Wilson took a few tries to get words out as he floated in and out of consciousness. “She wasn’t supposed to be home that night. Everything was in place… I couldn’t change it. She wasn’t supposed to be home.”
“Oh well, that makes it all okay, doesn’t it?” I knelt down to get in his face, my hand balling in the front of his shirt. “Youmurdered your grandchild, Bruce, and never fucking looked back. You don’t deserve mercy, but for the sake of Billie—because I know, deep down, she still loves the memory of you—I’m going to give you one chance. One. Chance. To save yourself.”
I released him with a shove, then rose back to my feet.
“What do you want me to do?” he moaned, his blood already pooling around him. Surely, he knew he was fucked. We were nowhere near any hospitals out here, even if I were inclined to seek medical attention for him.
I nodded, walking back over to where Angelo waited some eight or nine yards away. “It’s real simple, Bruce. You get from there”—I pointed with my gun to where he lay—“to here”—I pointed to the dirt at my feet—“and I’ll let you go. Hell, I’ll even let you take Billie’s car, which, by the way, has plenty of gas. You can drive off into the sunset for all I care. This is me… offering you the chance my unborn baby never got. A chance to save yourself.”
Wilson moaned, then rolled onto his belly in a flop. I wondered for a moment if he’d just given up already, but no… notWilson. Not the man who’d worked so fucking hard in the shadows for so fucking long to get revenge on the Ricci family for fuck only knew what insult. Nope, he was a fighter. So when he started dragging himself across the gravel and dirt, leaving a thick trail of blood behind, I almost had a flicker of respect.
Almost.
It took a long time. Painfully long, for Wilson to drag his maimed and bleeding body that short distance to freedom, but he did it. His fingers touched my boot, and the gasp he gave was of pure elation like he hadn’t believed he would actually make it.
“I did it!” he rasped, rolling onto his back to look up at me and Angelo, side by side. “I did it! I did it! You thought I’d give up, and I didn’t!” He started laughing, the sound wild and uncontrolled. Delirious. “Now you have to let me go!”
Angelo and I exchanged a glance, and I returned my cold glare to the dying man at my feet. “I don’t have to do shit, Wilson.”
I aimed my gun at his head and pulled the trigger.
“I guess that makes me a liar,” I murmured, feeling dead inside. “But the world is better off.”
Not only the world, but Billie, and I’d kill anyone to ensure that was always true.
thirty-nine
BILLIE
I’d been angry with Grayson, Jace, and Angelo before. Furiously angry, borderline hatred, but as Grayson wrestled me into the car and tore off from the ambush, I’d never felt so much rage.
My screams were near deafening in the car, and I only just managed to hold onto enough self-control to not start whaling on Grayson physically, since I didn’t really want to kill us both in a car crash.
He still got a front-row seat to my off-key screaming teamed with a multitude of curse words and hate-filled anger.
“Prickles, you need to calm down. There’s no danger to your boys, okay. I would never have left, otherwise.”
His words were barely registering, and I knew deep down this was all just a delayed reaction to the stress of what I’d just had to do. The stress and fear of knowing, despite pretending to care, Wilson still had planned to take us out. Knowing that I’d had to run away from him and his gun with just a dodge, duck, and weave maneuver to try and keep myself from getting shot.
Knowing that I’d looked into Bruce Bellerose’s eyes and seen nothing but empty darkness. He was broken, his mind completely gone at this point, and that made him a scary and unstable opponent.
A scary and unstable opponent who was near Jace and Angelo. My hearts and souls. My best friends since I was a mere child, before I’d understood how irrevocably we would be tied together for eternity.
I couldn’t live without them. Same as Grayson and Rhett. Hence why I hadn’t punched this big asshole in the fucking face.
At some point I stopped screaming at him and sank into my chair, turning my body away from Grayson and staring sightlessly out the window. The tears had dried up, the panic softened to just a low-level hum, and when Gray’s phone rang a few seconds later, I didn’t even flinch.
He put it on speaker. “Yep.”
“It’s done,” Angelo’s low tone further calmed my panic. “Tell Bella to stop raging at you.”
Grayson let out a low, strangled chuckle. “I think she’s far from done, bro. Billie Bellerose will let you both know in no uncertain terms how she feels.”
Fucker was right about that. Now that I knew everyone was safe, my fury was gone, but the low-simmering annoyance would stay for some time.
When Grayson hung up, he tried to talk to me again. “Baby, please. I’m sorry I had to haul you away like that, but we willneverrisk your safety more than absolutely necessary.”
If I gritted my teeth any harder, I was likely to break them.
