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“Daughter? She should be an adult now.” They were connecting the dots. Jesus, they were connecting the dots.
“What are you even talking about? We haven’t seen them in ten years,” I butted in, hoping they didn’t notice my shaky breath.
“It doesn’t matter. The point now is that they are one of our suspects.”
“Sus… suspects? How?” I was sweating. My hands were shaking and I clamped them together in fear of being caught.
My family had a way of telling when I hid something. Hell,everyonecould tell when I was hiding something, because of my hands that would never stop shaking, my eyes that would never stop dilating and my legs that would never stop shifting.
They couldn’t find out who Alex was. I just found her back after a hot search, they couldn’t find her and make me lose her again. I wouldn’t let them do that. I wasn’t fifteen anymore, I was twenty-five, I was old enough to protect my woman and that was what I was going to do.
I was going to kill them even if Jordan told me not to. I would never let them take her away from me again. I wanted to love her this time, I wanted a family with her this time and I knew it was possible, it was.
The only problem was my family. The problem had always been them, but I was going to stop it this time. I was going to kill them together with Jordan.
They could sue me for choosing to protect my woman after everything they did to her, after everything they did to us.
“What are you saying, Daniel?” Dad fumed as he stared into space, trying to think about it too.
“What if Jordan sent Alex to kill us as revenge?”
17
ALEXIS
Nightmares.
I’d had nightmares after nightmares ever since what happened ten years ago. Every night it happened again; Uncle Cedric came in with his sons, they raped me, I woke up in the hospital, we relocated, I took therapies, the therapists raped me, the police said there was no evidence and I just made things up because of my past trauma.
I relived the incidents every night, waking up in small hours and not being able to sleep again until the next night. While they all enjoyed their lives like normal people, as if nothing ever happened. As if they never raped a twelve-year-old girl because her father had stolen their money.
Every night when I woke up, I would ask myself the same question. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ My dad and Uncle Cedric were so close,tooclose for my dad to just steal his money. If he needed money, he could’ve asked. He was his fucking best friend, for crying out loud.
Something went wrong somewhere, but where? Where the fuck did it all go wrong?
I felt like only three people could know the answer to that question, and they were my mom, my dad and Uncle Cedric. My mom was off the list because she would tell me if she knew anything, she would never keep me in the dark like that. My dad was also off the list because well… I killed him, duh.
Which left Uncle Cedric as the only living witness to whatever happened, but he would never tell me.
He would only tell me if he knew I was going to die the next minute, but I needed to know. Something had to have happened. There was no smoke without a fire, so what was the fire? And if it was a person,whowas the fire?
‘What if Jordan sent Alex to kill us as revenge?’
I had never made a U-turn so fast in my entire life, not even when I was after that twenty-year-old guy who raped and killed his fourteen-year-old sister.
After I heard that sentence from Daniel, I did a one-eighty to Kendal and Ariana’s school. It was a two hour forty minute drive from where I was, but I had to visit them.
They were connecting the dots, finding out the people that could want them dead and even though I should blush for making the list, I was tense. I had kids, kids who couldn’t get caught in the web like I did when I was young.
I had ruined them already by killing their father even though to be fair, I only knew he had kids after he died.
Though I wouldn’t have stopped even if I knew beforehand. He was on my list and people on my list never survived.
I would be damned for life if anything ever happened to Ken and Ari. I was already attached to them, but if staying away equaled their safety, then I was happy to remove myself from their lives.
I was going to talk with Kendal about the adoption, because taking them to my mother wasn’t safe either. If their investigator was smart like John, he would trace my mother instead of me, then trace me through my mother, which already exposed her to danger.
I heard Jayden call John in his car and told him to do a background check on their investigator. I smiled. The man had no idea what he was doing, leaving his family to support the assassin.