Giving them my back, I listen to him struggle as the guys get him ready for me. Numbly, I dig through the cabinets to find what I’m looking for. Honestly, I’m winging it.
Picking out a few things, I turn back, taking a drag from the cigarette. He hangs from his tied wrists above his head.
“My wife is dead.” I say the words I’ve refused to acknowledge thus far, and it knocks the wind out of me. My legs threaten to give out, but I remain upright. I can’t look weak right now. I’ll save it for later when I’m all alone in our bed. “And someone has to pay for that.”
“I didn’t do it,” he screams. “I didn’t have a say. I was ordered?—”
I place the tip of the knife to his neck, and he swallows. “You will suffer for my loss.”
The whole fucking world will pay for what the Lords cost me, but I’ll start with this piece of shit. I step back, giving a humorless laugh. I can feel my mind slipping. Whenever they ask why a man has gone crazy, the answer always starts withShe…
“And you know what?” I ask, not expecting him to answer. “After I found out she was a founder, I started taking the enhancements.”
Audible sighs of “shit” and “fuck” fill the cold basement.
No one knew that I was taking them. Not even my wife. “So I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands now.”
He breathes heavily. “I didn’t hurt her.”
I look at Sin and Ryat. “We found him behind the cathedral in the cemetery,” Ryat informs me at my silent question.
“Then who did?” I demand, looking back at the kid.
“I…I don’t know…” he sobs. “But I can prove it.”
Proof?Fuck, I want to vomit, knowing exactly what he’s going to say. “How are you going to do that?”
“My cell,” he rushes out, looking at Ryat. “He has my phone. The guys made me record it. It’ll show I didn’t touch her.”
Ryat pulls the kid’s phone from his back pocket, and I just stare at it. Do I want to see what happened to her? This isn’t like her videos from Dollhouse. They aren’t from years ago, the pain I know she survived. It’s going to be from an hour ago, and now her body lies in the morgue.
I look at Haidyn, and he takes my silent request, snatching the phone from Ryat’s hand and connecting it to the TV screen on the wall, navigating to the video. The cathedral doors fill the screen.
Eve walks in moments later. She’s wearing my white zip-up hoodie, dressed in jeans and platform boots with her hair up in a tight ponytail and her makeup done. She’s my angry angel. Ready to take on the world.
Four Lords stand at the Lords’ altar, and I watch the fifth enter behind her, pointing a gun at the back of her head. She refuses to do what they want, and a part of me wishes she would have just gotten on the altar. Maybe itwould have stalled them. Given me enough time to arrive and save her. She knew we were looking for her. That I would have found her.
Eve’s shot in the leg, and the sound makes me flinch. She falls to the floor. A Lord walks down the aisle and grabs her. A blood-curdling scream comes from her before she’s slammed onto the altar. She pulls a gun from the back of her jeans and gets off a shot, falling over to the other side of the altar and out of sight.
One walks around and then falls to the floor, telling me she was still alive and able to shoot. Two down. She’s a good shot, but they were ready for her.
It was an ambush that she willingly walked into.
But at the beginning of the video, they said they wanted me. Why? Why didn’t she let me turn myself in?
One of the masked men wraps a belt around her neck and pulls her over the altar. She shoots him but then is hit herself. She crawls the best she can back behind the altar and out of frame. The fifth one that had entered behind her walks around the altar and points a gun at her. “Goodbye, Eve,” their altered voice fills the basement before the camera shuts off.
“See?” the kid shouts. “I ran out the side door. I never touched her.”
I want to fall to the floor and curl into a ball. The only thing that’s keeping me on my feet is my adrenaline. It’s going to fade, and I’m going to crawl onto the metal slab and hold my wife. After I make this man suffer. “You helped set her up. And that’s enough.”
He thrashes in his restraints and screams at the top of his lungs. He can do whatever he wants. He’s dead to me. “Check my messages,” Christopher rushes out. “I sent you the text.”
I look at Haidyn, and he starts scrolling through the phone. He pulls up an app, and sure enough, you can see he was the one who sent me the text with where she was, and he was able to hide his number. “Why?” I snap.
“She was just the bait. She wasn’t supposed to die. Evan wanted her.”
Evan.The name makes my blood boil. Fucking rage.
