Page 11 of Healed

Of Natalie looking at me, wanting to tell me something, Gabriella’s name on her lips.

“Wait,” I whispered to myself, more than anyone else.

“Wait? Wait, what? What is happening?”

I stared at her, waiting for my battered brain to catch up with the words, but they didn’t make sense. They hovered there, wrong and impossible, brushing against the memory of Natalie’s face, of the panic in her eyes, of the way she’d looked at me right before Nico shot her.

I had been too far gone to understand it then. Too angry. Too broken. Too desperate to tear the world apart because the only world I cared about had supposedly already ended.

But now, lying on a basement floor with Gabriella’s mother looking at me like I was the one who had misunderstood everything, the pieces began to shift.

“Mrs Rider, I think your daughter may be a genius.”

She frowned at me. “You just said she was dead.”

“I think she may be a perfect, sneaky, brave, insane little liar is what I think she is.”

“You’re not making any sense!”

I beamed at her. “Nothing about this makes any sense. But…”

I stopped as the sounds of chaos rang out above us. And then I laughed out loud, feeling a strange emotion bubble up inside me.

Hope.

If I were right, and Gabriella had faked all of this, that meant somewhere out there, my girl was alive. And for the first time since I’d seen that fucking sheet, the grief inside me loosened enough for something else to slip through.

“Luke?” Michelle said, looking at me with wild eyes.

“She’s alive, Michelle. I’m sure of it. I think she faked her death to get out of here. That’s how she was going to get help. That was her plan.”

Gunshots rang out, causing Michelle to flinch and me to laugh.

“And it sounds like she brought the entire fucking cavalry.”

Michelle stared at me like I’d lost what remained of my mind. Maybe I had. Maybe hope had finished the job the metal pole started. But I knew those sounds. I knew the rhythm of my brothers tearing through a place that had dared take one of their own.

“What’s happening up there?” she whispered.

I pushed my hand against the floor and forced myself upright, every part of me screaming in protest as I got one knee beneath me. “That,” I said, tasting blood and victory in the same breath, “is Nico realising he should’ve killed me when he had the chance.”

Chapter 5

Gabriella

“I will never get in another car with you as long as I live,” I snapped at Dante as I saw the familiar houses come into view.

He had started to slow down once we entered Rider territory, and now that I wasn’t fearing for my life—at least not at the hands of his driving—I was able to concentrate more on my surroundings.

Unlike the Devil’s, the Rough Riders did not all live on one heavily guarded compound. We were spread out throughout our patch of Leeds, which made an ambush more difficult. But it also made it easier for us to sneak up on the clubhouse, since there were always members of the public coming and going at any time.

Which is where I found myself when I opened my eyes, feeling the car draw to a stop, and the rumble of a dozen motorbikes before their engines silenced.

“Trust me, princess, I don’t plan on using the car any more than necessary. And when I do, you won’t be invited again.”

I just scoffed in return. The man drove like he was personally offended by the existence of corners, speed limits, and any form of self-preservation.

Instead of replying to him, I watched as he approached Rachel, murmuring words I couldn’t hear, before addressing his club—quietly, quickly, and with all the force only a president could command.