“Yeah, well, that’s even messier and riskier than what I did,” Dewi said.
Peyton slowly shook his head.“But her baby would still be alive.”
“Not necessarily.What if she didn’t kill Abundio?What ifhekilledher?This way, there was no doubt.”
“Therehadto be other options,” Peyton insisted.
“Shemadeher choice.”Dewi stared out the windshield.“Literally,” she muttered.
Peyton slowly shook his head.“That’s bullshit and we both know it.Because you and Ibothknow you could have set it up differ?—”
“I gave her achoice, Peyton!Not my fault she chose her invisible sky daddy over her baby.What kind of life did that baby have ahead of it with a psychopath for a father and a gold-digging, scheming sociopath for a mother?”
“Wow.That’s cold, even for you.”
“Easy for you to say.”She thought about the woman’s words, her tone.The phantom, sticky residue she couldn’t seem to wipe out of her brain, left behind from her contact with the woman.“Which one of us made their first kill at twelve, Peyton?”
She finally looked at him.“Which one of us survived our parents being murdered—our mother being raped and tortured and murdered in front of us—and went on to be named Head Enforcer,hmm?How old wereyouwhen you made your first kill?Oh, that’s right, it wasn’t until the yearafterI mademyfirst kill.Remind me, how old were you then, big brother?I know you were in the shit in Russia with that lab, and I don’t envy you for it.But I’ve been dealing with death for half my life, and you’ve been doing it for like, what, sixmonths?So fuck right off with the morality lecture,brother.”She started to reach for the door handle, but he was faster, his hand clamping around her wrist.
“Dewi, no.”
She froze, but it wasn’t from him using his Prime, because he wasn’t.
“You weren’t there,” Dewi softly said.“You didn’t look directly into her brain andfeelit the way I did.I’ve never felt someone so…evil.”
“Trust me that I fuckingknowevil, Dewi,” he grumbled.“I was armpit-deep in it just a few weeks ago.Did it ever occur to you that maybe I had bigger plans and that woman could’ve been part of them?”
“I had to move quickly and make decisions.I used my best judgment and opted to get my hands dirty.”
“There’s a reason I hired Aisling,” Peyton said.“She could have easily taken care of this.”
“Not and make it look like a suicide,” she shot back.“She’s not a Prime.Plus, I think we’ve asked enough of her to last a lifetime.She and Tam deserve uninterrupted time together.”
“No, but she could have set it up to look like it was a rival drug cartel behind it and let them all spin their wheels attacking each other.”
“And that’d still be messy and possibly pull attention to us that we do not need.I’m not happy about this either, but based on the info we were getting about her research, something had to be done.Easier to take care of her now than later.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath.“She didn’t care about that baby.That baby wasnothingbut a meal ticket to her, and an irritating one at that.She pretended to Abundio to be an innocent, churchgoing woman.The truth was, she was every bit as vicious as her husband.More, even.She was far better at hiding it than he was, because she was from a different generation and had hardscrabble roots he’d long since left behind.She would have gladly sold out him and us.”
He blew out a long breath, but he didn’t respond.
“Usorthem, Peyton,” she finally said.“That’s what you always drilled into me.Whateverit takes, remember that?That’s what you said to me after you returned to Trevor’s with Jake.You said that to me on the phone that night.Whateverit takes.Even Ken said it.
“Well,thisis what it took.Thisiswhatever, and what you yourself said before we took down the lab.It’s us, or them.She wouldn’t have cared as our kids were scooped up and dragged to a lab to be vivisected.I gave her the choice of her love for her baby over the love for her so-called ‘god.’Excuse me if I pick us over them every day ending in Y and twice on Sundays, but that’sMY FUCKING JOB.To protectourpeople.”
Peyton sighed.“I’m sorry I put this weight on you so young, kiddo,” he quietly said.“That wasn’t fair of me.”
“No, it wasn’t.But I meant the oath I swore to you as my Pack Alpha, to protect us and ours.And she was neither.As horrible as it sounds, neither was her baby.At least it didn’t suffer.Shechosemoney over our children and us.Over herownchild.
“I could have walked up behind her, made her follow me somewhere private, then put a bullet in her head and walked away.I could have Primed her to get off on a lower floor and follow me into a stairwell and strangled her, or shoved her down the stairs and broke her neck to make it look like an accident.
“But I didn’t, Peyton.I gave her achoice.And that’s far more than Mom and Dad, or Rupert and Maisie got.More than Raul Segura’s victims ever got.More than Bryn and Callum and any of those other poor bastards from the lab got.That woman believed that as long as she confessed to a priest, she’d still make it to Heaven just fine, no matter how many bodies she had to climb over in the process.Sheis the one who chose to kill herself.She had a baby and a comfortable life she could have settled for.She only had to choose to walk away.To not tell our secrets.To go to her grave without revealing what she knew.
“But she didn’t see us as human, and she was greedy.Despite the image her husband bought hook, line, and sinker, she was soulless.Do you know she thought it was funny that he bought her act?That every time he fucked her to get her pregnant, she closed her eyes and counted money.She fantasized about what she would do with all the money and power she’d have at her disposal, and she was actively researching how to off him without being discovered.She knew she couldn’t just hold a pillow over his head because of the telltale signs of suffocation.And if she’d succeeded, she planned to abort the baby, or suffocate it after it was born, so she could inherit everything.She wasnotinnocent.That baby would have suffered had it been born, and likely wouldn’t have lived very long.
“Am I happy?No.Am I satisfied?No.Am I gloating?No.I fuckinghateit.But you know what?That poor kid won’t be born into a cursed life full of loveless misery to a murderous mother who was also researching how to take out a secret life insurance policy on it so that in case she couldn’t kill Abundio before it was born, she could off the baby and getthatmoney without it fucking up her pre-nup.”
His eyes widened.“Holy fuck!”
