Chapter 34 · Price of a Memory

"Don't touch her." Cole lunged across the table, but Silas Quinn caught him by the throat and slammed him into the stone wall.

The stolen memory cards slipped from Quinn's other hand and scattered across the floor. Each one showed a different piece of Cole's life. His sister laughing in a kitchen that no longer existed. His old police badge. A hospital room. Eve standing beside him with blood on her sleeve.

Quinn pressed two fingers under Cole's jaw. Not hard enough to crush. Just enough to make breathing a choice.

"You want the memories?" Quinn asked. "Then stop pretending you can survive the truth."

Cole grabbed Quinn's wrist and drove his knee up. Quinn twisted away before the hit landed. His grip tightened instead, dragging Cole's head against the wall.

"You stole them," Cole snapped. "Give them back."

"I kept them from you. There's a difference."

"That supposed to make me feel better?"

"No. It's supposed to keep you alive."

Across the room, Eve Vane kicked one of the cards away from her boot. The card spun across the black floor, showing a younger Cole sitting at a kitchen table with his little sister, Mara, asleep against his shoulder.