Page 21 of Mafie Queen

We lean into the freezing mountain as we walk down a narrow ledge.The stone is even colder than the wind whipping around us, causing me to have to yell for her to hear me.

“Fear is what creates healthy boundaries,” I retort, then wince at the thought of Damien. I must flinch more than I realized because Lizz eyes me on the cliff’s edge.

“You good?”

I shake my hands out to get my head back in the game. A gust of wind blows through, and Lizz holds her arm out to help steady me. We wait for the flurry to pass, then ease off onto a ledge with five bolts set into the stone.

Lizz hands me a pair of belaying gloves and a harness before she gets to work setting herself up. I fasten myself in while trying not to have a mental breakdown over the thirteen thousand feet of elevation that is this mountain.

Snow crunches under my boots while some rolls off the side of the cliff. I have to stop looking down for just a second to gain my composure.

He couldn’t have locked me up in one of our facilities in Norway. No. It had to be the fucking cold as hell, high as the clouds, Swiss mountains.

Lizz ties us off to the bolt that must have been recently set, and I point to the others. She nods to them. “For Cil and Juvie.”

“Juvie’s here?” The fifteen-year-old boy my uncle brought to the compound three years back always made me smile. He was a goof and his mouth never stopped running. It was as adorable as it was annoying. He was one of the good ones.

“He came just for you. Said if anyone was going to make sure all the doors stayed locked until you were out, it was going to be him.”

A smile crosses my lips, feeling foreign, but somehow so needed. As we begin our descent, my hands start to shake violently. I’m lowering myself much slower than Lizz because I don’t have a death wish, but I feel like I’m going way too slow. Black starts to cloud my vision.

Shit, shit, shit. This would happen as I’m halfway down the side of a fucking mountain.

I reach my trembling fingers into my coat, searching for a syringe while keeping my other hand on the rope so I don’t plummet to my death. Taking a deep breath, I tell myself to focus.This is you escaping. You can do this. You’re Evie fucking James.

The new resolve helps me to steady my hand as I pull a vial free and yank off the cap with my teeth. Luckily, adrenaline is an intramuscular injection, so I don’t have to find a vein while freezing my ladyballs off and dangling on the side of a mountain. Before I lose my nerve, I quickly plunge the needle into myleg, administering the medication I need to prevent me from tumbling down this cliff.

I inhale a deep breath and toss the vial into the abyss. It works almost instantly, my vision clearing enough for me to see I was only about twenty feet from the pitch.Cool.

I look down at Lizz’s beaming face. “You coming or what?”

Laughing, I kick a bit of snow off the rocks so it falls directly on her head.

“You bitch,” she yells as I descend the last few feet. “I came to rescue you and this is the thanks I get?”

She fluffs out her tight curls but grins at me the whole time. I unhook myself from the rope and throw my arms around her. It’s funny how her body tenses, but after a beat, she reciprocates my embrace.

“We missed you, girl,” she says softly into my hair, and I pull her a little tighter.

“I want him to die.”

We pull back and she nods. “Luckily, someone is in charge of blowing up the facility the moment you’re in the helicopter.”

“How did you guys even get the manpower for this?”

She laughs, guiding me forward as we travel across another narrow pass. “Girl, do you have any idea how many people want to help you get revenge on that man?”

My brows pinch, and I shake my head, not realizing more than just my found family hated my uncle.

“Well, let’s just say you’ve got a whole army at your back now.”

Before I can question what the hell that even means, because Cil said it too, I round the bend and a set of familiar green eyes come into view. Without thinking, I run straight towards him, launching myself into his arms. His body envelops me, and his warmth settles an ache deep in my bones as he squeezes back.

“Fuck, E,” Havoc breathes, a choked sob nearly coming from him as he holds me close. “Don’t ever pull some shit like that ever again.”

I cling to him, finally believing that all of this is real. His familiar scent floods my nose, and I let out a pained noise as my body nearly goes limp in his arms.

He’s here. He came for me.

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