DAX
AGE 19

IT'S BEEN TWO MONTHS since I got into that stupid fight at Brookes' Halloween party. Two months since I let Cleo fuck and chuck me for that Reynolds asshole. I still can't believe she's marrying him. A world where Cleo isn't mine feels so fucking wrong. Even now, my chest gets too goddamn tight whenever I think about them, so I try not to think at all. It's better to be numb.

Necessary for my sanity.

Becoming mindless and senseless is the only way I can keep going. To keep breathing. My heart no longer beats for anyone except myself. Right after I left LA, Cleo called me twice and then texted a few more times. Not once did I reply to her bullshit. I can't let Cleo sink her claws into me again. I'm done with her. It's time to move on from the hell she dragged me through. She has her own life to live, and I have mine. My future is with the military. Not her. I need to pull my head out of her ass and focus on completing missions without letting my fellow brothers and sisters in arms get wounded—or killed.

On record, I've been deployed to Germany.

Off record?

I can't tell you where they really sent me. But I've been transferred elsewhere because of the dent I made in enemy forces during my last deployment. This assignment they gave me has nothing to do with the Army. My new teammates and I are part of a special unit, but we're not Green Berets. The public isn't supposed to know about what we do. They don't call anyone by their God-given names here. Everyone has a code name. Anonymity is key.

Like Maggot. Shit personality. But he has a talent for worming his way inside enemies' heads to always stay two steps ahead.

Or Tank. This one's pretty straightforward. The guy's built like a motherfucking tank, and he can tear any grown-ass man apart with his bare hands.

And Miss Hyde. She's the shyest lady you'll ever meet. Until she gets her hands on a flamethrower. Swear to God, never seen a bigger pyro in my life.

They call me Grim. Mine's self-explanatory. Because bodies tend to pile up whenever I'm around.

Back at Fairmont, my teachers rode me hard for being such a failure. None of them believed I could graduate as a senior. Bitches can eat their fucking hearts out. I might've been shit at school, but, apparently, I make a damn good killer.

During the party, I told Brookes that I was one of the best mofos in my unit. I lied to him. From day one, I've been the fastest, strongest, most merciless motherfucker. Whenever there's a gun or rifle in my hands, instinct takes over, and I know exactly what to do. Weapons become an extension of my body.

The aim.

The timing.

The trigger pull.

The kill shot.

It all comes together like a deadly symphony that I was born to play.

For the past two months, I've been training at a special camp. It's an undisclosed location. If you try to find us on Google, it'll show up blurred and pixelated on the map. All I can tell you is that it's hot as balls here, and I have to carry seventy pounds of armor and weapons in addition to twenty pounds of survival gear. We're constantly under fire. Just last week, a stray bullet nearly took out my left nut, and, yesterday, Maggot actually ended up with scrap metal in his thigh. Good thing we only need him for his brains.

I won't lie. This place sucks ass. It has nothing but sand, sand, and more fucking sand for miles around. I can't remember what it feels like to not have my skin covered in grime and sweat. There's always sand up my crack. Sand between my balls. Sand everywhere. It's like fucking on the beach without the best part—pussy.

The days are long. The nights feel longer because we're not allowed to sleep for seventy-two hour stretches at a time. Our superiors call it sleep deprivation training. I call it sadistic. If one of us dozes off, the whole squad is punished by being waterboarded within an inch of our lives.

I understand full well what they're trying to do. They want to break me. To see how much I can endure. They need to know what I'll do when my resolve finally shatters. Once they send us out into the world on do-or-die missions, reality will be even more fucked up than this shit.

Little do they know, this is exactly what I want. Hell, my dumb ass signed up for it. This beyond-extreme, balls-to-the-wall, purgatory-on-earth level of torture is what it takes to wipe Cleo from my mind. It's the only thing that can help me forget her. Maybe not completely. But enough to distract from the pain and fury.

Right now, I'm balls deep in another training mission. It's a manhunt. Kill on sight. My favorite kind of violence. With an MK-17 strapped on my shoulder, I feel a vibration in my pocket.

Jesus, fuck.

What now?

Scowling, I pull out my phone to check the screen. My breath clips when I see it's a text from Cleo: Call me when you can. We need to talk.

Bitch is relentless.

Why won't she leave me alone?

It's infuriating how Cleo keeps poking her pretty little head back into my life when she knows she's not welcome. I ignore my quickening pulse and leave her on Read.

Ten minutes later, my phone buzzes again: Please. It's important.

I don't respond to this one, either. I already set my sights on the target. He's about a hundred yards away. Squinting with one eye, I follow his every move through my scope. I'm hidden out of his line of sight, but I think he senses me, anyway. Looking around frantically, he starts sprinting across the sand dunes. It's too late, though. I'm already pulling the trigger.

Click.

The bullet cuts straight through his temple. A clean shot. Blood sprays in the air. He screams as he goes down. Then, there's nothing but silence. The sun blazes overhead. The sky is endlessly blue. It's a beautiful day to die. I don't know his name. Or what he did to piss them off. My job isn't to ask questions. It's to take the shot and never fucking miss.

Here—I don't have to think about her. I don't have to feel a thing. I only have to do what I'm told. More machine than man. Without these missions to anchor my crack in my chest, I don't think I could survive the hell she raised in me. Day after day, night after night, they keep trying to break me, but there's nothing they can do to one-up Cleo. I'm already in pieces thanks to her.

Her demons fucked with mine far too well, and, now, those bent little fuckers are out for blood.

***

CLEO
AGE 18

I'm in the bathroom. Alone. Trying not to hyperventilate. Trav isn't home right now, but the door to the bathroom is locked. Just in case he comes back early.

A plastic stick sits on the marble countertop in front of me. I've been staring at it for the past ten minutes. My entire body begins to tremble when, at last, two lines slowly appear, filling me with the utmost joy and overwhelming fear. These results confirm what I already suspected when I missed my period this month.

Before you ask, no, my fiancé isn't the dad. There's only one boy I've ever let in my bed, and his name isn't Travis fucking Reynolds. Trav and I never had sex before the accident, and, after the accident, he's been having trouble getting it up. Apparently, I broke his dick in the crash. These days, he's as useful as a Ken doll in bed. He can't feel a thing down there no matter how you tug, suck, or fuck it. Trust me, he's tried to do it with a revolving door of other women, and I'm more than happy to look the other way. None of them could fix him. Call it divine punishment or the karma, but serves him right for drugging me then trying to rape me on my birthday two years ago.

As I continue obsessing over the two tiny, perfect lines staring back at me, happy tears sting my eyes even while my heart hammers with terror. I don't know whether to celebrate or scream. Knowing that I have a part of Dax inside me brings hope. But I'm very much on edge. If Trav finds out about the baby, he'll realize that I cheated because his limp cock has never come inside me. Already, I know his rage has no bounds. He won't hesitate to tie me to a rock and drown me in the ocean. Pregnant or not. Then, he'll hunt down Dax and destroy him, too.

How long can I keep this a secret?

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Time's already running out. My belly will start showing in a few months. I don't even know if it's safe to tell my family, at least, not until I have a solid plan of escape. I feel like a fucking idiot. I shouldn't have let my hormones take control on Halloween. I was on the pill, but Dax and I should've used more protection. My thoughts spiral into a tangled mess. Whenever the world feels like it's about to crumble around me, there's only one person I want to talk to. Only he can calm the noise in my head.

With shaking hands, I reach for my phone to text him: Call me when you can. We need to talk.

I'm not surprised when there's no answer.

Ten minutes later, I try again: Please. It's important.

I feel like he has a right to know. If only he'd give me a chance to tell him. Brookes mentioned a while ago that Dax has limited access to outside communication because he's deployed overseas. I think Dax is stationed in Germany at the moment. He still talks to my brother from time to time. Dax hasn't been responding to any of my messages, though. Can't say I blame him. Not after I let him fuck me like a whore and then told him that I'm still going to marry Travis.

God.

It hurts.

The cuts and bruises on my face from Halloween have completely healed, but my heart can't seem to mend the wreckage that Dax left behind. I hate myself for letting him get away again, not knowing the truth.

The whole truth.

Right after Brookes' party, I packed up my bags and jumped on a flight back to New York City feeling utterly spent. An empty shell. I guess that's what happens when old wounds are split open, and your soul's bled into another. Love fucking hurts. Yet, I don't regret surrendering myself to Dax during those precious, fleeting hours we shared in my bedroom. Not for one second. The only remnants of my heart that mattered—damaged though they may be—have always belonged to him.

I've been in New York City for two months already. No one has discovered what went down between Dax and me on Halloween, and no one ever will. Call me a fake-ass bitch, but I'm good at pretending like nothing happened and everything's fine. My survival depends on it. Wearing too-bright smiles and soulless eyes, I've been playing my part, living a lie, as though I'm not fantasizing about suffocating my fiancé to death with a pillow each morning I wake up next to him.

My fiancé.

These two words trigger the hell out of me. They make me want to die every time I'm forced to say them. Fucking Trav. If only I could turn him back into a braindead vegetable.

Not long after I returned to Trav's side, he railed at me for gaining five pounds right before my dress fitting and locked me in our bedroom for two days without food. He ordered the staff to only give me water. Suffice to say, I dropped those five pounds real quick. And then some.

A week later, we hosted our engagement party at the Ritz-Carlton. The guest list consisted of influential celebrities, socialites, politicians, and businessmen. No expense was spared. Every table was served $10k bottles of champagne, $300-per-head plates of A5 wagyu, and live lobsters that had been caught and shipped in from Maine the same morning.

With so many eyes on us, Trav oozed charm and smothered me with affection at the party. Gone was the monster who had jailed and starved me mere days ago. It was jarring, chilling even, how quickly he could switch from villain to hero. Acting like the world's most attentive fiancé, Trav spent the entire evening praising me to the moon and back while feeding me generous bites of steak and lobster from his own plate.

Two-faced psycho.

When Trav offered me champagne, though, my period had already been two days late, so I pretended to take a sip and then, as discreetly as possible, spit every drop of alcohol back in my glass. I prayed that Trav didn't notice.

That day, I received so many compliments on the ring. It's an eye-catching eyesore, for sure. Solitaire diamond. Princess cut. Five carats. Platinum band. Worth almost $100k. All I want is to pull the ring off my finger and chuck it into the Atlantic. Everyone thinks I'm lucky to have a man who's head over heels in love and dead set on spoiling me rotten. My friends still don't know what Trav does behind closed doors. 

Some things never change.

Other things, though, have become more hellish.

Lately, he's been screaming louder and hitting harder than Old Trav. Maybe our engagement made him bold. He thinks I'm trapped with nowhere to run. Or maybe the accident fucked up his fucked up brain even more. But New Trav is no longer as careful about the violence he unleashes on me. He doesn't care if his fists leave visible marks on my face or body anymore. Trav simply tells me to stay out of the public eye until the evidence has faded enough to hide behind makeup. I thought my stint in Ashwood was bad. But this is so much worse.

I feel like his prisoner.

For months now, Trav's lawyers have been hard at work, outlining an ironclad prenup that will leave me powerless and penniless if I divorce him. They've also laid the groundwork to snatch my shares in Syncore after our wedding. But this bullshit hasn't been going on for just a few months. I was simply too much of a stupid, little girl back in high school to see the noose that was being wrapped around my family's necks.

It takes years of planning to take down an empire like ours, and the Reynolds have been eye-fucking Syncore and plotting our downfall for ages. Not even my dad can stop them. The Reynolds have gathered too much shit on him. If they release it, my dad could go to prison for grand larceny, falsifying business records, and securities fraud and conspiracy. Our family will lose everything if that happens.

It's all so sickening and corrupt. The Reynolds are evil pieces of shit. My parents have done some pretty evil shitty things, too. I don't know how to wash myself of their sins. The rose-colored lenses from my childhood have completely shattered. It makes me wonder if my mom and dad have always known about the way Trav treats me. Even back at Fairmont. They simply didn't give a fuck. They were too busy protecting their own asses to save mine.

Every day, I dream of escape. But I can't leave yet. Trav will only drag me back—dead or alive—if I'm not smart about every step I take from here on out. Some days, my future feels so damn bleak, but I refuse to give up. I need to use this time to gather dirt on the Reynolds and Evenstar Tech. Damaging collateral that can be used to blackmail Trav into leaving me the fuck alone. Something big and bad enough to keep him away—forever. I can't shy away from playing dirty like them. My hand drifts to my belly. I won't be like my mom or dad. I'm going to protect this little one even if I have to kill for it.

Click.

My eyes grow round.

Did the front door just open?

Trav must be home. A gasp escapes when I hear my phone chime a second after loud footsteps begin charging toward me.

Ding.

Frantically, I check the message. It's from Dax: go choke on your ring. i'm blocking you. don't contact me again.

My chest seizes up. It's hard to breathe. All of a sudden, the rhythmic stomping goes silent. Anxiously, I hold my breath. Then, without warning, the doorknob to the bathroom starts rattling violently. When the door doesn't budge, an angry fist pounds against the door.

Bam!

Bam!

Bam!

Trav's voice bellows from the other side, "Why the hell is this locked, you bitch? What are you trying to hide from me?"

Fuck!

Adrenaline surges, I don't know whether to fight or take flight, and my panic levels shoot through the roof. I'm not drugged, but my head is spinning. Everything begins to tilt and sway. My body crumples slightly. I sink to my knees. Both palms slam against the floor to keep from toppling over.

Trav won't stop screaming obscenities at me. 

You useless cunt. 

He's about to break down the door. 

Lying slut. 

I can't handle him right now. Not after Dax just severed me from his life. It's too much. My heart is hammering so fast and so hard right now that it's making me dizzy. I can't seem to keep my eyes open. Struggling becomes futile. Little by little, I give in to the heaviness that's dragging me down.

With a soft, pained moan, darkness takes over as I fall to the ground with a foreboding thud.