I’m out quickly in this round, left to watch the other make bold or stupid choices to stick or hit. While Garrett is chewing on his inner cheek, prolonging his choice, I glance at Meg. She is staring at the floor, her face blank, her shoulders curled inward. Like she’s already made peace with whatever fate is waiting for her. I refuse to accept that.
Shifting my shoe forward, I nudge her bare foot. She doesn’t respond, having retreated into her own mind, protecting herself from the anarchy happening around her. I suppose if she can’t hear or see us, she won’t feel the same distress that Avery obviously does. I hear Wyatt mutter her name, bringing my attention back to the game.
“Avery, it’s your turn,” Wyatt tries again. She barely hears him. She can’t tear her eyes away from her twin. Wyatt touches her knee, trying his best to bring her focus back to the table, and it’s permitted this time. Swallowing hard, Avery’s empty eyes glance over the cards in her hand. She sticks despite only having a total sum of six. Her mind can’t carry on, pretending that someone’s life in this room isn’t hanging in the balance.
As the others gamble too highly without reward, Wyatt sits across from the dealer; his focus zeroed in on the next card is flipped. The dealer leers as if he has a personal feud here, his lip curling when he goes bust. Wyatt exhales, his green eyes settling on Harrison’s face. For the first time, I see something shift in Harrison’s expression. Annoyance. He knows he’s running out of chances to walk out of here.
Lifting the revolver, Harrison rolls his neck and lifts it to his temple as Wyatt speaks, his voice flat and emotionless.
“Nixon.”
A collective inhale shakes the room. Nixon stiffens beside Axel, his battered body still having enough strength to react. His bruised jaw tightens, and his hands clench into fists on his lap. He should have seen this coming. We all should have.
The tension is suffocating, pressing down on my chest like an iron weight. I know Wyatt hates his father, or adoptive father, I suppose, but to choose to end his life over an ex-convict who is threatening our girl? There’s no one I couldn’t forgive at this moment, just to ensure Avery’ssafety. The blonde has twisted in her seat to watch Wyatt closely, but the string of pleading for mercy doesn’t come. She doesn't say anything in favor of the man who admittedly loved and cherished her the way a father should for the last eleven years. The realest father she’s known.
My eyes flick between the revolver, Wyatt’s rigid expression, and Harrison’s surprised grin. Harrison lets out a low chuckle, the sound slithering up my spine.
“Bold choice,” he muses, rolling his wrist to point the end of the barrel toward Nixon’s slumped head. Nixon exhales slowly. He doesn’t beg. Doesn’t even flinch. Avery’s hands grip the edge of the table, her knuckles white. Wyatt keeps his gaze locked on Nixon, unreadable and unmoving. Harrison leans forward slightly, his lips curling, his eyes gleaming with something far worse than amusement.
Then he pulls the trigger, and the gun fires. A crack rips through the silence. Deafening and absolute.
Nixon slumps forward, his body lurching before it’s caught by Axel, who surges up despite the bruises along his ribs. Blood spatters across the table, over the deck of cards still in play, over the green felt that is meant for wagers and cheap entertainment. Not this.
Avery screams, her hands flying to cover her ears. I doubt she thought it would actually fire; the injustice of it all splattered crimson across the far wall. The round had the bullet primed; the bullet was meant for Harrison.
Whether by the gunfire or Avery’s scream, Meg flinches so violently, her chair scrapes backward. A ragged sound tears from her throat as her body jerks to life, no longer trapped in whatever hollow place she’s been buried in. She gasps, chest heaving, eyes wild. They are so much like Avery’s but duller, clouded. For the first time, she looks at her twin sister. Locking their gaze, the screaming stops, their chests heaving with so much that needs to be said, but there’s no time.
The thud of the revolver is dropped on the table, its dull metal catching the light. I don’t know where to look or what to do. Now that the shot has been fired, we can leave, right? But the rough hands of the ex-cons behind our seats wouldn’t suggest that is the case.
Despite the nauseating scent of gunpowder still clinging to the air, I struggle to put the facts together. Struggle to come to terms with how fast Nixon went from being here, alive and breathing one second, andgone the next. It was so quick, so final. I glance at Meg again, instinctively reaching for her panicked, shivering body. My hand is swiftly hit with the butt of a gun, which is then turned and pressed against my head.
“Don’t fucking move,” my personal goon spits. “We’re not done here.” I freeze in place. My entire being starts and ends where the circular barrel is pushing at my temple, memories of the bullet slicing through my shoulder. Except this time, if the gun is shot, I wouldn’t even feel it. I’d be like Nixon, here and then gone. Alive and then not, in a split second, leaving Avery and my brothers behind. A singular thought rounds my mind on a continuous loop.I’m not ready to die.
Harrison watches us all, his mouth tilted at an angle. Opening the chamber of his revolver, he puts a fresh bullet in and spins before snapping it closed.
“We go again,” he announces coldly. Terror filters through me, and I manage to scowl at Wyatt. The hollering picks up again, my brothers yelling to call Harrison a cheat or complain that it’s unfair. As if any of it's fair, as if Harrison was ever going to stick to his own rules. We should have killed him when we had the chance, but now I’m the one with a heavy metal weight pressing against my head. Dully, I come to comprehend that there weren’t any rules to begin with. Whether by Harrison or one of the men working for him, we would never leave once we entered this room.
Chapter Forty Five
My pulse thunders in my ears, my breathing echoing like an empty rattle in my chest. I should be fighting for control like the others, but I can’t bring myself to clear the daze coating my vision. It’s like the room is spinning in slow motion, Meg’s haunted blue eyes blinking at me through the chaos. Huxley is frozen in place, a gun at his temple.
Dax is trying to hold Wyatt back, as my stepbrother grapples to stay standing despite the multiple goons trying to push him back into his seat. I don’t see the taser drawn until it’s shoved into Wyatt's side, forcing him into submission. The zapping jolts through my senses, and Wyatt’s arm hit me on the way down, a heavy thud against my arm and the chair groaning beneath his bulky weight.
Beside me, Garrett is cradling a blood-smattered Axel, protecting him as much as he’s able with his arms wrapped around Axel’s shuddering shoulders. Clearly, the body staring blankly at him is having a huge psychological effect on Axel’s mind.
I can’t bring myself to look at Nixon. I can’t even consider what the blank look in his eyes means. For all of his misgivings, he was my parent. My last living parent. I swallow, forcing the thoughts back, knowing I’ll need to deal with some things later. If there even is a later.
Harrison catches my eye, his smile menacing as he orders the dealer to set up a fresh game. The first card is tossed across the table, landingface-up in front of me, and just as I resign myself to this never-ending hell, the lights flicker.
At first, the bulb blinks, plunging us into bouts of darkness and then flashing bright again. A chill grips me in its claws, a voice in my head telling me not to be stupid. Not to risk the family I have left. The flickering casts jagged shadows across the card table, making every movement feel disjointed, like a stuttering film reel that’s skipping frames. I force my eyes away from the dead body, from Axel’s traumatized expression, from the twisted smirk curling at Harrison’s lips. I set my sights back on Meg, and in the next bout of darkness, I move.
Wyatt groans beside me, his body twitching from the aftershocks of the taser. He feels the brush of my leg shift against him and tries to push himself towards me. Luckily, like the other men in the room, he’s too slow. The light flashes on, catching me nearing the wall. I half debate tackling the man holding Hux hostage, but in a split decision, I know I can’t risk it. Two more steps, plunged into darkness again, and I’m throwing myself in Meg’s unexpecting arms before the next blackout.
Meg stiffens as my weight crashes into her, her arms frozen at her sides as if she doesn’t know what to do with me. My fingers clutch at the tattered fabric of her top, desperate and clawing, grounding myself in the little warmth she has.
She smells different. Gone is the floral shampoo I remember, replaced by sweat, blood, and fear. She feels different. There was no familiarity or returning hug or grasping desperation to get closer to me like I imagined. But beneath it all, buried under months of pain, she’s still my twin and my best friend. I need to get her out of here.
The lights flash back on, and she jerks away as if she’s been burned. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one who was in a rush to reach her. Harrison’s laughter cuts through the space between us, his hand grasping her by the hair. Meg’s body slips away from me, her raspy scream beside my ear. I grapple blindly, wrapping my hands around her arm and moving to stay with her. Vaguely, I hear shouting and banging against the other door, just a minute too late.
