The phone on the table buzzes, drawing my client's eyes down to the wood and instilling a frown upon his face.

"Continue," I say.

"I'll need—" he cuts off when it vibrates again. Not even a second after, my ringer starts.

I sigh, putting up my hand as an indication that we're at a pause. My men know not to contact me when I'm involved with business so it must be important, but the action annoys me nonetheless.

I ignore the annoyed huff from the man in front of me and press the device to my ear. "What?"

"Have you seen the news?" Theo's voice is sharper than I've ever heard it.

"I'm in a fucking meeting," I say. "Of course I haven't watched the news, Theodore. Tell me what's wrong."

"I don't know for sure, but there was an incident at Rosalie's on East Main. A kid had a Glock and a body was found on the same block." He pauses and my heart drops to my stomach. "Oliver hasn't been answering my calls, Sin."

I know how much Calli loves to go out when I'm away. There's no way it's a fluke that the kid had a gun in the same neighborhood as my current living quarters—the angel bloods love training their killers early. There's no doubt that they've been waiting for a perfect time to strike.

I curse, shooting out of my chair. "Have you checked the penthouse?"

"On my way now," he says.

I hang up and shove the phone into my pocket, taking quick strides to the door. There are no other words necessary. He knows that I'll meet him there.

"Sir?" the man behind me asks.

I pause my quick pace and turn my head to find where he sits stiffly at the end of the table, suddenly remembering his presence. "Get out."

His brows raise. "I thought we had a—"

"Get the fuck out," I say, turning toward the door. I don't give a shit if he follows me out or not. The only thought that rages through my head is ensuring the safety of my woman.

...

Theo gets there before I do. He leaves the front door ajar and I push it open so roughly that it crashes into the wall with a concerning bang.

He's standing by the large window, hands tucked into his pockets as he leans against the glass. The stance looks like it should be casual but the hunch of his shoulders and the tenseness of his torso tell me something else entirely.

He looks at me, his face drawn with weariness as he shakes his head.

I've never cared enough about anyone to experience such a staggering sense of loss. Even with my brother's keen sense of recklessness, it was always different. I expected to lose him.

But her? Fuck, even knowing that her blood would be searching for her, looking to get me where it hurts the most and kill the traitor of their line—it hits me so hard that it feels like I can't breathe. Somehow I can't seem to wrap my head around what I knew would be inevitable.

Hot rage spills through my chest, burning my limbs until I find the closest thing to me—the counter, topped with a vase of sunflowers and other cutesy shit Calli's filled my space with—and sweep my arm across it, causing glass to shatter over the tile floor.

They want blood. Fine. I'll fucking give them blood. I'll string them up like animals for slaughter and scrape each individual organ from their bodies while they writhe beneath my hands. I'll make it slow. Take them one by one, letting each miserable fucking piece of shit watch their brethren slowly fizzle out in front of them.

"Sin," Theo says quietly, "I know you're upset, but we can still get her back. You just need a cool head—"

He closes his mouth as I stride forward and seize him by the throat, pushing my face close to his so he can see the crazed light in my eyes. "Stop. Fucking. Talking." A cool head? He wants me to be fucking calm?

He narrows his eyes. "We need a plan."

A harsh laugh scrapes past my throat. "A plan? Yeah, I didn't think of that."

His lips pull into a taut line and he opens his mouth to speak again but the ringer going off in my back pocket cuts him off.

We listen to it ping for a few terse moments before I begrudgingly release my grip and take a few steps away from him.

I whip the device out of my pocket and press it to my ear. "What?" I snap.

"Mr. Black," a smooth female voice croons. "I have a business proposition for you."

...

I'm numb.

I try to shake the shock from my system and scramble down the latter to run away but I'm far too outnumbered to have even a small chance of escape. One of my brethren, Kal, holds me down while someone else binds my legs and wrists with zip ties before slinging me over his broad shoulder.

He slings the body of the girl I'd taken out with my panicked shots over his other shoulder. Clio's eyes are permanently drawn open, her dark hair flopping wildly over her face with every step Kal takes forward.

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to force the emotion from my chest. I shouldn't feel guilty. Not after everything Delia and the rest of them have put me through. But despite my better judgment, all I can think about is the funny hiccuping sound of Clio's laugh and how she always picked the pepperoni off her pizza.

First Sean, now Clio. There were so few of us to begin with, and now the remaining three surrounding me feel like nothing.

Someone cries softly behind me. Weariness has begun to seep into my bones and I don't have the strength to crane my head upward to find the source, but I'm pretty sure it's Amara.

She's always been the softest out of all of us. The closest thing I had to a real friend, even when the rest of the team shunned me once Delia took a particular dislike of my presence.

It takes everything inside of me to shove down the old habit of calling out to her and offering her words of comfort. I can't forget what they did to me. What they plan to do with me now that I'm back within their grasp.

After what feels like forever, they take me to a warehouse. I don't recognize it, which is probably intentional. They probably want to make sure I won't know where to run in the slim chance I might escape.

I grunt as Kal roughly drops me on the concrete floor.

"Don't move a fucking muscle," he says.

I narrow my eyes. He's tied my hands behind my back and flipped me on my stomach so I can't really do anything aside from awkwardly wiggling around. It's impossible to get out of the position without the use of my hands. "Yeah, thanks, asshole. I was really planning on making a run for it."

I grunt as someone buries their foot into my side, hot nausea crawling up my stomach as something inside of me makes a concerning crunch under their shoe.

"Dante!" Amara hisses. "God, be careful with her."

I lift my head up, searching for her across the expanse of concrete and shadows. She's sat down a few feet away on the ground, a frown etched deep across her face as she watches us.

She looks lovely as always, her deep brown skin dark against her skin-tight white shirt speckled with Clio's blood. In her arms nestles the little girl from the restaurant, her small face burrowed in the crook of her neck.

"What?" Dante snaps. "She's annoying."

"And you've always been a raging prick that likes to swing his little dick around but you never saw me trying to kick you in the balls for it," I scoff. But god, I should have when I had the chance.

Amara's lips twist, her brow furrowing as her gaze shifts down to me. "Calli," she says softly. Maybe I'm imagining things, but she almost sounds sorry.

"Why did you let them throw me away?" I ask before I can stop myself. I have to know before they put me down like a rabid dog. She was always so kind to me, so full of camaraderie. I was stupid enough to think it meant something.

She shakes her head, pulling her eyes from mine. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "Sometimes sacrifices need to be made."

"Sacrifices for what?" I hiss. "Is there something I'm missing here? Why is Sinclair Black so important that you'd throw away one of your own kind?"

"Because he's worth a lot of money," Delia's smooth voice interjects. "Enough that it would leave us financially stable for a long time. We'd have enough to live comfortably. Raise future children with the right education and materials. Enough for anything we might need."

I stiffen. She's somewhere behind me so I can't see her and I have no idea how long she's been standing there, watching the entire exchange.

I don't even want to think about the fact of why she's taken a new child so old. Usually, she finds us before we can form words. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's probably so she can mold our little brains from the get-go.

Guess she was desperate to find my replacement. I wonder what she thinks about the loss of two angel bloods that she actually considered valuable.

"Hold her down," Delia says. "And get out your knife, Dante."

I wheeze in frantic breaths past the burning in my lungs. It doesn't make sense. Why wait to kill me instead of just taking me out when I was vulnerable on the fire escape? Why tie me up and carry me to an empty warehouse just to slit my throat and leave me to bleed to death?

I force my wheezing breaths to slow as Dante and Kal grip my bound limbs, desperate to calm my beating heart. If I'm going to die, I refuse to let them know how terrified I am.

I need to focus on what's important: Sinclair is safe. Their plan failed and I'll be the one to pay the price for it.

I don't know how or when it happened, but I know without a doubt that I don't think I would have survived losing Sinclair, regardless of the mark on my arm binding my life to his.

I hold my breath as she takes the blade from his fingers and crouches next to me, the sound of my heart beating in my ears nearly drowning out the sound of my brethren's quiet murmuring around us.

But instead of pressing the sharp tip to my throat, she caresses the blunt edge on the skin of my bicep. Right where the cross marking me as one of her own blood lies.

"What are you doing?" I whisper in a short and trembling breath.

"You want to fuck a demon?" she says, her lips twisting with disgust. "Fine, fuck him. But you won't die with honor. You won't die as one of us."

An incredulous and half-hysterical laugh bubbles past my throat. "Are you shitting me? You threw me to the wolves. You didn't give a damn if I lived or died, but you care who I let stick their dick in me?"

"Careful, little one." She presses the apex into the meat of my arm and I grind my teeth to hold in a hiss of pain as a trickle of blood streams down to my elbow. "If you're not wary of your words, you might have to lose your tongue too."

I know she's not exaggerating. Not in the slightest. So with my remaining dignity, I bite the inside of my cheek and stare at a scratch in the grey wall in front of me, steeling myself to hold in my screams as she begins to carve.