I’ve never known a rage like this, and I’ve known a lot of anger in my life. That motherfucking son of a bitch. He’s destroyed lives.
It hits me that Daisy had nothing to do with Ophelia being snatched. We were looking in the wrong direction, and all along it was my father and Felix who betrayed us. We blamed that poor girl when she did nothing wrong. Guilt becomes a knotted rope that tightens around my chest and makes it harder for my lungs to draw air. I’d always believed I’d been Ophelia’s protector, when it was because of me that she’d been in danger.
The knowledge I inadvertently put her in that position hits me hard. I claw my fingers into my hair and pace back and forth. I’m barely aware of everyone watching, waiting for my next move. The gun still hangs loosely in my other hand. Mal is watching me closely, but he leaves me to pace as I try to put all of my emotions back in a box, because with them ricocheting around my body this way, I can’t focus at all.
As the fog clears, only one thought remains.
My father must die.
Mind made up, I cross over to where Felix’s body lies on the ground. I wonder if anyone else at the college will have heard the gunshot. We’re a distance away from the main building, and protected by the trees, so hopefully if someone heard the bang, they’ll have put it down to a car backfiring or even a firework. I roll him over with my foot and reach into his back pocket to find his cell phone. Miraculously, it’s still unlocked from where he’d been talking to my father, though the call has ended. How much did my father hear on his end?
I hit call on the number again, and my father quickly answers. “Felix?”
“No, it’s me. We need to talk,” I say with no preamble. “In person. Not on the phone.”
His voice comes down the line, cautious. “What’s going on?”
“Like I said, not on the phone. Can you get here, ASAP? Not into the college, but somewhere nearby. It’s important.”
“I can be there tomorrow, by late morning.”
I wonder how much he realizes that I’m onto him.
I figure my father must have hung up when Felix put his phone away. Or he’s planning to ambush me.
“There’s an old cabin out by a lake nearby. I’ll drop a pin in a map and send it to you.”
The cabin is only about a thirty-minute drive from the college, and if my father can’t get there until around late morning, I plan to get there way before and have men hidden around the woods, keeping a lookout.
I end the call before he has the chance to ask any more questions.
I look around at the other men. Will they report back to my father about what’s happened? Will they give him a warning? They are his men, after all.
I turn a slow circle, taking each of them in. “You all saw what went down here, and what happened at the commune. Felix and my father deliberately had each of you poisoned so they could have a couple of young women murdered.” I focus on Deacon, who’d spent the most time with her. “You all met Daisy. A sweeter girl couldn’t have existed, and yet between my father and Felix and the Prophet, they murdered her. Ophelia would have been next, if it wasn’t for each of you. Is that who we are? People who help to have young women killed?” They exchange glances and shake their heads. “Tomorrow, everything changes. You have a choice. You can choose my father, but know if you do, then you’re my enemy. You don’t want me as an enemy, trust me. You’d also be working for a man who would kill innocentgirls. We might be criminals, but we have a fucking code. Or you can work with me, stay with me, as my men. Be a part of what comes next. A new generation for the Lockwood family.”
“I’m with you, Cain,” Deacon says. He glances at the others who one by one nod their acceptance. “We all are.”
CHAPTER 24
Malachi
Everything is shattering around me.We’re falling apart. I can sense it.
Last night, Ophelia slept curled up with Roman, I slept on the couch, worried about Cain, and Cain… well, he didn’t sleep at all. I tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t listen, wasn’t in a place to.
All he kept saying was that he was a piece of shit, and his family was poison.
He paced up and down, repeatedly, until I gave up trying to sleep with him in the same room and went and crashed in the room Daisy had been using. It felt kind of weird sleeping in the dead girl’s bed, but I figured if she was going to haunt anyone, it would be the parents who sat and watched her die and did nothing.
Roman and Ophelia are still in bed.
Ophelia’s sleep has been unsettled. She’s cried out a few times, and one awful moment, at around six in the morning, I woke to her talking and crying in her slumber loudly enough for me to hear. I went to the room and peeked inside, my heart tearing when I saw the tears streaking down her cheeks from underneath her closed lids. Roman was holding her close, so she was being cared for, his arms locked around her in sleep.
I’d wiped her tears, and murmured to her until she fell back into a deeper, calmer sleep and then I left her and Roman and went back to stare at the ceiling until fractured dreams took me under for another hour or so.
The heavy weight of depression is sitting on my chest, threatening to suffocate all the good in my life. How do we come back together?
Can Ophelia even be with Cain now she knows his father was responsible for the truly terrible things that happened to her? It’s such a huge, life-altering trauma to go through, and she’ll never get over it. I worry that she won’t be able to see Cain the same way again.
