Gene just kept tightening the noose. She couldn’t wait anymore. If they were going to survive this ordeal, she needed to think. Needed to find a way out.
But she’d never faced danger like this. She had no idea what to do.
Hudson sank onto the couch, his face devastated. His hands shook with terror and rage.
Gene turned the gun back on the boy, gesturing wildly. “Now the others. Put the rest of the phones on the table.”
Hudson slumped. “I don’t know where Grandma’s phone is.”
“In my purse, honey.” Grace’s voice shook. “In the kitchen, on the counter near the stove.”
Hudson hesitated before he got to his feet and retrieved the phone under Gene’s hawk-eyed stare. Wrath filled the teenager’s face as he carried it back before setting it carefully beside the others.
Hudson looked her way then, his green eyes—his father’s eyes—meeting hers with silent apology before he bent and picked up her phone from where it had fallen on the floor.
As he did, Heavenly noticed his still sitting on the couch cushion. Her heart raced. If she could just reach it—text Seth—warn him somehow…
“I already warned you once.” Gene leveled the gun her way. “So help me, bitch, if you touch it, I’ll put a bullet in your fucking skull.”
Heavenly froze, her fingers halfway to the cushion, then pulled back her trembling hand.
Cruel satisfaction engulfed his smile as Hudson added her phone to the growing pile of technology.
“Now yours, kid,” he ordered Hudson.
The teenager paled. Panic flashed across his face before he gritted his teeth, plucked up his device from the couch, and dumped it on the gleaming wooden surface next to the others.
Five phones sat in plain view three feet away, unreachable.
Now they were completely cut off. Every lifeline gone. Every illusion of help stripped away.
Gene had them trapped, and his terrible smirk said he knew it.
Guilt filled Hudson’s face, as if he was beating himself up for betraying everyone.
She sent him a reassuring smile. It’s okay. There was nothing else you could have done.
In that moment, he looked so much like Seth that it almost broke her heart.
“Good job, kid. Now sit down,” Gene ordered, gesturing with a jerk of his gun toward the couch. “Next to Grace. Where I can see you.”
Hudson obeyed, sinking onto the cushion beside his grandmother.
Gene’s message was unmistakable. They were leverage. And they were expendable.
Beside her, Grace blinked, her stare landing on Hudson’s tormented face. Then she lifted her gaze to the spot on the floor where Carl had fallen before trailing to the unmistakable stain of Beck’s blood. Something inside her seemed to snap.
“What are you doing, Gene?” Her voice cracked. She sounded raw and desperate.
He turned his focus on her, his eyes wild with rage. “Michael asked the same stupid question, in that same righteous-ass tone—right before I blew his fucking brains out.”
Gene’s words landed like a sledgehammer.
Grace gasped, the sound strangled and broken. Disbelief rippled across her face. Heavenly felt the woman’s shock blasting through the room in a wave of horror. Grim silence followed.
A moment later, Grace opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She stared at Gene like she was seeing him for the first time—not the man she’d known and trusted—but the vicious monster he’d concealed for decades.
“Why?” she finally managed to choke out. “Michael was your friend.”
