Page 184 of Between Passion and Revenge: Part Two

“Who was Zane Gibson working with?” he asks slowly, his voice almost soft.

Darren sneers.

“Why does it matter? The motherfucker’s dead now.”

Storm still stands tall, but this time I watch his shoulders rise and fall as he takes a slow, deep breath.

Then, he cocks his firearm.

“I’ll give you one more time to tell me what you know,” Storm says.

Bakari starts sputtering.

“Man, if you know something, say something!” he shouts, his words falling together.

Darren’s eyes turn flinty, and he tilts his chin up, unyielding.

“Either you kill me, or he does.” Darren delivers the words with a humorless chuckle.

He? Who is “he?”

I call back the nonsense Zane spewed at me before he shoved me in the trunk. Whowashe going to bring me to?

“But if you’re gonna do it, get it the fuck out of the way,” Darren says, sneering at the trio.

Storm doesn’t flinch when the gun in his hand goes off, the silencer muting the explosion, and Darren drops to the ground from a killshot.

Bakari’s mouth wrenches open in a silent scream as he stares at the fallen man.

“You know anything?” Storm asks Bakari, his voice calm as if he hasn’t just killed a man where we park our SUVs.

“I don’t know anything! I swear!”

Storm cocks his head to the side for a long moment.

“I believe you,” Storm finally says. Bakari’s shoulders drop, and he almost bows to Storm.

When he straightens, his eyes nearly bulge out of his head. Storm’s gun hovers an inch from the man’s eyebrows.

Shaking his head frantically, Bakari says, “I really don’t know anything! I didn’t have anything to do with?—”

“I don’t fucking care,” Storm mutters.

Bakari locks eyes with me, and I see his innocence. I see he had nothing to do with whatever his partner was involved in.

He was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

“Wait!” I shout, stepping into the room. Axel and Riale’s heads whip in my direction as I run toward Storm.

But he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t react—almost as if he knew I was there all along.

“Storm, don’t!” I scream, reaching for my love, but it’s too late.

Storm drops the remaining man with a twin bullet to the brain.

Breathe. Breathe, Shae.

Still staring at Storm’s back, I track the rise and fall of his breath. I register how, in the reverberation of the gunfire, he seems to calm, settle.