Page 179 of Crave
A wave of guilt hit me.
It tore through me like shrapnel. Images I didn’t want—Angelica’s face, the look in Gabe’s eyes, blood, the sound of the call—ripped through my skull.
But guilt wasn’t going to get me what I needed.
No.
Rage was.
And we were going to bury them for it.
“Get in the car,” I snapped.
Jude didn’t speak. He moved. Theo was already behind the wheel, the engine roaring to life before the doors even shut.
I barely got the door closed before he peeled out—tires screaming, gravel spraying behind us like gunfire.
The warehouse blurred in the rearview.
So did the blood.
Jude loaded another clip into his gun with steady hands, his jaw tight. “We track them to the safehouse, we hit hard. No questions. No survivors.”
“They went after them, didn’t they?” Theo growled, eyes locked on the road. “They laid a fucking trap, Silas and we?—”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do, Sil? What. Are we…going to do?” His voice cracked as he turned to me, and he was that desperate, pleading kid all over again. The one I fought and the one I protected.
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
Because if I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure what would come out.
The headlights cut through the dark, carving a path toward the safehouse. My heart beat in time with the engine—hard, fast, too loud.
Every mile between us and them felt like an insult.
I wanted to be there already. I wanted to pull them from the walls. I wanted to make them bleed.
Theo’s knuckles were white on the wheel. “What if we’re too late?”
“We’re not.”
“But if we are?—”
“We’re not,” I snapped.
The silence that followed was sharp. Heavy.
Jude looked back at me. “And if they hurt her?”
I looked out the window. My reflection stared back. Hollow. Vicious.
“Then we burn the world down.”
We didn’t slow when we reached the perimeter.
