Layla
The kitchen around me had grown dark as the day faded into the horizon, but I didn’t notice. Didn’t rise from my seat at the table to turn on a light. The glow of my phone’s screen was light enough—and I had eyes only for its contents anyway.
The device trembled in my fingers as the message played. Again. As it had on repeat for the past few minutes while I struggled to determine my next move.
“Layla,” Marco’s voice drawled from the tinny speaker, filling my quiet kitchen, “you have something I want. And now, I have something you care about.”
Marco didn’t appear in the video that flickered across the screen. Of course, he didn’t; that coward wouldn’t show his face in such an incriminating way. No, it was Eli’s pale, frightened face on my screen, shadowed by the dim lighting of
