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“You poisoned Piper against me!” The gun swung toward Lachlan now. “She was mine! My legacy! My?—”

Twenty-seven years of programmed obedience shattered.

“I wasneveryours!”

The words erupted from somewhere deep, somewhere I’d kept locked and buried and silent for so long. Ray jerked back,genuinely stunned. I’d never raised my voice to him. Never fought back. Never defied.

“You destroyed everything good!” The dam broke completely. “Every birthday, every Christmas, every moment that should have been happy—you defiled it all! You beat us, terrorized us, turned our lives into hell, and for what? For your ego? For your pathetic little crimes?”

“You ungrateful?—”

“I was a child!” I twisted in his grip, not caring about the gun anymore. “A child who just wanted her father to love her! But you’re just a small, pathetic man who hurts people because it makes you feel big. What’s even worse is that you were going to carry on that tradition of pain and terror with your own grandchildren! You are a useless piece of shit, and no matter what happens from here on out,my father is dead to me!”

His face went purple. The gun swung back toward me, but his shock had made him sloppy. His grip was wrong, his stance off-balance.

A baby’s giggle flooded the room. Sadie. Making her little baby noises that I’d know anywhere. I didn’t know where it was coming from, then I heard Beckett say, “Aw, come on, now. You’re ridiculously cute.”

What? Beckett wasn’t here.

The baby’s laugh came again, and I realized the sound was coming from Lachlan’s phone. He’d made Sadie’s laugh his ringtone.

Ray’s head turned toward the sound, like mine did. But it took him longer to figure out what was going on.

I took advantage of his mistake, dropping like dead weight, straight down, while twisting my body. Ray’s grip broke. His gun hand flew up as he tried to maintain control.

Lachlan knew what to do from there, as I knew he would. Two shots were deafening in the enclosed space, and Ray fell away from me, dropping back onto the floor.

Lachlan was up the stairs and on me, pulling me away from Ray and kicking his gun out of his reach.

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer.

“Are you okay?” He pulled me against his chest.

“Yes. Are you?”

“Now that he doesn’t have a gun pointed at your head, I am.” Red and blue lights were flashing outside. “I radioed for backup as soon as I got your call and realized Ray was here.”

“Why didn’t you wait for them? You could’ve been killed!”

He cupped my face in his hands. “There was no way in hell I was leaving you in here alone with him. I could tell he was unstable, and I wasn’t taking a chance with your life.”

“Thank you.” That choice had probably saved me. As soon as Ray had heard sirens for real, he would’ve made sure I couldn’t testify against him.

“Thank you. Everything worked out just the way it should because of you.” He kissed my forehead. “Now let me go get things calmed down outside.”

Ray moaned on the floor at my feet. The man who’d haunted every corner of my life—reduced now to a trembling, broken shell. Pathetic. Small. Just an old man undone by his own overconfidence and paranoia.

Lachlan returned less than a minute later, two deputies flanking him. They pulled Ray upright, hauling him down the stairs and cuffing him as he wheezed for breath.

“You’ll never be more than what I made you,” he spat, blood staining his teeth.

The room went still.

I stepped closer, my voice steady, cold. “You’re right. Everything I am is because of you. Because you showed me exactly what I never want to be.”

Ray blinked, confused by the calm in my voice.

“I am a real parent. I am someone who protects their children instead of using them. I am someone who loves instead of destroys. So yeah…you get the credit. Because I became everything you weren’t.”