Everything around me goes silent and still. This is one of those moments the rest of my life hinges upon. When nothing else exists but the decision in front of me. There’s not a doubt in my mind he would kill her if it meant getting back at me for coming after him in the first place.
“Then you let her go,” I grunt. “Do what you want to me, but let her go.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he asks with a laugh. “You don’t call the shots here. I will fucking end her life if I choose, and you’ll watch,” he adds.
A tiny whimper squeezes its way from her throat when I slowly crouch, never taking my eyes off him. “I have no choice,” I tell her, lowering the gun to the floor.
“Kick it away,” he barks. I do as he asks. Tears roll down her cheeks while she gasps for air.
“Now you’re starting to get it,” he says with a chuckle. “You don’t have a choice. You never fucking did.”
“What about me?” Her voice is shaking, but there’s strength running through it. Defiance. “Don’t I get a choice?”
He didn’t expect her to speak up, and the surprise makes him look away from me to glare at her.
Which is when she slams an elbow into his ribs.
I launch myself into the room, my fist connecting with his mouth and knocking him onto the bed. She screams as the two of us land there, where I knock the gun from his fist. “Just you and me,” I snarl. Something primal explodes, and I release it, punching almost blindly, thinking of my team, my home, my family. Everything he so carelessly and even gleefully destroyed.
He lets out an otherworldly roar and shoves me off him, knocking me to the floor, throwing himself on top of me and screaming in my face close enough that droplets of his blood hit my skin. “I’ll eat your fucking heart!”
“Try it!” I roar, reaching out to dig my thumbs into his eyes until he screams again. The sound feeds my soul, making me crave more. “Come on, you bastard!”
Before either of us can land another blow, a gunshot rings out, deafening, echoing.
We both freeze, except to look at where Aurora fired at the ceiling. She’s breathing hard, sobbing, but she has control of the room.
Because now, she holds the gun on us.
29
AURORA
I’m officially living out my worst nightmare. Holding a gun on the two of them. They look like scared rabbits, totally not expecting me to take control. I didn’t expect to, either.
I have it now. I only wish I knew what to do with it. I didn’t ask for any of this.
“Get off him,” I tell Dad. “Now. I want the two of you away from each other.”
It’s amazing, the way he can pretend. All of a sudden, he’s my dad again, a loving man, gentle and soft. “Sweetheart, don’t fly off the handle.”
“Sweetheart?” The laughter that bubbles out of me is high-pitched. I sound insane. Who wouldn’t be after all of this? “You have never called me that in my whole life. Now move.”
The other gun is way on the other side of the room where it landed when Liam kicked it aside. Dad would have to get past Liam to reach it, and I don’t think Liam will let that happen.
Dad moves slowly, hands raised, getting to his feet without taking his eyes off me. Blood drips from his nose and a split lip, trickles down the side of his face from the gash Liam carved in his temple. “You are upset. You’re overwhelmed.”
“Don’t tell me what I am,” I whisper.
As soon as Liam moves, my gaze cuts his way. His hands are raised. “I’m only getting up,” he murmurs. “That’s all.”
“Remember what he did to you!” Dad urges. “He abducted you. He forced you to marry him, didn’t he? He used you.”
“And you didn’t?” I ask, looking back and forth between them.
“It was for your own good,” he insists. “Listen to me. You are my daughter. This fucker deserves to die if only because he took you away, locked you up. Let me make him pay for it.”
Liam doesn’t say a word. He only watches me, occasionally glancing at Dad. I almost wish he would beg and plead, but that’s not him.
