I Thee Take: To Have and To Hold Duet Book Two by Knight, Natasha (books to read in your 20s txt) 📕

There’s ten thousand dollars in cash along with the two passports with our new identities. American passports. I have no idea if they’re good forgeries or not, but I guess they are. The key is to a BMW.

Cerberus sits beside me looking out the window. He must feel it too, this anxiety. This feeling that something has gone wrong.

“Everything will be okay,” I tell him. It’s a lie. I have no idea if anything will be okay.

He sets his head on my lap with a small whimper.

Did Cristiano find Marcus? Is that why he’s given me this pouch? Shown me the way off the island. I know this is the one thing that’s kept him alive. His hate. His need for vengeance. The drive to kill Marcus Rinaldi. Does he still intend to be done with things now, though? Done with life once he’s had his revenge? I know the passports didn’t happen overnight. He’s put some planning into it. But what’s happened between us, hasn’t that changed anything for him?

The sound of a speedboat has me running to the window. I’m not sure if Cristiano left by chopper or boat. I heard both earlier. I can’t see who is on the boat before it disappears around the corner.

“Let’s go,” I tell Cerberus after shoving the money and passports back into the pouch and tucking it and the gun under my pillow.

My pillow.

How quickly I’ve come to call it mine.

Cerberus follows me out the door and down the stairs where I already hear Noah.

I breathe a small sigh of relief when I see him. He’s talking with another soldier, someone I don’t know, and the older man laughs at what he says. Cristiano is nowhere among the half-dozen men who enter, but Dante is. His eyes track me as I make my way to my brother.

I don’t like Dante and I don’t trust him. The feeling is mutual, I know.

“Scarlett,” Noah says, coming to me. “Is he following you around now?” He points to Cerberus.

Dante glowers at me, pets Cerberus’s head and passes us to the kitchen.

“I need to talk to you,” I say as quietly as I can, so no one hears. As uncertain as I am about things, I do know one thing, I know what’s best for my brother.

“Sure,” he says, his face serious as he follows me up to Cristiano’s room. “Did you tell Cristiano yet?”

I nod. “I’m not sure how he took it. He’s processing, I guess.”

Noah appears uncertain. “You think I’m remembering wrong? I’ve gone over and over it and I swear, the minute I laid eyes on the photo, I just knew. I felt it, Scarlett. Does he think I’m making it up?”

“No. No, of course not. That’s actually not what I want to talk to you about.” I take the pouch out from under the pillow but leave the gun where it is.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“I have a bad feeling, Noah.” I have these a lot and over the last ten years I’ve been right more often than wrong. Although maybe that was the circumstances. “Something’s wrong. Something’s happened. With Cristiano I mean.”

He studies me. “No, don’t worry. He’ll be fine. He’s got nine lives.”

“How many of those has he used up do you think?”

He pauses at that and I think about how much he’s seen, how much he’s lived through for his fifteen years.

“What’s in there?” he asks.

I take out his passport and hand it to him. He opens it and his eyebrows shoot up. “Michael Preston?”

I take out mine. “And his sister, Elizabeth.” I know those names weren’t random choices. I pull the pouch open so Noah can see the bills.

“Whoa.”

I tuck my passport into my pocket. “Cristiano gave this to me. He said if anything happens, I’m to take you and go.”

“Take me and go?” He looks confused. “Go where exactly? And how did he think you’d manage that? There are about two dozen soldiers on the island that I counted just on my way in.”

“You’re keeping count?”

“I’m not stupid, Scarlett. These men are loyal to Cristiano. If something happens to him and Dante takes over, I’m pretty sure you and I are dead.”

“Shit.” I sit on the edge of the bed, pushing my hand through my hair. I know this, but Noah saying it, Noah knowing it, it makes everything feel that much more dangerous.

Makes me doubly certain that I need him out of here. Now.

“Do you want to go?” he asks, sitting beside me. “I mean, would you? Right now? If we could?”

“Would you?”

He nods and I see the little boy he was when all this started. It’s the look in his eyes he sometimes gets. Like he’s just barely holding everything together. He’s just fifteen. A kid. Even if he is taller than me and slowly starting to fill out. I see the little bit of a mustache he must have shaved a few days ago growing back in.

And what I’ll have to do makes my stomach twist.

“He showed me a way out,” I tell him, not answering his question. “A secret way.”

“How? There’s guards watching everything. It’s an island, Scarlett. We’re surrounded by water. There is no secret way.”

“There is. Under the water.”

“What?”

“There’s a tunnel that leads off the island. Access is through the cell where they killed Angel and Diego. We just have to get to the cells.”

“Wait. Why did they put us in there if there was a way out?”

“I don’t think anyone but Cristiano knows about it. Maybe Dante. Put that away, okay?” I motion to the passport. I don’t want anyone walking in and seeing us with passports.

He looks down at it and tucks it out of sight in his back pocket.

“Here,” I take out just a few hundred-dollar bills and push them into my pocket before handing him the pouch. “This too. There’s a car waiting on the other side of the tunnel. Key’s inside there. Don’t be stupid with the car.”

His eyes narrow as he takes the pouch.