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With my gun trained on Nikolai, I couldn’t stop Hazel from doing something stupid. I didn’t know her well enough to determine if she was bluffing, but I couldn’t take the chance. “You don’t want to do that, Hazel.”
“Yes, I do.” Hazel nodded, her hand trembled with the gun poised against her skin, the barrel flush with her body. She may have been wearing a bulletproof vest, but it wouldn’t save her, not with what she had planned.
“Listen to your sister,” Lincoln said. “She’s willing to die because of what you did.”
Skylar struggled against Nikolai, squirming in his grasp, trying to shrug away from him, but he wouldn’t let her escape. “Let me go,” Skylar whispered, her eyes welled with tears. “Please. I don’t even know what’s going on. I won’t tell anyone.”
I wasn’t going to let him disappear. Not after all that he’d done. “Tell Hazel what you did, Nikolai.”
Nikolai shook his head, his dark thick hair falling into his eyes. “Everything I’ve done was for you, Hazel. All I wanted was your happiness.”
“My happiness?” Hazel scoffed and stepped forward. Her own gun still pointed at her head. “You sold me to Franco to be his bride! I’d sooner die than marry that disgusting pig.”
Nikolai blinked several times over; his expression looked perplexed. “What?”
“You heard me!” Hazel shouted as she stepped closer, unafraid of her brother. “I’m tired of you running my life and ruining it. I know what you and dad did. I know about the jobs, the fake agency I worked for, the boyfriends who you and dad paid off. I’m not an idiot, you know.”
Nikolai released his grip on Skylar, and she hurried away from him as Lincoln grabbed her and dragged her behind him for protection.
“They weren’t good enough for you,” Nikolai said, his attention on Hazel. “It’s my duty to protect you. You’re my baby sister. Those men weren’t deserving of you.”
“You bastard, that was my decision to make!” Hazel shouted up at him. Staring him down, the gun trembling in her grip, her finger on the trigger.
Nikolai lowered the gun in his hand and reached for Hazel’s weapon. “If you die, I’ll kill every last one of them.”
“No, you won’t,” Hazel said and turned the gun pulling the trigger, shooting Nikolai in the chest.