He howls, jumping back to grab his leg gushing blood. I stumble past him out of the kitchen, gasping for breath, massaging my throat, tripping across the floor. If I can just get him outside, away from Sarai.

I’m almost at the front door when a sound fires behind me. Pain explodes in my shoulder with atomic force, sending me to my knees. I clutch my shoulder, blood running through my fingers.

He shot me.

In all those months he held me against my will with that gun, he never actually shot me.

He means to kill me.

“It’s useless to run, Iris.” He drags his injured leg behind him and over to the wall where I slump, so disoriented with pain, I can barely move.

“I never wanted to hurt you, baby.” He pushes my hair back with the barrel of the gun, making me shudder. “I only wanted to love you, but you messed that up.”

A bitter laugh cracks my lips. “You lying piece of shit,” I whisper. “I can’t even count all the ways you’ve hurt me.”

I don’t wait for him to answer, but go on, ignoring the seething crater in my shoulder.

“I have a cracked tooth.” I tap a molar on the side. “Right here. I lost twenty percent of the hearing in my right ear when you busted my eardrum. You fractured my wrist, and it never healed properly. It aches all the time.”

I ache all the time.

“You’ve done nothing but hurt me.” Tears and blood from my head wound mingle on my face.

August.

His name whispers through my thoughts. I say a silent prayer that Sarai will make it through this, that August will take care of her. That he and Lo will make sure she doesn’t forget me. Sorrow, wide and deep, swallows me, for all the lost moments with her and August I’ll never have. My stolen second chance.

“New rules,” Caleb says, pushing the gun into my side. “We either live together, or we don’t live at all. Those are the rules. I do have one gift for you, though.”

He pulls something small from the pocket of his jeans, opening his hand to reveal MiMi’s gris-gris ring. It glints against his palm, so unassuming, so powerful.

I know I can’t actually hear her voice, but the sight of the ring MiMi crafted to protect me brings her words, spoken to me in this very house, back to mind.

You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.

He can’t hurt you.

Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.

Strength. Dignity. Courage. All these things belong to you. Take them back.

“I only wanted us to be together,” Caleb says, his sorrow, his madness and ruthlessness twisting in his voice. “And one way or another, we will be. It all ends tonight.”

The hell it does.

His rules. His dictatorship. His girl. For too long, he’s acted like he owned me, but I’m not his. He doesn’t get the last word. It’s my life. My body. My spirit.

Yours to keep and yours to share.

There is a reservoir in my soul. A pool of strength, lying in wait. Like MiMi’s Mississippi, it surges through my veins, cleansing me, renewing me, imbuing me with the power of a thousand priestesses. Lending me ancient courage born a thousand years before.

I slam my fist into his injured leg, scrambling out of the way when he grabs at the wound. I push against him, shifting our bodies until the gun flies from his hand. We both dive for it, blood leaking from my shoulder and gushing from his leg. Our hands wrap around the barrel and the handle. He presses me to the floor, and we fight and fumble until our fingers overlap on the trigger, the gun wedged between our bellies. It’s him or me.

Or maybe it’s both of us, because together we pull the trigger.

51

August

Every horror movie on the bayou I’ve ever seen comes to mind while I drive the long road to MiMi’s place. “Secluded” was the word Iris used. That’s a daytime word. At night, “scary as hell” seems more appropriate.

When I finally pull into the driveway, the rental car is the first thing I see. Iris was adamant that security not stay. I can’t even think about her reasons without nearly busting a blood vessel. Caleb has so much to answer for, and I plan to personally see to it that he does. Not his money, or his family’s power, or the rug we like to sweep shit under will save him this time.

The car makes no sense, and the closer I get to the house, my duffle bag in tow, the more cautious I become. The door is cracked open, an eerie invitation to come inside.

The house is so tiny, making the scene in the front room unavoidable. It’s the first thing I see, and I’m sure it will haunt me until I die.

“Iris.” I say her name out loud, but I don’t hear it. I don’t hear anything. The words are muffled. I’m underwater and drowning, burning lungs, weighted limbs, struggling to the top, fighting for air.

My Iris.

Lying in a pool of blood—still. And that monster on top of her—still. There’s so much blood, and I can’t tell where he ends and she begins, and whose blood is coming from where. For a second, I’m immobile at the door, trapped in a tragic snapshot, but then all the sounds rush in and I’m in motion, desperate and frenzied. I push the dead weight of Caleb’s body aside.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Iris lies on the floor, wearing one of my shirts. It’s shoved up past the top of her thighs. Blood blossoms across her torso, dousing the shirt from belly to shoulder.

“Iris?” I touch her arm, gentle and hesitant and desperate. “Baby?”

I search for signs of life. I don’t breathe while my heart waits to know if it’s irreparably broken.

When her eyes slowly open, it’s daybreak. It’s dawn. This moment puts everything in perspective because despite all the things I have, if Iris is gone, I’ve got nothing.

“August!” She tries to sit up, and I scoot my body under her so her head can rest on my knee. “Sarai. Where is she?”

My heart seizes when I don’t see Sarai. Did he do something to her? But then a sound from the back of the house filters into my consciousness, insistent, but faint.

“I hear her in the back. She’s calling you.”

Iris releases a long breath out and nods. “I locked her room. She must still be in there,” she rasps, her voice hoarse. She squints, focusing on the prone man a few feet away. “Is he dead?”

Her lips tremble. She’s shaking in my arms. Her cheekbone is swollen, and blood streaks down her face. Black marks stripe her throat.

God, I hope he’s dead.

“I . . . baby, I don’t know,” I say. “I need to call nine-one-one. There’s so much blood.”

“Not my blood.” She grimaces and lifts her hand, painstakingly slow, to touch her shoulder. “Some of it is. He shot me in the shoulder.”

Motherfucker.

I squeeze my forehead and claw my hair to keep myself focused on her and not tearing his arms out of their sockets. The desire to kill him is an ache in my bones. It makes my heart contract.

“He’s shot, though,” she says weakly. “We fought, and I shot him.” Pride sparks in her eyes, dulled to brown.

“You did good, Iris.” I run a shaky palm over her hair, and my fingers come away red and sticky with blood. “Jesus, baby. Are you sure you’re—”

“Is he dead?” she cuts in, her grip on my arm tight. Her eyes are wide, urgent. “I need to know, August. He won’t ever leave me alone. Do you hear? He’ll kill me. And Sarai will—”

I press my finger to her lips, staunching the panic rising in her voice. “I’ll check.”

“Now.” Tears leak from the corners of her eyes and skid over her swollen cheekbone. “Check now.”

Smudgy marks from his fingers stain her jaw. My stomach turns at what he’s done to her. At the thought that this isn’t the first time. She lived with him. She slept beside him. For months. Alone.

Fuck.

I gently shift her and scoot across the blood-covered floor to the vermin pickling in his own reckoning. Rage overpowers me the closer I get. I want to stomp on his face and press my boot to his throat. His hand is tucked under his shirt, and when I tug the shirt back, he’s covering a hole in his belly streaming blood.

“West.” His eyes flutter open. His voice is thin, withering, agonized. He grimaces, tipping his head back. Life leaks from his eyes as surely as it’s leaking from his wound. “I guess you win.”

I look back to Iris, who has pulled herself to a sitting position and leans against the wall. Even now, with him clinging to the last threads of his life, she’s wary and guarded, watching him like, shot and bleeding out, he still might strike.

She lifts her hand, revealing a small ring in her palm.

“Lo told you your days were numbered,” she says, her voice wobbling.

With eyes narrowed, she cups her hand to her mouth and blows over it.

“Fuck you, Iris,” he says, voice rough and angry.

With one hand covering the bullet hole in her shoulder, Iris drags herself across the floor until she’s beside me. A scarlet line of blood trails her.

“Iris.” I pull out my phone and nod to her bleeding shoulder. “I need to call nine-one-one.”

“No.” She fires the word like a bullet, the last one in her barrel as she looms over Caleb. “Don’t call yet.”

“But your shoulder—”

“It’s fine.” Her soft mouth lopsides in a bitter smile. “I have a high tolerance for pain. Isn’t that right, Caleb?”

Her gaze is locked on his—on the last vestiges of life draining from his eyes, from his body.

“As long as he’s alive, I’m not safe and neither is my daughter. He tried to kill me.” She draws in a long breath, her eyes narrowed. “So we wait.”

She’s my Iris, but I’ve never seen her like this. I thought I had seen all her sides, loved all her sides, but I’ve never seen this. Ruthless and beautiful and bloodied, she emanates all the strength and determination it must have taken her to survive.