Blood splatters across all of us—warm and wet and final. The bullet tears through Gilbert’s chest, the impact lifting him off his feet and pushing him backward. Red blooms across his suit, the white button down, spreading fast.
He falls to the ground.
Axel starts panicking, his breathing coming in short, sharp gasps. “Oh my God. Oh my God. You—”
“What were you saying, brother?” Lexi asks, the gun now pointed casually at Axel’s head. Her voice is calm. Too calm.
Axel drops to his knees, but he doesn’t cry. Just stares at Gilbert’s body, at the blood pooling beneath him. “You killed him.”
“He killed Mom!” Lexi’s voice finally cracks, emotion bleeding through.
Axel turns to her slowly, and there’s something broken in his expression. Something that looks like grief mixed with horror. “And now you’re no better than him.”
The words hang in the air, heavy and damning.
Lexi’s hand wavers for the first time, the gun dropping slightly.
I step forward carefully, hands visible. “Lexi—”
“Don’t.” She swings the gun toward me, and I freeze. “Don’t you fucking dare try to talk me down.”
“I wasn’t going to.” I meet her eyes. “You did what you had to do.”
She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Or did I just become exactly what he wanted me to be?”
No one answers that.
Because we all know the truth.
She just crossed a line you can’t uncross.
And there’s no going back from here.
47
Lexi
The gunshot still echoes in my ears even though the sound died seconds ago. Or maybe it’s been minutes. Time feels strange, elastic, like I’m moving through water.
My hand is steady. The gun doesn’t shake. I expected it to—expected some kind of physical manifestation of what I just did—but there’s nothing. Just the weight of the weapon and the smell of cordite burning my nostrils.
Gilbert’s body lies crumpled on the ground, blood spreading beneath him in a pool that catches the dim warehouse light and turns it dark, almost black. His eyes are still open, staring at nothing. One hand is outstretched like he was reaching for something in those final seconds.
I should feel something. Horror. Regret. The crushing weight of having just killed my own father.
But all I feel is... satisfied.
The Reaper’s crew materializes from the shadows like they were always there, waiting. Six men in black, faces covered, moving with the kind of efficiency that speaks to years of practice. They don’t look at me—don’t acknowledge the gun still in my hand or the body at my feet. They just start working.
One of them crouches beside Gilbert, checking for a pulse I know he won’t find. Another moves to Vincent’s body on the other side of the warehouse, the corpse I barely registered when I walked in. They’re staging it, I realize. Making it look like the two men killed each other in some final confrontation. They add in a few more bodies because time of death wouldn’t make sense.
Koa’s voice cuts through the haze, rough and damaged. When the hell did he get untied? “I’m making some calls. Got connections that can make this disappear.” His face is destroyed—swollen and bloodied. He pulls out a phone from somewhere and starts dialing, his voice dropping to a murmur as he speaks to someone on the other end.
I watch him, this boy who delivered me to monsters and called it protection. Watch the way he winces when he moves, the way blood drips from his split lip onto his shirt. Watch him orchestrate the cover-up of my father’s murder like it’s just another day.
And I feel nothing.
Revan and Atticus stand nearby, both splattered with Gilbert’s blood. Revan’s knuckles are split open, already swelling. Atticus has a cut above his eyebrow that’s still bleeding sluggishly. They’re talking in low voices, coordinating with the Reapers, but the words don’t penetrate.
