Page 21 of Tainted Blood
A bloom of warmth spreads inside my chest. She didn’t take them off herself. Then the gravity of his words take root in my chest, turning a bloom of warmth into molten lava.
She didn’t take them off.
That means someone else did.
“Santi, he’s going back under,” RJ notes.
The fuck he is.
I give his cheek a firm smack, causing his eyes to flutter back open. “Focus Sanders. When we found you, you said, ‘Run. Run, Thalia. Fucking run.’ You saw someone. You saw them coming. Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” he repeats.
I smack his other cheek. “Don’t lie to me!”
This time, his eyes don’t just flutter—they snap wide open, the fire from before reigniting to a full blaze. “Hit me again, and I’ll cut your fucking hand off. If I knew where she was, don’t you think...?” He heaves out a ragged breath. “Don’t you think I’d tell you?”
Typical Santiago. Talking bullshit, even when on death’s door.
“Then do it,” I say with a growl. “Because if she shows up in a shipping container next week, her blood is on your hands.”
“Care to rephrase that? You know damn well her blood will be staining the both of us.”
“What the fuck did you say?”
He exhales with a cough and a grimace. “She should never have been in that parking lot in the first place... She should never have been in New Jersey.”
I bite down on my tongue so hard I taste metal. My head knows what he says is true, but my Thalia-torn heart, that traitorous piece of shit, has a mind and a mouth of its own.
For once, I don’t combat RJ’s look of warning. I heed it. Locking my fingers around the back of my neck, I walk away, pacing the back of the room as Sanders floats in and out of consciousness. It takes every ounce of restraint I have to maintain distance between us when all I want to do is reach inside his head and drag his memories out myself.
Finally, after fifteen more minutes of babbling and silence, he lets out three clear words.
“They took her.”
His revelation is like a shot to my heart. Still, I remain silent, waiting for him to continue. Waiting to know Thalia’s fate.
Sanders holds RJ’s stare, and then slowly slides his gaze to me. The moment we lock eyes again, my stomach churns.
“I found her in one of your private gambling rooms.” He tosses me a look of derision. “Your security is for shit, by the way.”
“Fuck you.”
He shifts his weight, and pain blankets his face. “Grayson wanted her to know everything. Said she’d come home easier once she knew you’d lied to her. That Ella was fine. That she’d betrayed her family for nothing.”
The hatred in his voice is palpable.
RJ mumbles out a hushed, “Don’t,” under his breath, but it’s unnecessary. While I don’t appreciate his tone, I can’t argue with the truth.
“It worked. She wanted to be back in New York that night,” he rasps, twisting the knife in even deeper. “We were walking back to my car. I remember opening the door for her, and that’s when they hit me with the first shot... That’s when I told her to run—”
“And did she?” I demand.
He levels me with a stare. “What do you think?”
Of course she didn’t. She’s a fearless firebird, remember?
“Then they hit me with the second.”