Page 173 of Crave
But I knew better.
I stepped closer to him, my boots crunching over gravel. The warehouse was long gone. The road behind us was empty. The isolation wasn’t safety—it was separation.
And then I heard it.
The low purr of a high-end engine. Smooth. Expensive. Deadly.
Gabe turned toward it as it crested the rise—sleek, black, windows tinted like obsidian. It didn’t belong here.
It didn’t belong anywhere near us.
“That’s not one of ours,” I whispered.
The car slowed. Stopped.
The rear door opened.
And the world dropped out from under me.
Shadows poured from the vehicle like smoke. Two men stepped out—faces obscured, movements precise. Not Cartel. Not at all. These men didn’t swagger. They didn’t shout.
They owned the silence.
Gabe stepped in front of me. His voice wasn’t loud—but it didn’t need to be.
“Angel…baby. Run.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t a plea.
It was an order. A final act.
There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard before. Steel. Rage. The quiet heartbreak of a boy who’d grown up too fast—and knew this might be the last thing he ever did.
I froze.
For a split second—less than a breath—I couldn’t move.
Not because I didn’t want to.
But because this was the moment. The line between before and after. Between being the girl in the shadows… and the one they were hunting in the light.
The terror hadn’t reached my bones yet. The mind control hadn’t sparked.
I just stood there.
Staring at the brother I had only just begun to understand—and knew, deep in some shattered part of my soul, that he was about to be taken from me.
That second?—
That single, agonizing second—was the last moment I was just me.
And then survival kicked in.
The heartbeat of instinct. The ripple of fight.
I turned and—lunged.
I got five steps before something sharp exploded at the base of my skull.
