Page 147 of Unholy Bonds

“Shut the fuck up, Red. I’m not going anywhere without you.” His voice was fierce as he gripped my waist and slammed his lips to mine before pulling away. “Get this inside your pretty fucked up head. I’m here to stay.”

Fuck this man. He made everything so much harder.

All my life, I’d known that someday my time would run out. I didn’t fear it, but now… as I was looking into Ryden’s determined glare, something else pierced the mask of indifference I had held all my life.

“I want to go home, Ryden.”

“Then we will go home, Yara.” Ryden got into the driver’s seat and drove in the opposite direction from where we had come.

“I have never been scared in my life. Angry, sad, furious, murderous. Never scared.” But I was now. It felt strange, the feeling, like someone else’s skin on mine.

The sedan rushed through rocky trails, moving further and further away from the sound of the siren until it was a background noise. Unwanted.

“If the shit hits the fan, I’ll take it all for you.”

“No, you won’t. He’s my kill. I’ll find a way. They wouldn’t trace the bullets to us. It’s all about stories. I just have to find a good one.”

I’d find a way once I could think clearer without the haze surrounding me. This wasn’t my first stint.

“You’re good at that.” His eyes turned dark for a second as he swerved around a tree, hitting hard on the brake. I knew what he was thinking right now. Victor. “Making up stories.”

“That’s what I do.” I shrugged.

It was strange, the cold look in his eyes, even when he had just promised to take the fall for me. “The ones I killed… they deserved it just as much as the ones you killed, Ryden.”

“I know,” he replied grudgingly. “I know, Red. But if Irene did something…”

“I’d hate anyone who hurt her,” I said with a sigh. “What are we going to do about it?”

“We’ll find a way.”

“If you say so, Ryden.”

“I fucking said so. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Yara.”

55

REASONABLE DOUBT

YARA

Ryden was staring. He kept staring even as he expertly guided the car out of the dense trees and into the highway. Silence filled the car, and I was usually okay with silence, but not this time. I knew I should say something after the kind of day we had—he watched me kill a man and admitted he was turned on by that—but it was like my mouth and mind were disconnected. Broken. There just weren’t enough words left in me for that.

“We have to get rid of the sedan,” Ryden said after a few minutes of silence.

“I know,” I said. I already knew I had to give it up, but this car had been my partner-in-crime for so long, and it was the last piece of good thing from my old life.

“It was my grandfather’s,” I said with a sigh. “What should we do?”

“There’s a junkyard on the way to Enzo’s funeral home. We need to lean the evidence and then destroy it.”

I nodded. It made sense. We couldn’t keep it any longer. If the cops found my other car, they’d trace it back to me. I couldn’t risk them finding the sedan in my possession.

“Are we going to the funeral home now?”

Ryden nodded as he swerved the car around and changed directions. “We should.”

My stomach shifted uneasily. Even the thought of the cops didn’t make me that nervous, but the thought of seeing Irene again… God, what happened to us?

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