“I told you not to touch her!” Dorran spits at Dad, then punches him in the gut.
He bends forward, but recovers surprisingly fast.
“Stand the fuck down!” Jayce tells the guards. “Or my brother here will cut the old bastard open before any of you can so much as blink.”
They look unsure, but when Dad nods at them, they step back.
“You forget your place, Dorran,” he says, then groans and places a hand on his stomach. “You forget who has been providing for you and yourpetsfor all these years.”
“For airing your dirty laundry so that your manicured fingers remain clean? Trust me, Chase, Iknow.” Dorran gets in Dad’s face. “But the thing is: Cignette means more to me than you or your money. She completes me. It’s something nothing and no one has ever had the power to do.”
“She will be the end of you; the end of everything you’ve created for yourself, and everything that youare.”
“Oh, Chase.” Dorran smiles, then chuckles. “Put me in a fucking grave, and watch how I come back to life with the smallest of breaths she takes in my name. Cignette is my beginning, and if she’s to be my end, then I’ll go a happy fucking man, I assure you.”
Dad gives him a once over, then tilts his head to the side. “Not if I kill her first.” He points the Glock at me, and before I know what’s happening, he fires it in my direction.
I suck in a breath and wait for the impact, the pain, but it doesn’t come. What instead happens is far more agonizing than I could have ever imagined the bullet wound to feel like.
Mave has stepped in front of me, and I watch – completely shell-shocked – as he takes the bullet that was meant forme, right in the center of his throat. It exits through the back of his neck, and as a scream rips out of me, he falls onto the floor with a heavy thud.
“Motherfucker!” Dorran yells, and I see a flash as he punches my dad in the jaw, but I’m too broken to do anything but fall on my knees in front of Mave.
In front of his body.
“Mave…” I shake him, but he doesn’t respond to me.
Healwaysresponds to me.
My vision is blurry; I’m trembling from head-to-toe. I want to throw up, but I also need him to fucking answer me.
“Mave, please.” I shake him again, then look at his wide-open eyes that are staring into nothingness, and the thick stream of blood that’s pooling under him and seeping into the hem of my dress. “Mave.”
He remains still. So still that it paralyzes me for a minute.
“Mave…” A sob breaks out of me, and it’s loud enough that it rattles me and makes my body tremble harder. “Mave, please… Please, please, please.” I shake him yet again, but nothing happens. It doesn’t wake him up; it doesn’t make him look at me. And that’s because he’s gone.
Mave isdead.
Just like that, he’s been taken from me. My constant, my best friend. The man who always listened to me, no matter what. The man who loved me for who I am – flaws and all. Who made me see things I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Who fought for me, andwithme whenever he thought I was wrong. The man who was my shadow, who always stood behind me, even when I asked him not to. All I would have to do is look over a shoulder, and he’d be there.He’d be there…
Not anymore.
I place a hand over his heart, and mine practically breaks when I don’t feel a single heartbeat under my palm.
“I love you,” I say in between my tears. “I know I’ve never said it, but I love you, Mave. I always will.” I briefly close my eyes when I can’t look at him lying here like this. “I’m sorry. I’m so fuckingsorry.” Knowing that he’s dead because of me hurts so much, but I know he wouldn’t want me to blame myself, so I have to try not to. And even though I don’t deserve a single breath I’m taking right now, I’ll keep on taking them, because they are the reason Mave gave up on his. And I can’t let his sacrifice go to vain.
Glass smashes somewhere, making me open my eyes. I look ahead, and see that Dorran has tackled my dad on the floor. There are shards of glass and spilled scotch around them, and every time Dad tries to slip away from Dorran, he pulls him back and punches him harder than he did before.
The guards – who only minutes ago were pointing their weapons at me and the others – have now put them down, and are instead looking at Mave with the same amount of pain that I’m feeling. These men may be working for my dad, but they were part of Mave’s team. They looked to him for orders, and I’m sure they respected him more than they do my father.
Dorran stands – his arms marred by cuts from the glass – and grabs my dad by the collar before pulling him to his feet. I see that he now has bruises on his face and neck, but they are still nothing compared to what he did to Mave.
“I will take my time with you,” Dorran grits out. “Skin you inch by fucking inch until you’re begging me to kill you. And you’ll see, Chase, just how ruthless I can be when someone messes with me or my family.”
“You’re abutcher,” Dad sneers. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
Dorran jolts him in a way that makes him stumble. “At least I’m not a petty loner, eh?”
