Page 15 of Claimed By the Rockstars: Part One
He's three rows over. Then two. I can't see him in the shadows, but I can track him by the sound of his breathing. Harsh. Controlled. His hand must still be pressed to his face because his growled words come out slightly muffled.
"This is war, Bells. You tell a single soul about my face and I'll destroy you. I'll release everything. Your career, your life—everythingburns. If I go down, you're going with me. Straight to fucking hell."
The words hang in the air long after he slips out of the room, long after his scent and footsteps fade away.
He knows I'm a girl. Maybe not an omega, but a girl. And he hates my guts. There would be no reason for him to keep that discovery to himself.
But I know what he's hiding, too.
And now we're both holding loaded guns to each other's heads.
Chapter
Six
REX
My hands won't stop fucking shaking.
The maintenance room door slams behind me and I fumble with the lock, fingers slipping on the metal like I've never used hands before. The strap dangles from my mask, severed clean where her blade caught it, and the whole thing threatens to slide off my face with every movement.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
How much did she see?
The question pounds through my skull like Phoenix's drums, relentless and deafening. I press my back against the door and slide down until I'm sitting on the filthy concrete floor, one hand still pressed to the ruined side of my face while the other tries to assess the damage to the mask.
The leather strap is fucked. Completely severed about an inch from where it attaches to the mask itself.
I dig through my pockets with trembling fingers, looking for something, anything to fix this. Safety pins, duct tape, a fucking miracle—I'll take whatever I can get.
My fingers close around something unfamiliar. Cold. Smooth.
Her fucking knife.
I yank it out like it's burning me. The bone handle gleams under the flickering bulb, that elegant scripted 'B' carved deep into the surface. Custom work. Expensive. Personal. The kind of thing someone doesn't just replace.
The blade springs open at my touch—perfectly balanced, sharp enough to slice through leather like butter. Like it sliced through my mask strap. This little piece of metal ruined everything, and now it's mine.
I should throw it away. Flush it down the toilet. Grind it under my boot until there's nothing left but bone dust and twisted metal.
Instead, I'm running my thumb over that carved 'B', feeling the grooves worn smooth by her fingers. How many times has she traced this same pattern? How many years has she carried this?
Fuck. Now I have something of hers. Something she'll want back. Something that proves our encounter was real, that she was pressed against me with this blade between us, that she saw?—
My breathing comes in short, sharp gasps that echo off the concrete walls. The room smells like industrial cleaner and decades of dust, and there's a single flickering bulb that makes everything look like a horror movie. Which fits, considering I'm the fucking monster in this scenario.
She saw.
Bells saw my face.
The irony isn't lost on me that I'm having a panic attack about someone seeing what's under my mask while she's been wearing one this whole time too.
But there's a difference. Shechoseher mask. Mine was forced on me by twisted metal and fire and over a decade of looking like something that crawled out of hell.
My phone buzzes. Phoenix.
Where the fuck are you? We're on in twenty.
