He had thought that he had every base covered, that there couldn’t possibly be a single hitch in his brilliant plan.
He didn’t factor in every variable, though.
Like me loving Vega just as hard and obsessively as Ryder.
Yes, Ry had fallen apart after our star left, but I’d still been standing.I’d fought for both of us to get out of the mess we’d made so we could earn the right to win Vega back.
And we would—we fucking would.
Tossing back the last of my drink, I set down the glass on the tray of a passing server.Cullum thought I was just as sloshed as Ryder, though neither of us had a single drop of alcohol in our systems.Cullum was too confident, mixed in with overly inebriated, to imagine things were going any other way but in his favor.As if he couldn’t possibly lose.
Turning my head, I double-checked the open French doors that led out onto the veranda and gave a single nod.Without hesitation, soldiers moved into the room with deadly precision, red dots finding and executing their targets in a matter of moments.Blood-splattered bodies hit the floor before Raffaella and her sister could release their first screams.
Those who had been prepared to follow Cullum now lay dead at his feet, while one soldier pushed him to his knees.Pulling my own gun from beneath my suit jacket, I stepped in a pool of blood and brain matter and pressed the end of the barrel to Cullum’s forehead.
His skin had gone a sickly gray, sweat beading on his brow, that smug-ass grin long gone.“What’s the meaning of this, Kane?”he sputtered, sounding remarkably more sober than I knew he was.
“This?”I cocked a brow at him, taking a sick pleasure in how his chin trembled when he opened his mouth, but no sound escaped.“This has been decades in the making, Cullum.Or weren’t you expecting a bloodbath tonight?”
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he rasped, his hands lifted, fingers shaking.
“Oh, I think you do.Only, I was the one who was supposed to be on my knees, right?”I tutted as I stepped aside, lifting my foot to wipe the gore from the sole of my shoe on the dead body beside Cullum.As I did, I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned my head in time to see our guest had arrived.
“Vega,” Cullum spat, his hatred of the other man putting steel in his voice for a moment until he remembered I was still holding the gun to his skull.
Ernesto pulled at his cuff links, his movements smooth, unhurried.I couldn’t blame him.After years of imagining this moment, I wouldn’t want to rush it either.Hazel eyes, so like his daughter’s, landed on Cullum.Years of physical pain, loneliness, and unimaginable heartache were etched into every line on his face, but those eyes were still as clear as my Vega’s had been the last time I’d looked into them.
Ryder’s gun was out and pressed to the back of his father’s head before I could halt him.“You speak only with respect, fucking reverence, when you say her name.”
Gun still on Cullum, I placed my free hand on my friend’s arm.“You said you trust me, Ry.”
“He will never say her name like that again.Never!”Wild blue eyes met mine, rage and confusion mixed in their depths.“How does he know her name, Kane?How?We were careful.I was careful.He shouldn’t know her name.”
“He knows her name because it’s not just hers.”I glanced back at Ernesto.“He’s our Vega’s father.”
“What?”Ryder slowly lowered his gun.“No.Vega doesn’t have parents.She’s an orphan.That’s why she was in the system.Her parents died when she was five.”
“Cullum had them murdered,” I explained, giving him a condensed version of it since we were in the middle of a freaking pool of blood.“But Ernesto survived.His wife died that night, and he was wounded.Strangers found him, took him to a hospital, and then helped him after.Meanwhile, our Vega Estrella is his daughter, Estrella Vega.Something as simple as a typo, a freaking missing comma, put her in the foster system with the wrong name.He’s been working to get back to his daughter ever since.Every time he got close to finding her, she would run away and she’d get moved.When she was placed in the group home with you, Cullum kept her hidden.Then Ernesto almost found her during her last shift at the hospital, but they missed each other by mere minutes.”
Around us, everyone stood quietly.Da and Ma were side by side at the fireplace, their eyes watching the scene without a single emotion filtering across their faces.There was true confusion on Ma’s face, but I couldn’t read Da, and I didn’t trust that for a single minute.Raffaella and Amadea were both mute as they stared wide-eyed at the carnage Ernesto’s soldiers had unleashed.The only noise in the room was Cullum’s labored breathing as he stared up at Ernesto defiantly, as if he were the wronged party.As if his fucking life were the one that had been torn apart by greed.
“Cullum has toyed with you from the day Vega was placed in the same group home with you, Ryder,” I told my friend.“He dropped her in that place, played God with both of your lives.He’s the reason our star left us.He gave her to us, and then he ripped her away with nothing more than a whispered comment from a passenger on a bus.”
Raking a hand through his hair, Ryder met my gaze.“How do you know all of this?”
“Ernesto reached out to me after I called in a few favors in an attempt to find Vega.”
I’d almost not responded to his text, but fortunately, I’d listened to my gut.Ernesto—a man I’d thought was dead because, even as young as I’d been at the time, I’d been present at his funeral—had plenty to fill me in on.From his business dealings with Cullum, Aurelio, and my da, to the way Cullum had been manipulating and micromanaging every move his son made from the moment he was born.
Soaking in all that information, Ryder stepped back and handed his gun directly to Ernesto.“Kill him,” he commanded.“And then, if you can’t tell me where your daughter is, kill me too.Because I don’t want a life without her.”
Vega
I wasn’t actively lookingfor friendships when I first moved.Hell, I wasn’t even sure how to make friends.Ryder had been my first best friend, and we’d simply gravitated toward each other from the moment we made eye contact.Looking back, he’d started isolating me from other people then, all the way up until he introduced me to Kane.But I wasn’t sure if he’d done it on purpose or because he was a possessive alphahole.Maybe it wasn’t his intention at first, but as the years went by, it definitely had morphed into that.
My first new friend was a pregnant patient.During her initial appointment with me only a few days after I’d started working at the women’s center, she mentioned her book club,Mocktails and Steamy Ever Afters.
Reading wasn’t something I’d had time for in the past, but she’d extended an invite to the next club gathering, and I’d tucked it away in the back of my mind.That Friday as I was walking into my too-quiet house, I decided to take a chance.
