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Cade looked ready to rip his hair out—or rip my eyes out. Regret gnawed at me. Not for hurting Tom, no. I’d do that again in a heartbeat. But I’d gone rogue without discussing it with the group and hadn’t thought about the consequences.

He wasn’t wrong about my “savior complex”, as he put it. He’d never understood my need to bring home every broken thing and try to fix it. I had an affinity for rescuing small creatures, mending them, helping them heal. Of the two of us, he’d always been the hard-hearted one. I’d always felt things more deeply, was more sensitive and able to reach my feelings on a level he struggled with. He was a lot like Margot in that he used his anger to express himself most of the time.

But this…

This was unprecedented.

Maybe I’d become a liability. Maybe I was a direct threat to this whole operation now. “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “But you know she needs our protection now. Thorne will be pissed and he’ll be looking for her. If he finds her⁠—”

“I get that. I do. And it’s not like we didn’t talk about it. But that’s why we had a fucking plan. We’d tell her to get the fuck out of dodge, not keep her like a pet⁠—”

A sound of frustration erupted from me. “What was I supposed to do! He’s the one who hurt her! We didn’t plan for that, and he wasn’t supposed to fucking be there in the first place!” I looked down at Margot, trying to get my shit together. Cade and I didn’t need to be arguing right now. “Look, I know things went sideways, but Tom wasn’t supposed to be there. So just…”

Let me have her.

Cade turned to Vincent, who was quietly watching us bicker with a neutral expression. He was like an android sometimes. I was kind of convinced he was a sociopath, but there were rare times when he showed a depth of emotion that negated that belief.

“Please tell me there’s no one else at the next one,” Cade said.

Vincent raised a brow. “There’s no one else at the next one.”

Cade wiped his hands down his face and inhaled. “Fucking thank you.”

He strode from the room, and as much as I knew he wanted to, he didn’t slam the door. We couldn’t be bringing any unwanted attention on us. After the robbery, we’d ditched the van for an SUV and driven two hours away, closer to the next hit.

We’d driven out to a motel in the middle of nowhere, holing up for a few days to let things cool down back in Marion and gearing up for Thorne’s store here in Mansfield. After that, Canton was the final target before we retreated back to our home in Davenport and laid low, until we wrapped things up at Thorne’s estate in Glen Falls.

His estate was a lake-front property with a hundred acres of land. Perfectly isolated. A place where no matter how loud you screamed, no one would ever hear you—which was what he counted on.

“I’ve got another first aid kit if you need anything,” Vincent said to me. His soft voice was a jarring juxtaposition to his hard eyes. They were hollow eyes. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes comforting, depending on the day.

He turned to leave, then paused. Without looking at me, he said, “You know this could screw everything up, right?”

Yeah, I fucking knew that. But even if it did, there was no other outcome. I wasn’t going to just leave her there.

But yeah. I’d royally fucked up and might have just ruined six months of planning and waiting, among other things.

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. But I wasn’t gonna leave her there.”

Vincent nodded. “I know. You did the right thing, ultimately. But at what cost?” He left, shutting the door quietly behind him.

“Fuck,” I muttered, leaning back in the chair I’d pulled up to the bed.

The whole plan had gone to shit. I was supposed to go in there, get the money, and then tell Margot to get the fuck out of Marion immediately. The things that Thorne and his son had planned…

I couldn’t wait until the day I got to put a bullet in their heads.

But at what cost?

He was right. I’d let myself become so completely fixated on this woman that in the most crucial moments, all that we were working toward evaporated.

But I hadn’t forgotten about Jesse, about my mother, about family and duty and every moment Cade and I had spent clawing our way through the dirt, trying to hold onto something stable, something rooted, and finding nothing but each other.

I hadn’t forgotten. I could never forget. Some days it felt like I was made up of only the memories. The heartache.

There was so little left in me that all I was able to do was go through the motions.

But this hunger…