Page 26

26

ZANE

F rom the bottom floor of the cheap motel, the gunshot sounded like an explosion. It echoed off all the cracked tile and splintered through my ears.

But it was Ophelia screaming Otis’s name that was the most deafening of all.

Fawn’s eyes went wide, and in a heartbeat, she was lunging for the rickety metal staircase and was two stairs up it before I caught her wrist, pulling her back.

“Zane! Let me go! That’s my son up there!”

The panic and fear in her eyes made me want to give in. Made me want to let go of her and let her run up there, because all I’d ever wanted was to give her exactly what she needed.

But for once, my head knew better than my heart. “You running back up there is exactly what Eddie wants.”

She fought with me anyway, but this time, I wasn’t giving in. I caught her chin in my hand. “I’m going to get him back, Fawn. I promise.”

Something changed in her eyes, and then she pressed up on her toes and brushed her lips over mine.

I didn’t want to question what that kiss was.

Because something deep inside me felt like maybe it was a goodbye.

I spun on my heel, pushing the thought out of my head, because there was only room for one now. And that was getting Otis back.

Fawn would never be whole without him. And I refused to let her live the rest of her life in just a different sort of misery. I refused to let my brother take away the one small happiness he’d given her.

My boots thundered up the stairs, the old metal groaning beneath my weight, like it might collapse at any moment.

The scene at the top of them, in the open doorway of a motel room, stopped me in my tracks.

I’d assumed it had been Eddie who’d fired a shot. Or Vincent. Or Ophelia.

Instead I found Otis, a gun clutched in his small fingers, Ophelia, and Vincent trying to coax it from him, and Eddie finally looking at the kid with the pride I’d felt the moment I’d seen him.

A spray of plaster dust covered the dirty carpet, courtesy of the bullet hole in the ceiling.

“Come here.” Eddie held a hand out to his son. “Give me the gun.”

Otis went to move, obedient as ever, the survival mechanisms Fawn had taught him kicking in. He was just doing what had to be done to keep himself alive.

But Ophelia and Vincent both shouted, and Otis flinched, the gun swinging around the room wildly, making all three adults duck.

“Fucking hell, kid!” Eddie shouted. “Why are you so fucking dumb? Just give me the goddamn gun.”

Otis swung the gun in his father’s direction, and I saw the color pale out of Eddie’s face.

And the indecision, fear, and anger on Otis’s.

“I can take you to your mommy,” Ophelia tried coaxingly. “I know where she is.”

But Otis was too smart for that. He didn’t know she was his aunt. He didn’t know these people at all. All he knew was shouting and violence and that he had no idea who to trust.

But he trusted me.

It had been me who’d held him on the stairs that night, his mom screaming while his father hurt her. It had been me who’d rocked him to sleep, his head on my chest.

It was me who loved that kid with all my fucking heart, even though he’d been in my life for such a short period of time.

It didn’t matter. I’d loved him from the moment I’d set eyes on him. Because he was a part of the woman I’d never been able to forget.

And never would.

Even though I knew, when all this was done, she was going to walk away from me.

I shouldered my way past Vincent and dropped to my knees in the doorway. “Otis.”

His brown-eyed gaze slid to me, and all the anger and fear disappeared in an instant. He ran to me.

Eddie reached out to block him, and Fawn’s brother issued a single, chilling threat in a voice I hadn’t heard him use yet. “I wouldn’t.”

It was enough to give Eddie a second of pause, and Otis was small and fast enough to dodge around him. He threw himself into my arms, his little body trembling with fear and sobs bursting from his chest.

“I got you,” I whispered in his ear, plucking the gun from his fingers easily and pointing it at my brother, even though I wasn’t done with his kid. I pulled back, the gun never moving, but I needed Otis to know one thing before anything else happened. “You’re safe.” I kissed the top of his head, one eye on his father. “Your mom is downstairs. Go.”

He went without questioning me. His trust in me so absolute it broke my fucking heart. He was just a kid, desperate for a man in his life to be just that.

A man. A role model. A father.

I stood, raising the gun in my brother’s face.

Ophelia and Vincent at my back, all three of us facing the demon who’d taken Fawn from us for way too long.

Eddie laughed bitterly. “Didn’t think you had it in you, little brother. Didn’t think you had the brains.”

I shrugged. “I don’t. This was all Fawn.”

He snorted on a laugh. “The sniveling bitch who’s too afraid to even face me?”

Ophelia breathed out a long, slow breath and cracked her neck. “You’re making it so fucking hard not to kill you, Eddie. I swear, it’s taking every ounce of my self-control.”

He sneered at her. “Not as tough as the rumors about you make out then, huh? You a scared duckling like your sister?”

Surrounded, it was clear my brother had a death wish. Or he was just that arrogant. Or maybe he actually thought that little of anyone who wasn’t him.

The latter seemed most likely.

“And you?” Eddie sneered in Vincent’s direction. “Fucking kill me if you’re going to.”

Vincent turned his blade over faster in his fingers. “I want to. Every part of me is burning to thrust my knife so deep inside you I get to watch your blood spill slowly all over this floor.”

“Then why don’t you, you pussy? We both fucking know you would have by now if you were going to. But you’re all as weak as she is. Fucking pathetic. The lot of you.”

Fawn’s voice spoke up from the back of the crowd. “They aren’t because I told them not to.”

Eddie’s eyes flared, focusing past us on the woman he’d spent the best part of a decade obsessed with. “I knew you’d come crawling back. You learned your lesson yet?” He sat on the bed like he didn’t have a care in the world.

But I knew his tells. Saw the slight shake in his fingers and that he was covering it by clutching them into his undone jeans.

Because Fawn wasn’t alone anymore. Not only had Guerra walked in behind her, but she had all of us.

And Eddie knew it.

His gaze focused on Guerra, surprise and recognition filtering across his expression simultaneously. He held up his hands. “Hey. It was nothing personal. Your wife hired me to kill you.”

Guerra cocked his head to one side, considering Eddie’s plea. “So you won’t consider it personal when I kill you then?” He raised his gun and shot a shower of bullets into the bathroom door and wall.

I cringed at the muffled cry from the other side, and then the heavy slump of a body hitting the floor.

Eddie’s fear finally broke through the tough-guy exterior, sweat beads appearing on his forehead as he stared at the wall full of bullet holes. We all knew Audrina was very likely dead on the other side, lying in a pool of her own blood for betraying her husband.

Eddie might have given second chances, but apparently Guerra did not.

Eddie’s voice shook as he scrambled back on the bed. “Look, this wasn’t my idea. I barely even knew your wife. I don’t deserve to die because she’s a greedy bitch.”

Some sick part of me enjoyed watching my brother squirm. Enjoyed the fear in his rounded face. That dark part wanted to cross the space between us, put my gun in his mouth, and squeeze the trigger.

All while I stared into his eyes, eating up every last bit of his fear.

But it would never be enough to avenge what he’d done to Fawn. No number of bullets or quick deaths would repay the torture he’d inflicted on her day after day.

Fawn was owed revenge. Slow, painful, agonizing revenge.

We all moved in like a pack of wolves stalking its prey, and Eddie squirmed back on the bed. His shout echoed around the room when he realized there was no escape. “Just fucking kill me then! Get on with it!”

But none of us pulled a trigger. None of us lunged with a knife.

Fawn’s voice didn’t tremble. Her fingers didn’t shake. “Nobody is going to kill you.”

She smiled, and it was one I’d never seen on her before. One that suddenly made her look so much more like her siblings than I’d realized she could.

Her gaze never left his. “I made a deal for your life, Eddie. And you’ll get to live out the rest of yours, however long I decide that might be, in a cage. The same kind you kept me in for the past five years. You’ll be starved. Raped. Beaten. And then you’ll be left to die, scared, and without a single person by your side. Because that’s what you deserve.”

All that was left in her eyes was the satisfaction of seeing their roles reversed and knowing she’d won. “Mr. Guerra here owes me a favor. So he’s going to see that it happens.”

Guerra cracked his knuckles. “Did my wife tell you all about the cages in my basement, Eddie? Or did she forget to mention that while you were fucking and planning my death?” He glanced at Fawn. “Don’t worry about your husband.” His eyes darkened as they focused on Eddie. “Taking care of him is going to be my pleasure.”