My body went stiff with fear. A solid arm wrapped around my middle to keep me in place, and the scream that crawled up my throat was silenced by a hand over my mouth.

"If you'd have met me somewhere like I asked," Alex muttered in my ear, somehow sounding as nervous as I felt, "this wouldn't have been necessary." I tried to shift my head around his grasp, but he only held me tighter against him. "Calm the fuck down. I'm just here to collect what you took from me."

The memory of that envelope I stole from his car flashed in front of me like a gigantic red flag. Mostly because I didn't have it with me at the house. Dante had it. But my brain wasn't calculating what I should do about that at the moment. All I could think about was how tight he was holding onto me as the familiar smell of tobacco invaded my senses.

Reality hit me fast and hard that Alex had broken into my house, he was upset, and I was in immediate danger.

"I'm going to remove my hand," he said, loosening his grip on me. "Don't fucking scream and don't try to run. Understand?"

I nodded as well as I could. Alex removed his hand.

Moving around to face me, his eyes skimmed over me from head to toe before moving up to the ceiling. He blew out a slow breath of air, and with him momentarily sidetracked, I looked down at the floor to where my phone had landed.

Come on, Spence.

Please be close by.

My eyes drifted back up to Alex at the same time as he glanced back down to me. The oceanic blue in his gaze, which had only ever been calm and intriguing before, was now as unsettling as a storm at sea. The unpredictability written on his face had me terrified, and my mind was finally moving with thoughts of survival.

Should I try to run? Could I run? Should I just do whatever he says and hope for the best?

For all the times I'd considered what to do in a situation like this, imagined the different scenarios of escape, it would seem I had no clue how to actually handle myself when the moment arrived. Especially when Alex reached behind his waist and came back with a gun.

I swallowed hard at the sight of it. My heart was racing so fast, I could hardly speak, but I managed to stammer out the only question on my brain. "Are...are you going to hurt me?"

His eyes flashed between me and the .45 pistol in his hand, brows shifting inward. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out right away. He seemed to be mulling over the right answer in the same way I was considering my next move. I didn't like that he had to think about it.

"Just..." He cleared his throat. Using the hand he was holding the gun with, he gestured toward one of the stools at my island counter. "Just sit down and let me figure this out."

I noted with agony that he hadn't answered my question, so I figured the best course of action was to do what he said and hope for the best.

As I sat down at the counter, I kept my eyes on Alex, observing the way he started pacing the length of my kitchen. He shook his head here and there, his steps becoming quick and sort of manic as the seconds passed between us in silence. He looked almost unhinged, and the way his weapon swung carelessly when he moved made my stomach roll.

Finally, he stopped. Turning to face me, he pointed the pistol at me and said, "Why didn't you tell me who you were?"

Any words I wanted to say were caught in my throat. Staring down the barrel of his gun rendered me unable to answer, and I froze in my seat. As often as I'd been around firearms and people who kept them on their person at all times, I'd never had one pointed right at me before.

When I stayed quiet for too long, Alex seemed to notice my discomfort and lowered his weapon. "Well?" His eyebrows lifted. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't think it would matter to you who I was," I finally answered, keeping my voice steady amid the stress radiating through my body. I powered through it and asked a question of my own next. "Why didn't you tell me who you were...Alessandro?"

"Honestly?" He laughed, and his eyes looked almost amiable again. "Because I never in a million years thought you'd end up being who you are..."

"And who is that?" I asked him, my own eyes beaming between his face and the gun still in his hand, resting like a thousand pound weight on my countertop. "Who am I to you?"

"Dante Harlow's little sister," he said. All traces of amusement fled his eyes. Just like that, he was angry again. "And Dalton Farina's twin."

Despite the name confusion, the mention of Dalton straightened my spine, and a shiver rolled through me. I was reminded, once again, that I could be face to face with my brother's killer, if the puzzle pieces of intel we had on him all fit together.

Alex sniffed through his nose and looked away like he couldn't stand the sight of me. "I have my reasons for using a different name and I guess he did, too." His eyes trailed back to me. "Wanting to protect someone like you back home, it makes sense."

My next words came out without thinking.

"Did you kill him?"

Alex didn't react at all to my question. I couldn't decide right away what that meant, but I felt a wave of relief when he went on to say, "No. I didn't kill your brother."

Tears welled behind my eyes and my chest went tight. He'd said it so casually, as if my entire world wasn't affected by that handful of words, but I was grateful either way for the answer he'd provided.

Until he spoke again and everything changed.

"My brother was the one who killed yours."

A breath caught in my breath. My mind whirled with a million things I wanted to say, but all I could muster was, "Why?"

"Well, see..." Alex gripped his gun again, lifting it from the counter as he took slow steps toward me. "If you asked him, he'd say it was because I was too much of a screwup to do it myself. And maybe that's true. I do seem to fuck up everything I try my hand at." He stopped in front of me. "But if you'd seen the look in his eyes when he pulled the trigger, I'd argue that my brother did it because he likes how it feels to take a life. The guy's kind of insane."

Bile rose in my throat, a river of acid and heartache. I felt lightheaded and dizzy and like my whole world was falling apart. "But...why?" I asked again. "What did Dalton do to deserve that?"

Alex dipped closer to me, his mouth at my ear. "He got in my fucking business, that's what he did."

I sat perfectly still as he backed away from me and started pacing again. My heart thumped in my chest as he elaborated.

"He just couldn't mind his own," he began. "Couldn't keep his head down and do the job he was there to do. No. Instead, he decided to play detective and he put all of us in danger." The storytelling tone of his voice matched perfectly with the cadence of his steps. He was enjoying it too much and it made me sick. His next question didn't help. "What do you know about Bluejay, Davina?"

"I, uhm..." I hesitated. That stupid party drug had been the center of so many conversations lately, be it work related or town gossip, I knew plenty about it. And considering a pack of it had been found in the envelope in Alex's car, I wasn't surprised he brought it up, but I was afraid to find out how it connected to Dalton's death. "Not too much. I just know it's a dangerous drug that killed some people a few years back."

Alex rolled his eyes. "It's not any more dangerous than everything else out on the streets, let's be clear about that. I don't know what kind of shit you and your brothers have been told about it, but it's perfectly safe. When used responsibly."

Tell that to Dalton's friend who almost died.

I wanted to say that out loud, but something told me Alex wasn't ready for that conversation, so I simply replied, "Okay."

All at once, his energy shifted. Again. He'd been so back and forth since the moment he grabbed me, I didn't know how to follow his cues. We didn't know each other well enough for that. I didn't know him at all. Not before, when we were going out. And certainly not now where one minute, he seemed calm and the next, his gun was pointed right at me for the second time.

"Okay?" Alex seethed. "That's all you have to say?"

Fear rattled through my bones, effectively holding me hostage as I sat there, unmoving and silent. I didn't know what he expected me to say.

"I had something in the works," he said as he drew closer, his voice low and annoyed. "Something big. I was working with a guy from your hometown, actually. We were gonna get Bluejay back on the streets. I was finally taking some initiative like my brother has been begging me to do. And what do I get for it? Your brother fucking it up and putting all of us at risk. You understand where I'm going with this, right?"

I nodded but said nothing as my mind reeled. Since we met, Alex had told so many lies, it was hard to keep everything straight in real time. But the truth was starting to come together.

"Amato can't know about any of this," he went on, his voice shaky. "If he finds out I was messing around with Bluejay, he'd kill us, me and my brother. I thought we were in the clear after we got rid of Dalton, until you took that envelope. I had to start doing some homework to figure out who the hell you were. And now, here we are."

The puzzle pieces clicked. There was a gun in my face. I heard his next question in my head before he even asked it.

"Where's the envelope, Davina?"

Fuck. There it was. The envelope.

The envelope I didn't fucking have. But I couldn't exactly tell him that, could I? Alex was unstable, waving a gun around, pointing it at me like some kind of psychopath, flitting between this weird balance of arrogance and anger. I had no idea what he might do.

My eyes flashed down to my phone again. Was Spence on the way? Things were tense with us, but I couldn't imagine a scenario where he would ignore my text. He had to be on his way. I just needed to bide my time.

"I, uhm..." I glanced past him and into the living room. "I think I left it in that stack of mail on the coffee table."

Alex followed my line of sight, nodding before he turned back to me. "Well, then. Let's go get it."

"Okay," I whispered through the ball in my throat.

When I came to my feet, Alex shifted in behind me, gripping onto my left shoulder and holding me tight like the hostage I'd become. His other hand, still holding the gun, drifted up to my neck.

As the cold metal pressed against my skin, I inhaled a sharp, fearful breath, and my body reacted with a jolt. I took a quick step forward.

But it was the wrong move. I should have stayed still.

"I said don't run!" Alex shouted, mistaking the intent of my movement. Before I could apologize and tell him that I wasn't going anywhere, he whipped his gun into the side of my head.

A searing pain shot through my skull, my vision clouding, stomach rolling as the contents of it threatened to come up from the shock. But all I could do was stand there frozen, counting the thrum in my veins. Counting every throbbing pulse in my head as a trickle of warmth ran down the side of my face. Not only could I already feel the start of a nasty bruise, he'd broken skin.

I took three deep breaths and forced my body to relax. "I'm not going to run," I finally managed to choke out, willing the tears away from my eyes. My head was killing me.

"Okay." Alex cleared his throat and took a deep breath of his own. "Okay, good...good," he stammered. "Just walk slow and don't do anything stupid."

I nodded and did exactly as he said, moving slow and steady over the threshold of the kitchen. But his reactive move had changed the trajectory of my plan in an instant.

Once we made it to the living room, I no longer felt confident in biding my time with a lie. That envelope wasn't in the giant stack of mail that sat on top of the coffee table. It was halfway across town in my brother's possession.

How long could I keep up this charade? Would he kill me as soon as he found out I didn't have it?

When Alex released me, I turned to face him, if only to offer some semblance of reassurance that I wasn't going anywhere. "I'll just..."

I gestured to the table, worried that if I moved too fast or didn't explain my every move, he'd hit me again. But as I waited for his go-ahead, the seconds inching by with tension, Alex wouldn't even look me in the eyes.

Instead, his gaze lingered on the side of my head. As though in a daze, he somehow looked scared and enthralled at the same time as he studied my injury, still dripping with blood. I didn't know what to make of that. But all at once, he snapped out of it and shook his head.

"Yeah, good. Start looking. I can't leave without that envelope and the Bluejay better be inside it."

I nodded and stooped down by the coffee table, moving the mail around with intention, despite the fact that I knew I wouldn't find what I was looking for. My only saving grace was the amount of catalogs and envelopes I'd left there over time. Being unorganized left me plenty to fish through.

"Hurry up," Alex urged as I picked up the latest issue of an outdoor magazine I'd subscribed to years ago. On the cover, someone lounged in a hammock that hung between two trees, and my chest ached with the memory of happiness long passed, missed and forgotten by circumstance. I wondered if I'd ever make it there again.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, quickly combing through the rest of the mail with shaky hands. "It must be in here somewhere."

"How do you not know where it is?" Alex retorted.

"I don't know," my answer poured out. My head was throbbing and my mind was growing more frantic with every second he spent looming over me.

Outside, I heard a car door slam shut. I held my breath as I tried to decipher where it might've come from. How close or far away.

It was too distant to be in my driveway, kind of loud for all the way across the street. Unless the person slammed it shut with a little extra ambition...

Alex exhaled a calculated breath, anger slipping into his tone. "Where else would it be, Davina?"

"I might've left it in my work bag."

"Stand up," he ordered. When I did as he said, we met face to face again. His voice was low. "You do have it, right?"

I nodded, whispering, "Yes. I have it. I just–"

Right then, my back door creaked the rest of the way open, the sound of it like a bomb going off in the silence.

Spence.

Alex's head swung in the direction of the kitchen. From where we were standing, he couldn't see the door. "Who the fuck is that?"

"A friend," I answered softly.

"Great," Alex mumbled, sounding more irritated than concerned. He grabbed my arm again and spun me toward the kitchen. This time, he put the gun at my back, the barrel of it digging into my spine. "Walk."

We'd taken two steps before the person in the kitchen finally spoke.

"Davina?"

I already knew it was him, but the sound of Spence's voice rang through me with the vibrations of sweet relief, my blood still pumping faster and faster but with a touch less fear.

He came.

"I'm here," I muttered as Alex and I rounded the corner into the kitchen.

With the lamp above my stove on and the moonlight streaming through the window over my sink, there was a hefty glow in the room, plenty to see each other by. The sight of Spence nearly made me fall over with relief, and he looked equally afflicted. But as I moved further into the kitchen and he realized I wasn't alone, all traces of relief fled his face.

"Oh, fuck." Spence's hands moved like lightning to the gun at his waist. He pointed it right at Alex. "Drop your weapon."

In the blink of an eye, Alex matched his stance, shifting his gun from my back and pointing it at Spence. "Can't do that."

I stood there and watched as they faced off. By now, Alex had fully let go of me, having shifted all of his attention and energy to Spence. I was happy to no longer have it on me, but seeing the target on Spence nearly gutted me. My heart thrashed around in my chest.

Finally, Alex spoke again. "I don't want any smoke, alright?"

"Then why did she walk in here with your gun pressed to her back?"

"Look, I don't know who the fuck you are and I really don't care. I'm just trying to collect what she stole from me. When I have that, I'm gone. It'll be like I was never here. Deal?"

Spence regarded him carefully for a moment, his eyes never leaving Alex, even as he spoke to me. "Davina, are you alright?"

"Yes," I answered, trying to keep my voice from cracking. "I'm okay."

Alex rolled his eyes. "Are we good here or not?"

Spence adjusted his weapon a bit higher, aiming it right at Alex's head. "Sure."

"Wonderful," Alex said with a smile that made my stomach curl.

His whole demeanor had gone casual for the moment as he tried to convince Spencer that there was no cause for upset or harm, but I could see right through it. The gash on my head ensured I would always remember he'd been here, and his erratic behavior made it hard to believe he'd just leave, simple as that.

The guy had been acting strange and unpredictable since the moment I found him in my house, and in some ways, that made him more dangerous than your average criminal. It was clear he hadn't come here with a fully laid out plan, he'd already shown himself capable of hurting me, and I had no idea what else he would do when he found out I didn't actually have what he wanted.

"Hurry up." Alex said to me, snapping me back to the moment and the mission I'd been on. He tipped his chin in my direction. "Where is it?"

I swallowed hard. "In my bag, I think."

"Where's your bag?"

"Hanging on that chair." I gestured to the small dining table in the corner, even though he couldn't see it. He was looking at Spence again, his grip tight on his gun.

"Bring it over here. Stay where I can see you."

I did as he said, grabbing my work bag and parking myself on the other side of the island, across from both of them in equal measure. With Alex to my left and Spence on the right, we were a triangle of anxiety and firearms.

"What's she supposed to be looking for?" Spence asked. I could only admire how steady he spoke, the words flowing so easily, like he didn't have a gun pointed at someone's head. Or have one pointed at his...

"None of your fucking business," Alex spat.

He turned to watch me as I started rummaging through my work bag. My work bag that barely had anything to rummage through. I only brought it along to carry my lunch and an extra water bottle, but I guess I was doing a good enough job of faking it.

With Alex's attention on me, I noticed in my peripheral that Spence had turned to look at me as well, his gun holding steady on his target. It was the first time he was getting a good look at me, and in the quiet around us, I could hear him exhale a slow breath, felt his eyes on the side of my face like a laser.

"You do that to her face?" he asked Alex a moment later.

"It was an accident." Alex turned to him, the casual facade slipping away as irritation filled his voice. "She's fine."

"Is that true?" Spence's eyes were back on Alex now, but his words were for me, his voice low and heavy with concern.

Before I could answer, Alex fired off again.

"Shut the fuck up!" he screamed. Turning to Spence, his posture went tight and he took a step toward him. "You know what, I take it back. Maybe I do need to know who you are."

"I'm fine," I quickly interjected, desperate to keep things calm between them, especially since I was running out of time. I could only search the bag so long. "It looks worse than it is."

That was a lie. My head was still throbbing in pain, but the tension in the room did help me to block some of it out, and I was pretty sure the bleeding had at least stopped. When I spoke, my skin felt tight where it had begun to dry up along my temple and cheek.

"See? She's fine." Alex laughed but it didn't sound right.

In the next second, the energy shifted again, and his .45 was back in my face, making me gasp. My heart dropped into my stomach and my breaths were coming in too fast.

"And she'll be a lot better when she finds my fucking envelope." Lowering the gun, he waved it down at my bag. "Now keep looking."

Relieved that his gun was no longer pointed at me, my shoulders dropped, tears welling in my eyes again. Without thinking, I shifted my gaze over to Spence.

In the flash of time it took for that to happen, he'd taken two steps toward Alex, and he looked ready to shoot. But Alex didn't even notice. His full attention was still on me, just waiting for my hands to produce that fucking envelope.

Spence's brows dipped together. He mouthed, "Is it here?"

The fear in my eyes was answer enough.

"Don't look at him," Alex seethed, lifting the gun again. "Where the fuck is my envelope, Davina?"

"Lower your weapon," Spence demanded. His voice was all business, gruff and stern enough to make Alex drop his arm down. "You point it at her again, I'll fucking shoot you."

Alex smirked as he glanced at Spence over his shoulder. "Is that supposed to be a threat?"

"It's a promise," Spence replied.

Laughing, Alex waved his gun in the air. "I'll shoot both of you if she doesn't find that envelope! Where is it?"

My heart lurched in my chest. "I-I don't..."

When I couldn't finish, Alex took a step around the island, his nostrils flared with anger. "You don't even have it anymore, do you?"

I stood there frozen.

"Did you give it to your brother, you lying fucking bitch?!" he screamed in my face. "I'm a dead man if he gets his hands on it!"

"I'm sorry," I finally muttered. With a slow step back, I tried to expand the distance between us, but Alex only closed it as he continued to step closer.

"You're not sorry yet." He lifted his gun. It was right in my face again.

And then a shot rang out.