ONE SECOND AFTER ANOTHER
by Bethany-Kris
The After Another Trilogy, Book Three
Publication Date: November 9, 2020
Genres: Adult, Romantic Suspense, Crime Thriller, Organized Crime
There’s only one way this can end …
Penny Dunsworth isn’t hiding.
Not anymore. An assassin turned legend, AWOL from her organization act h in
and hunted from all sides, nothing is going to stop her from finishing what she started. By the time she’s done with The Elite, no truth will be left untold, and maybe—just maybe—she can go back ...
That is if she can make it out alive.
Luca Puzza only wanted to help.
His obsession with the white ghost has left him alone, estranged from his own world and family, and in constant danger. That doesn’t mean he’s going to give up. Besides, if he found her once, then he can do it again. And this time, he won’t be the one letting her go.
There’s too much on the line to fail.
She dares to wish for a life after pain. He dares to think they could have it. But it only takes one second for everything to change—one mistake could end it all.
Some say legends never die.
But what happens when they do?
NOTE: One Second After Another is book 3 in the After Another trilogy. It follows the same couple – Luca and Penny – from present to past, and back again. The books must be read in order. Be warned, the trilogy discusses a subject that may be triggering.
BUY LINKS:
One Second After Another (The After Another Trilogy, book #3)
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One Step After Another (The After Another Trilogy, book #1)
Amazon: https://geni.us/OneStep
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One Breath After Another (The After Another Trilogy, book #2)
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Google Play: https://bit.ly/3jlvjmc
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MUSIC PLAYLIST:
Direct Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55-I0Z8d9utzZtJh039ewQ1H2jtyBNSm
EXCERPT #1 - Luca
Mere seconds could change everything. Even, the span of time it took Luca to open his eyes and know he was alone in the hotel room. He didn’t need to turn in the bed to see it was empty of Penny’s presence. He felt the loss.
Knew it was real before it actually was. The weight sitting on his chest, and the cold cloud surrounding him made the white ceiling seem like it was closing down in on him. The absolute silence—but for his steady breaths and the beats of his heart—confirmed what he already knew even though he didn’t want to believe it.
He was alone.
Absolutely.
“Penny,” he dared to call.
Daring himself to be wrong.
Willing her to prove him wrong, even.
His call went unanswered.
Before that moment, Luca hadn’t realized loneliness could be such a tangible thing. Beyond a feeling, there was a real presence about it. A heaviness around him that made it all the more real.
And cruel.
There was something to be said about the way loneliness could leave a man confused. Like as he sat up in the bed, confirming Penny’s side was empty and so was the rest of the room, he just couldn’t catch up to speed. He was quite aware Penny wasn’t beside him in the bed like she had been the night before when they fell asleep. And yet, a part of him didn’t want to believe that even when he grabbed the blanket and yanked it away from her empty pillow. Even the indentation of her head was gone.
The room was just … chilly.
When had she gotten up?
Did she leave or—
“Penny!”
Luca’s shout undoubtedly carried out through the bedroom door to the rest of the hotel room, but to no avail. He didn’t get an answer just like the first time.
Fuck.
He was trying not to panic. Excuses raced through his mind in a shitty attempt to quell how the nervousness skimming over his skin when he exited the bed. Cold floors met the soles of his feet while he thought … she’s just getting food—maybe coffee. Shit, he couldn’t pretend to know what Penny did during her days. He’d only been back in her life for a short while. Who was to say she didn’t have an entire routine in the mornings, right?
Bullshit.
He knew it.
His heart screamed it.
Of course, that didn’t stop his sleepy brain from trying to brush off the obvious. Like the differences in the bedroom—the shoes Penny had kicked to the side were now gone. Her laptop sat open on the chair, but only the back of the screen faced him. As if she had been sitting there with it, and just left it where it was because she wouldn’t need it. The wall safe next to the bed had been left open.
Why didn’t he hear that?
Right.
Because he thought he was safe. Stupidly, he believed that he had the upper hand where Penny was concerned. Why would she leave again? Hell, she brought him here.
That’s why it didn’t make sense. Why he couldn’t catch up, so to speak.
The obvious stared him in the face as he gathered his clothes from the night before in his arms and headed for the connected bathroom, but he still refused to accept it. He had one leg stuffed into the pair of jeans and was shoving in his second leg as he came to a complete stop in the doorway of the bathroom.
There was no ignoring it now. Everything became painfully clear.
And written in red.
Literally.
The bathroom looked like someone had went knife happy on the place—or rather, over the sink. The shirt dangled from Luca’s clenched fist as he dared to step closer to the mess, reading the words that had been hastily scrawled on the mirror that faced him while he took in the bloody mess in the sink.
A knife sat on the rim. Half on, blade hanging over the edge. Balancing dangerously … like the woman who put it there, he knew. Holding on, but barely. Blood still red on the blade.
In the mirror, he read Penny’s bloody words: Sorry, this is on my terms now. He had the distinct feeling the message wasn’t directed at him, and yet, it still stung just the same.
Luca started moving a little faster, then. While he raced to put everything together—to figure out how he went to bed with Penny only to wake up alone with a bloody bathroom next door—he managed to shove his shirt down over his head.
Maybe he could catch up with Penny … wherever in the hell she went. And deal with whatever reason for her disappearance, too. Punching his arms through the sleeves, he went in search of his hoodie and jacket but—
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Penny, open up! Penny!”
Luca’s stride came to a stop just beyond the bathroom threshold as the noise became louder.
“Penny, open this goddamn door right now!”
Not that Luca needed more confirmation that Penny had disappeared the night before after she let him fuck her and slept tucked into his side, but the noise outside the hotel room did exactly that for him. He didn’t even have time to figure out how that made him feel or what it meant that she left.
Again.
It wasn’t the same as the last time.
He knew that.
It still … hurt.
The banging came again—louder and harder. The hint of desperation in the familiar voice calling through the thick hotel door made Luca think the man didn’t want to believe what was happening, either.
He recognized the man’s voice even though he had only heard it once before. Cree. Given their first meeting, he couldn’t exactly forget the man.
“Penny, come on—open the fuck up!”
Luca almost missed it. To his right, the flicker of the laptop screen, he almost fucking missed it because he was distracted by the bloody mess behind him, and the unwelcomed visitors barking at one another between hitting their fists against the door. He could have blamed the fact he just woke up, too, but now he was wide awake so that didn’t work.
Nonetheless, Luca saw it.
He watched as the screen of Penny’s laptop flickered—the cursor jumped from one side of the page to the other, tabs closing and opening, pages scrolling downward fast before flipping to another one. He didn’t even have the chance to blink. He was watching, in real-time, as someone hacked Penny’s laptop.
The only good thing about it?
He could see what they saw.
Probably the same thing Penny had been looking at before she set the laptop down and walked away from it the night before. The last thing he saw before the laptop’s screen went entirely black was an image and a headline.
He was only able to read the name in the headline: Allegra Hatheway. Except he knew that woman—the one in the image at the top of the article before the screen blanked out—as Allegra Dunsworth, Penny’s mother. Once, he sat at the same table as the woman while lawyers worked out the final details of an estate that was split between two beneficiaries.
Penny and her mother.
But he knew a lot more about Allegra through his years of tracking down every scrap of Penny’s history and proof of existence that he could find. It wasn’t a lot. It was just enough to tell him that there had never been anything good between the two.
That was all he knew.
So why was she looking up her mother?
And why did she leave when she found her?
Those were answers Luca didn’t have and wouldn’t have the time to figure out. At least, not at the moment. The yelling from outside the hotel room brought him back to reality and out of his self-pity in a flash.
“Open the door or I am breaking it down,” he heard called.
Well …
Time for him to go.
It took all of two seconds for Luca to realize what Penny had done and why there was blood in the bathroom. She told him once that The League could find her no matter where she was. He bet the blood wasn’t the only thing she left behind for them to find. Might they find a tracking chip at the bottom of the sink drain?
He didn’t plan to find out.
How would this situation end for him if Cree—and whoever was with him—broke down the hotel door just to find Luca in there alone? Fuck, they already threatened to kill him. He wasn’t about to give them another reason to see it through.
He did like being alive.
Even if he didn’t know why.
Luca was just beginning to scale the ledge of the hotel room’s small veranda when he heard wood crack as the door was kicked in. Lucky for him, it wasn’t the first time he had to make a quick exit … or take an unconventional route of escape.
Unluckily for the people in the hotel room below Penny’s, too. Because the naked couple—the redheaded female riding her partner on the bed facing the veranda down below where Luca landed—certainly hadn’t expected him to dart through their hotel room with a quick, “My bad!”
The woman shrieked, scrambling off her partner and grasping for the sheets that really did nothing to hide her body. The man only swore.
“Nice tits, though,” he called over his shoulder.
They didn’t even have time to react. He was already exiting their smaller hotel room before the two even fully understood what had happened. The hallway was empty. He had no idea what was happening above his head a floor higher or if this plan of his would even work.
If he could call it a plan.
Could he if he didn’t know what he was doing?
Likely not.
What did it matter?
Luca doubted running would work for him—Nevada wasn’t his territory, after all. He didn’t have connections, didn’t know the streets, and on top of that, still needed to get out.
Would it work?
Probably not.
Fuck him if he wouldn’t try, though.
Where are you, Penny?
That was the real question.
The entire fucking problem, honestly.
REVIEW:
The culmination of Luca and Penny is here and you won’t be disappointed. I knew this book was going to be a doozy and that was exactly what I got. Picking up where book 2 left off, Penny is out to get revenge, but she makes it interesting when she does something truly unheard of.
Luca knows he needs to find Penny so he can help her, but is surprised when she essentially tells him she doesn’t need or want his help. They are honestly one of the best couples. He supports her and wants to help her, and even though she doesn’t need him she likes his protectiveness and being with him.
A book that wraps up their story in the perfect way. There are ups and downs and you will go on a roller coaster ride throughout the book. I highly recommend this series, and especially this book. I received an ARC in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.
AUTHOR INFO:
Bethany-Kris is a Canadian author, lover of much, and mother to four young sons, one cat, and two dogs. A small town in Eastern Canada where she was born and raised is where she has always called home. With her boys under her feet, snuggling cat, barking dogs, and a hubby calling over his shoulder, she is nearly always writing something … when she can find the time.
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★★CONNECT WITH BK★★
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