“Let me out,” Izzy said, keeping her voice steady even as her pulse quickened.
“Or what?” another one chimed in. “You gonna call Daddy’s lawyers?”
They believed the story she had fed them for two years, that she lived with her aunt because her parents traveled constantly for business, that the reason she left school in a nondescript sedan instead of a chauffeured SUV was because she liked independence, that the reason no one ever came to parent-teacher conferences was because her family valued privacy.
The truth—that her father ran one of the most powerful motorcycle clubs in the region, that the Red Saints had more influence in certain neighborhoods than the police did, that violence was something she had been raised to understand but not to romanticize—was something she kept buried, because normalcy was a luxury she guarded fiercely.
“Caleb,” she said now, turning toward him, “this isn’t funny.”
He stepped out of the car, walked around to her side, and yanked the door open, the wind immediately stealing the heat from the interior.
“Here’s how this works,” he said calmly. “You sit out here and think about how you talk to people. When you’re ready to apologize and say yes, you can come find us at Tyler’s place. Five blocks east.”
“It’s below zero,” she said, disbelief creeping into her voice. “You can’t just leave me here.”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her out onto the icy pavement. She slipped, hit her hip hard, and before she could scramble up, someone had tossed her phone into a snowbank and her keys in the opposite direction.
“Have fun,” Caleb called over his shoulder, and then the Audi’s taillights disappeared into the whiteout.
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