulated explosives. The walk-in safe that holds enough firepower to arm a small revolution. A taxidermy boar with his face painted with the David Bowie lightning bolt that we as a family dubbed “Piggy Stardust” when I was little. A wall of shelves with a gazillion books.

Today, though, we're doing cars.

“So…” Dad says from under the hood. “How's the fucking husband?”

My face heats. Electric warmth swells in my chest before I shove it right back down where it came from.

“Fine." I shrug. “He’s…you know…fine.”

Really fucking fine.

Like a snack.

Dad pulls his head out of the engine and gives me a long look. "Obviously sleeping on the couch, I assume?”

It's genuinely ridiculous how good my father looks for his age. I mean, yeah, dad was notoriously hunky when he was a young guy. Which, honestly, is the probably the only reason a troublemaker like him landed a smoke show like Mom.

But even in his late forties now, Hades Drakos is aging better than fine wine. He's kinda got this whole James Dean thing going on, if James Dean had lived long enough to get some silver at the temples. He’s ridiculously handsome, and in crazy good shape: trim, lean, and even more muscled and strong than he was when he was a young guy.

Obviously, this has been a huge net positive for my mom. But there’ve been…downsides, too

For instance, in high school, a group of four very popular, extremely catty “mean girls” suddenly wanted to be my best friends in the whole world.

And I let them, because I was planning to ruin their lives for sport and amusement for being such cunts to everyone all the time.

But it turned out, they weren't there for me. They were there for Hades. And the few times I allowed them to come over to our house—to study their weaknesses, obviously—always resulted in super uncomfortable instances of them trying to flirt with my wildly uninterested father.

Eventually, it came to a breaking point when the ringleader snuck upstairs and left a note with her Snapchat under his pillow, along with a pair of her panties.

When he found them, while those girls were still over, Dad responded by coming downstairs, grabbing my mom in front of everyone, and kissing the living fuck out of her against the wall for like five solid minutes before turning to the now mortified girl and asking her if she could refrain from leaving her dirty laundry in his bedroom.

Needless to say, I stopped hanging out with those bitches. Then I spread a bunch of rumors that the four of them were working as sugar babies for old men and ruined their senior year of high school.