Yes, she knew.
Too well.
She regretted nothing.
It had to happen.
“I only need to stay ahead of you, actually,” Penny returned. “What’s left of your organization now, Mother? Every move I’ve made has taken something else from you, hasn’t it? There isn’t very much left. Is The Elite even capable of going up against me now—or someone else, for that matter, if you step on the wrong toes trying to get to me?”
The League, she meant. Not that she would say it. That would simply give her mother information she might not otherwise have. Penny wouldn’t play that game. Just this phone call was dangerous enough.
And she only had one thing left to tell Allegra. Little else really mattered, and she refused to give the woman any more of her life or time than she needed to. Even in her death, Allegra Dunsworth would only get what she deserved and nothing more.
It was all Penny could promise.
The only thing she guaranteed.
“The white ghost is coming for you,” Penny told her mother. “Watch for me, Allegra. I’ll be seeing you.”
Penny ended the call as her gaze found the clock on the motel room’s wall. Directly over the bed, it was the only thing on the walls. The second hand kept ticking. A lot like the beats of her broken heart that smashed against her ribcage because just talking to her mother was enough to damn near unravel everything that kept Penny sane.
Tick, tick, tick.
The sound of the clock echoed in the back of her mind. It continued counting down the seconds until she could finally finish this. One after another. She watched the time go.
What choice did she have?
3.
Luca
OVER the years, Luca occasionally found himself in ... precarious situations. For a lack of a better word. Situations where he didn’t think there was any way out. Yet, he always managed to do exactly that in the end.
He wasn’t sure this was the same. Never mind if it would end the same way.
At least, Cree and his men hadn’t bothered to do more than tie Luca up while they delivered him to the compound in the middle of the Nevada desert. He didn’t have to wonder where he was when he had already been there once—The League’s home base. But that was where the good side of things ended.
Luca’s prison stared back at him from where he sat in the corner of a room with cement walls and floors. Dampness coated his lungs with every breath, and the shivers crawled over his body the more he tried to get comfortable.
Or warm.
He was going to be lucky to escape this without catching a fucking cold, let alone with his life.
It didn’t help that his arms had been tied at his back with zip ties connected to a metal bitch link protruding from the cracked cement. He couldn’t even use his hands to warm his own body, and the hard floor wasn’t doing anything for his aching muscles.
Every part of him hurt. The rusty metallic tang of old blood lingered on the back of his tongue every time he dared to lick his chapped lips.
The worst part?
Luca couldn’t tell time—he had no idea how long he’d been there stuck in the cement room with no windows to see the rising sun to say another day had come and passed. Only a bare bulb with a long, thin chain hung from the ceiling to provide light.
It had yet to be shut off.
Even when he did fall asleep—though he seriously doubted it was for more than a few minutes at a time with the way his mind felt slow and tired—he could see that goddamn light in his dreams. It was just there ... shining bright in the background like it was fucking taunting him or something.
What was happening?
That’s all he wanted to know.
Anything.
He’d take anything now.
Luca was close to drifting back to a hellish dreamland—if one could even call it that—when an echoing beep had his eyes jerking open. Metal clinked, then, and in the next second, the double doors at the far end of the room with the squeaky hinges opened without the prompting of the man who waited on the other side of them.
Over the doors sat a camera. Pointed and trained on him, the red blinking light over the lens was yet another thing that continued to haunt his waking dreams.
“You’re looking ... well,” Cree murmured when he stepped inside the room.
Luca had every urge to tell the man to go fuck himself, but he held back. Barely. Cree could have been less kind given Luca’s current circumstance, but he wasn’t. Not intentionally, anyway.
He didn’t bother replying to Cree’s first comment, instead asking, “Have you found her?”
Penny, he meant.
He didn’t need to say her name. He bet every single person in this building—however many there were—knew exactly why he was there.
Cree came to a stop in the middle of the room still ten feet away from a bound Luca. At least, they let him keep his boots even if they did rip the laces out of them. His ankles weren’t tied, so that was something to be thankful for, too. If only he could get his wrists undone and out of the strange room, then he might be able to—
“No, we haven’t,” Cree finally replied, interrupting Luca’s thoughts. “Do you feel betrayed because of what she did?”
Luca’s brow dipped. “What did she do?”
Cree raised a single, thick brow high. His dark eyes nailed into Luca like he was trying to decide whether the man had lost his mind or was just stupid.
Frankly, even Luca didn’t know the answer to that one. Not now.
“She brought you here,” Cree clarified, “and decided you could be used as a good distraction for the rest of us while she headed off to do her own thing. As for you, well, you followed right along.”
Huh.
“That’s what she did?”
That’s why Penny let him follow her to Nevada?
He didn’t think so.
Not entirely.
“That’s what she did,” Cree echoed.
Luca shrugged—as much as he could in his constraints. “No, I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t feel anything at all.”
Well, partly.
He felt too many things, really. Betrayal simply wasn’t one of them.
“I can’t say the same,” Cree admitted quietly.
Luca didn’t acknowledge the man’s words. He figured it was probably better if he didn’t. It wasn’t like he could pretend to know the bonds Penny shared with these people—if she had any at all to speak of, that was. Nonetheless, there had to be something. She spent over five years with these people. Someone felt something.
That was only human.
The longer Cree stood there watching Luca where he sat in the corner on the floor, the more he fidgeted. While he’d only been vaguely aware of the restraints on his wrists before, as he’d become used to them to an extent, now the plastic was biting into his skin in the worst way.
He talked just to distract himself from thinking about it, asking, “What is she doing, anyway?”
Cree sighed. “Going after her mother.”
That had Luca interested.
“What?”
The man passed him a look; the neat plait of his long braid belied the dirty scuff marks on his black cargo pants. “The Elite—her mother.”
Luca still didn’t understand. Or maybe his tired brain just wasn’t letting him put it all together. Either way, he opted to say nothing at all. Better to keep one’s mouth closed and let someone think he was a fool than open it and prove it.