Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
She chooses sacrifice over survival.
He will damn himself to bring her back.
Daniela Agudelo has spent her life paying for the sins of men who believed they owned her. This time, the choice is hers, and it’s the most dangerous one yet. To save an innocent child she loves, Daniela offers the one thing she swore no one would ever take from her again.
Hawk Bellamy refuses to let her disappear.
As Daniela vanishes into the jaws of her past, Hawk risks his fortune, his freedom, and the carefully controlled life he’s built to find her. Every secret he uncovers drags him deeper into a truth he’s spent his life denying—his father’s legacy isn’t clean, and the darkness threatening Daniela may be rooted in his own blood.
Daniela already knows what she’s willing to sacrifice. Now Hawk must choose what he’s willing to destroy to save her
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
HAWK
Eagle nods once, heavy, as the sedative crawls up his veins. “Outside your door,” he whispers. “The night I…went down.” His lashes flutter. “Somebody didn’t want me telling you what I found out about Dad…”
Everything inside me goes still. “What about Dad?”
“Dad and…” His tongue trips. “D—D—D…” The syllables stumble, break apart. His eyes roll, slow as tide. He tries again. “D—”
The last consonant dies on his lips. His mouth softens. The sedative wins.
I turn to the nurse. “Is he okay?”
The nurse is already smoothing the line, already changing the monitor range. “He’s fine,” she says. “He needs sleep. His body’s been through a lot. He’ll likely be out the rest of the night.” She lifts her gaze to mine. “You can come back in the morning.”
“Yeah,” I say, though morning feels a lifetime away. “I’ll do that.”
Falcon watches me from the door.
“I’ve got something to attend to,” I tell him.
“Reyes.”
I nod.
The hallway feels too bright.
I take the elevator down, grab my car from the valet.
The night outside feels wrong, air thick and wet. I drive with my knuckles raw from earlier, the bandage already spotted through.
The drive is slow and dark, but I finally make it.
The old barn crouches on the edge of our land. No lights. No sounds but crickets.
I kill the engine and listen. Nothing. Good. I want quiet.
Gravel crunches under my boots. The barn door gives with a long, complaining groan.
My eyes adjust quickly.
The chair.
My skin crawls with tiny invisible feet.
What the fuck?
The chair waits where I left it.
Empty.
For a second my brain refuses to believe what my eyes are seeing. The shape is wrong. That’s all. Reyes is slumped. Head down. I step closer.
The rope is cut. The rag I used to gag him in a heap on the ground.
I go cold and hot at once.
“Reyes,” I say into the dark.
Silence answers.
I cross to the stool where I left the plate. The fork sits on top and the plate is licked clean. He ate every bite.
Something glints at the base of the post. I crouch. A sliver of metal.
Fuck. It’s half a hacksaw blade. Where the hell did he get that?
I follow the scrape marks to the side door. Outside, weeds bend in two lines to the service path. Not footsteps. Knees. He crawled, or someone dragged him. The tracks vanish in the gravel.
My skin prickles.
I scan the rafters. The beams.
Nothing.
Motherfucker.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. No bars. I step toward the big doors. One bar. Then none.
He was tied. He was gagged. He was mine. And now he’s air.
Eagle’s voice punches through my head, slurred and stubborn. Outside your door. Didn’t want me telling you what I found about Dad… D-D-D…
Dad and what. Dad and who. Dad and D.
The barn tilts.
If Reyes is out, he’s either running or hunting. Maybe both. If he’s running, he goes home, grabs the diary, burns the pictures, resets the board before I can move. If he’s hunting—
No.
I replay every knot I tied. Every check. Every lock. There’s a gap I didn’t see. There has to be.
I walk the perimeter again, slow this time, eyes on small things. I inhale.
Something hits me.
Motor oil?
No. Almost like soap, but stronger.
Fuck.
Cheap aftershave.
The same ghost Eagle muttered about through meds. Aftershave in a garage somewhere. A smell that doesn’t belong to my barn or to Reyes.
He didn’t get out alone.
My mouth goes dry.
My phone vibrates. I yank it out. One bar now.
A new text from a number I don’t recognize.
It’s a photo. Grainy. It’s the barn. Two figures. One slumped, one upright. A third shape in the foreground—just the hint of a shoulder. Whoever took it is almost in the frame.
Under it is a message.
Nice knots, Bellamy. Try harder.
My pulse goes flat. I lift my head into the dark and grin without humor.
“You want to play?” I say to the ghost of cheap aftershave riding the night air. “Okay.”
A second buzz. Another photo pops up. Close-up this time. Reyes’s wrist, chafed and bleeding, hand giving the camera a lazy thumbs-up. On his ring finger, a smear of something darker than dirt.
And then a third—a shot of a safe keypad. Not mine. Not his. Looks like a stock image. Just numbers lit in cold blue. The code fields blank. The caption under it:
Tick-tock.
The screen goes black.
I stand in the doorway of the barn, fists opening and closing, knuckles burning under old blood and new.
Eagle’s last stuttered syllable scrapes through me again. D—D—D—
Dad and who?
Reyes is gone.
Then I see them.
More texts.
From Daniela, sent hours ago.
Belinda is missing. DHS revoked her temporary protected status.
This quickly? What the fuck?
My breath catches in my throat.
I stopped being the good son. I embraced chaos, did what felt right in the moment.
Pandora’s box has been opened, and that same chaos has now cursed everything I touch.