The gunshot ripped the night, cutting short enough to shave the storm.Mariam dropped onto the pavement, her knees into wet asphalt, cold rain plastering her hair into her face. Her chest moved up and down, her heart thrashing louder than the thunder overheard. She! she hadn't even felt the burn of! her bruised palms all she smelt was iron, heavy and raw, the scent of blood spreading into the night.Another. Shot. Ranged out. Too! close. Too deliberate.She leaned her back against the wall!! store, gasping for air.This! can't be. happening. This! can't be happening.A shadow! towered."Stay down! The voice was deep, rasping, and laced with the authority that could slice through fear. Before she was even able to think, a gruff hand wrapped around her wrist and jerked her across the wet ground, behind the gleaming bulk of a black car. She hit hard, rain spattering against her skin.Her breath caught when she finally laid eyes on him.Even amidst the disaster, she knew him.". Or better yet, she saw the danger that had come before his name everywhere.Adrian Kane.The Devil.The man people swore you never met twice because you didn't live long enough for the second meeting."Let me go ."There was a gunshot above her, cutting off her protest. Shards of glass rained from a shattered window, flowing on the pavement. She flinched, covering her head.Adrian's body held her in place, shielding her. His weight was crushing, terrifying and somehow earthy. His tattoos glinted wet in the tempest, scars curling around the knuckles, his eyes cold and unforgiving even in semi-darkness."If I release you," Adrian growled, his face so close that she could taste the smoke and metal on his lips, "you'll be dead in three seconds. Decide."Her lungs constricted. Run out into the street and die, or stay with the man that everyone was afraid of."I don't even know you," she breathed, her voice shaking."You don't have to." His eyes burned through her, hot and cold. He drew a pistol from his jacket with one hand, never releasing her wrist with the other. "You just have to make a decision.". Stay with me… or die in the street.Lightning ripped apart the sky.Beyond the blinding whiteness, she saw them three men stepping out of the shadows, guns glinting, feet in time. Hunters.Her mind was screaming. Run. Run. Get out of this. Don't get pulled into his life.But her body had other ideas. Her legs would not move. Her silence was already a choice.Adrian smiled, predatory satisfaction dancing in his eyes. "Good girl."And then the world exploded.Gunfire ripped through the blackness.Adrian was like something supernatural fast, brutal, precise. One bullet, one corpse. Another revolution, another fallen body. He wasn't firing blindly; he was thinking, commanding, and calculating each movement as if the street were his chessboard.The thunder swallowed her scream as Mariam huddled lower behind the car, shaking. But her eyes kept going higher, morbid curiosity forcing her to watch.The rain was dripping blood.The first man fell with a bullet through his throat, his pistol clattering down the asphalt. Adrian turned around before the body had even hit the pavement, shooting a second time. The second assailant turned around, red covering the pavement, his body falling like paper.The third charged in. For a moment, Mariam thought Adrian would finally fall. The man moved quick, knife flashing in the tempestlight.But Adrian did not fail.He moved, caught the man's wrist in the midst of attack, and smashed it into the car door so hard that the metal buckled. The knife skittered away. Adrian's other hand pushed the pistol into the man's chest point-blank.A hundred percent.A single shot.The man's eyes went wide, then faded as his body slumped down the car.Mariam covered her mouth with her hand. Metallic flavor rushed across her tongue, and she knew she'd bitten hard to keep from screaming.
The shooting stopped in a matter of seconds. All that was left was the beat of the rain against the sidewalk.
She shuddered uncontrollably as adrenaline coursed through her frame. She cautiously lifted her gaze to Adrian. His face was carved from stone. Not a single drop of regret, not the slightest quiver of doubt. He re-holstered the pistol, rain streaming down his eyelashes. Mariam shoved against his chest, rage breaking through terror. "What the hell was that?" He regarded her calmly as if he'd just swatted away mosquitoes. "That," he said flatly, "was your introduction to my world."Her stomach knotted. "I didn't ask for it." "And yet…" He pushed closer, trapping her against the cold metal of the car. ".you're still here."Her chest tightened anger, fear, something she would not call. "You killed them" "They tried to kill you." His voice hardened, cutting off her words. "Or did you think this was a random thing? Do you think bullets rain down from heaven for sport?"Her blood ran cold."What do you mean? " she gasped."
You were the target this evening." His gaze did not waver from hers. "Which makes you mine now. Until I find out why."
Her knees went weak nearly to the point of collapse. "I don't want to be yours."
"Too late."
His phone rang. He answered immediately, his eyes still fixed on hers.
"They're taken care of," Adrian said into the receiver, voice as calm and as lethal. Silence, then.
"What do you mean another hit? Who did it order?". Another attempt? Another attempt at her life? "Fine," Adrian taunted. "Double the guard. She does not leave my eyes."He banged down the receiver.Mariam shrank back, shaking her head in disgust. "No. No, by no means. I am not going to stay with you. I don't even know you ."You think you still have a choice?" His voice cracked like lightning. He approached her, and she retreated against the car. His eyes burnt, feral and desperate all at once. "The second they know you're breathing, they'll try again. And again. Until you're just another body in the rain."Her throat closed. "Why me? ""That's what I'm going to find out," he said. Then his tone shifted lower, softer, almost breaking. " But until then, you'll survive. Even if I need to chain you to me to make it work."Tears pricked her eyes.
Rage clawed at her throat.She wanted to scream, to push him back, to inform him she'd die first before she was his.But when his hand stroked the side of her face so unexpectedly soft, trembling with a suppressed break her voice fainted.For a horror-stricken beat, she glimpsed something else in him.A man bleeding on the inside. A man who might die without her.And that frightened her more than the shots.Sirens wailed in the distance, closer.Mariam got up, hope surfacing.The police Adrian's face contorted.He yanked her against him again, this time holding tighter."Not police."His eyes darkened"Something worse."Before she could tell him she demanded to know what, he pulled her back into the shadows, away from rain and blood.And Mariam knew with bone-deep certainty:
Her life ended tonight.
Whatever came next… belonged to him.