They prove they never take her seriously as they lay back down. Her father looks at my arm while her mother scoffs, “Don’t be silly. You don’t have the capability to harm us.”
“Are you forgetting your daughter killed Asher?” I ask as Daigon steps into the room.
“That’s enough family bonding.” He stops in front of their bed, stretching his neck around the metal bat. “Give them the location they want.”
“You can’t harm us,” Lizbeth says with a current of fear working through her.
“Can and will. You see,” he leans forward, grabbing her right hand so tightly I can see her bones distorting beneath her skin before it snaps, “the child you tried to kill is mine. I now have all of your children, all of your money, and your house. You have nothing. Are nothing. So give them what they want, or I’ll begin my fun.”
I let Delilah go when Harkin moves. She wastes no time to stab him in the dick. The smile on her face is radiant as she twists, elongating his screams. “Hurts, doesn’t it,Daddy?”
There’s only one thing they care about, so I take out my phone as they get in position beside my rotten in-laws. Daigon doesn’t lean down so their heads are aligned. Delilah does the same, and I make sure there’s nothing in the shot to show this is forced as Daigon says, “Say cheese.”
It takes three attempts for them to look like they’re smiling. “What will your master think if she finds out you paid your son-in-law to save your daughter from the hell she put her in?”
We have enough information to know how they all operate thanks to Ruby and Daigon filling in the gaps. They had to keep their family safe after Harkin sold Ruby to Rowan, who tried to kill her while she was pregnant. The one thing Lizbethand Harkin used as a safety net was isolating their daughters. Lennox gave Delilah enough information to help too. Now there’s nothing they can surprise us with.
Their business is crumbling.
Helene’s ego won’t allow them to live if she thinks she’s losing control of them, but their stubbornness stops them opening their mouths. Daigon is all too happy about it as he grabs them by their throats. “Out of the way, troublemaker. Your sister won’t be happy if you get hurt.”
“Is he flirting with her?”Asher asks.
I ignore him because I trust my wife.
He drags his in-laws through the house while I watch Delilah as she slowly walks to her childhood bedroom. The bargaining voices of her parents get further away. She opens the door, pausing at the threshold to watch a room stuck in time as she flicks the light on. Wrapping my arms around her from behind, I kiss her shoulder. “Are you sad, pretty girl?”
“No. I don’t know who I was here.” She strokes across my forearms, her touch gentler on my left arm as she stops below my elbow. “It’s like I know the information, but I’m detached from it, like it wasn’t me.”
“Take what you need. Everything’s burning tonight.”
Leaning up on her toes with a soft smile on her face, she kisses my jaw, repeating, “Everything burns tonight.” Another tender kiss. “Apart from us.”
“We’ve burnt enough.” My dick twitches. Years of feeling nothing and now, at the most inopportune fucking time, it comes back to life. I bite the side of her neck as I grind into her ass. “Hurry up, koukla mou. I miss having my wife to myself. Get what you need, make them hurt, then it’s on to the rest of our lives. I’m going to fuck you while you’re covered in their blood and your heart is racing from slaying your demons.”
Her smile is even wider, crazed as she rushes forward, dragging me with her. I have to let her go when she drops to her knees in front of her bed. I step back, sparing a look at the open door as Lizbeth’s screams travel through the house.
“Not now,” I whisper. “Your brother-in-law is downstairs.”
“I’m not doingthat, you idiot.” Delilah lightly swats my leg. “I hid something under the floorboards.”
She crawls under her bed, and I lift the bed skirt to see the small cut in the carpet. The clattering of the wood panel being removed is barely heard over the bloodcurdling scream, but she doesn’t pause as she reaches into the dusty floor to pull out a hard drive wrapped in plastic wrap.
“Got it,” she says, breathless, in disbelief. Climbing to her feet, she laughs, growing in strength. “I fucking got it. I’m not a stupid girl who doesn’t know anything.”
“Never.” I cup her jaw, softly kissing her while she continues smiling.
She climbs up my body, tightly wrapping her legs around me as she breathes life into me. I use my hand to guide me until I get to the top of the stairs. It physically pains me to pull away from her but I’ve already hurt her too many times, I’m not going to be dumb enough to do it again.
But as I walk down the stairs with my wife’s head on my shoulder, Daigon groans, “You two touch each other a lot.”
“You share a plate, a seat, and God knows what else with your wife,” I fire back. “I’m surprised you don’t spit food in her mouth like she’s a baby bird.”
I don’t know if Ruby is aware her husband is a cannibal. They share two meals a day together, but the third is always cooked to resemble what everyone else is eating and served on a special plate. He never allows his children to eat off his plate either, so I don’t know what lies he tells his wife.
Or how he’s going to explain what he’s done to her mother.
Lizbeth is tied to a chair with violin strings forming a sharp tourniquet around her right wrist. He cocks his arm back and punches her in the face, sending a crack around the large hallway. Per our deal, Harkin is untouched apart from being tied to a chair opposite his wife. He doesn’t barter for her life, or even a less severe beating as Daigon lifts his bat, slamming it into her knees.
