Page 88 of Cannon

“Not by blood!” She pushed off the wall, moving toward me again. “We’re not related. We never were. And I’ve loved you since that day you killed that boy who attacked me. Remember? You were sixteen. You protected me. You’ve always protected me. That was the day I fell in love with you. When I realized that I wanted to repay you for protecting me.”

The memory flashed through my mind. Reese, fifteen, clothes torn, crying as some neighborhood kid tried to force himself on her. Me, finding them, the rage that overtook me. The knife in my hand. The blood.

“That doesn’t mean… Jesus, Reese. We grew up together. We were adopted together. We’re family.”

“We can be more,” she insisted, reaching for me again. “Now that Gage is gone, we can be together. The way it was always meant to be.”

Everything clicked into place: the bruise was definitely self-inflicted, the crocodile tears, the manipulations. She’d known exactly what I would do to any man who hurt her. She’d played me.

“Did you set him up?” I asked, my voice deadly quiet. “Did you set me up to kill him?”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Does it matter? He’s gone now. We can be together.”

I backed away from her, shaking my head. “You’re sick, Reese. You need help.”

“I need you!” she cried, desperation creeping into her voice. “The boys need you! We can be a family…a real family!”

“The boys deserve better than this,” I said, moving toward the door. “Better than you using them as pawns in whatever fucked-up game you’re playing.”

“You’ll love me eventually,” she said, her voice hardening with certainty. “You’ll see. We belong together.”

I turned away, unable to look at her anymore. This woman I’d known most of my life, suddenly a stranger. “I’m leaving. Don’t call me.”

“The boys will be home soon,” she pleaded. “At least wait to see them.”

“No.” I opened the door, pausing without looking back. “Tell them… tell them I won’t be coming around anymore.”

“You can’t abandon them!” she screamed. “They need you!”

“What they need is a mother who isn’t manipulating everyone around her.” I stepped outside, the fresh air a relief after the suffocating tension inside. “Get help, Reese. For their sake, if not yours.”

I walked to my car, her screams following me across the yard. As I slid behind the wheel, I caught a glimpse of her in the doorway; hair wild, eyes blazing, mouth twisted in fury. A stranger wearing my sister’s face.

I pulled away from the curb, my hands shaking on the steering wheel. The weight of what I’d done, killing Gage for her, pressed down on me like a mountain. I’d taken a man’s life because I believed he was hurting my family. And he had been the victim all along. That shit was fuckin’ with me. I never killed for the sake of killing. It was always out of protection of either myself or the ones that I loved. Reese was out of her fuckin’ mind. We had been through so much together and she held me down when I was in prison, but our relationship was over. I couldn’t believe I was losing the only family that I had.

I drove in silence, the summer heat pressing through the windshield but cold settling in my chest. Reese’s face, her words,her kiss kept replaying in my head, twisting everything I thought I knew about family.

First Tessa giving me up at birth. Then my adoptive mother. Now Reese.

Every woman I was supposed to be able to trust turned on me in some way, used me, betrayed me. Would Queen be next? Did I even really trust her?

I thought of the boys, their little arms around me, their voices calling me Uncle Cannon. The only pure thing left, and even that I had to walk away from because their mother had poisoned it.

Just as I was making my way back to the city, I got a text from Creed.

Chapter 34

Cannon

I stared at Creed’s text, feeling the weight of my past and future colliding.

Intel checks out. Time to handle Smoke. Meet at my penthouse in an hour.

The phone felt heavy in my hand as I weighed my options. I’d just walked away from the only family I thought I had, discovered my sister was a manipulative sociopath who had me kill an innocent man.

But now it was time to handle business. I needed to take care of Smoke for shooting at me and threatening my woman’s life.

I hit call instead of texting back. Creed answered on the first ring.