NOLA
The phone lies on the floor like a dead thing, the screen is cracked and flickering, and Marcus’s voice still seems to echo in the hollow silence of the foyer, making my skin crawl with a cold, sticky dread. My father is gone. Lawrence, the man who raised me in a bubble of safety that was actually a cage of secrets, has been snatched from his hospital bed by the very people Rhett just slaughtered on our lawn, and the weight of that realization hits me like a physical blow to the stomach. My heart feels like it’s being squeezed by a cold, invisible hand, and the air in the room is suddenly too thin to breathe, tasting of dust and the lingering, metallic scent of the violence that just unfolded outside.
I look at Rhett, and for a moment, I don’t see the Alpha who just tore through a p
