I dip my chin to Jax, who has a keen sense of how others are faring, and wrap things up. “Last question. You said Kratos was power hungry, and this other group wanted them wiped out. What type of power was Kratos after—arms, drugs, trafficking?”
“Yeah.” Keller grimaces, his eyes fluttering as he gathers his words. “Kratos had their hands in everything—all that shit, politics, and legit dealings. Too much.”
“And the other?” I press.
“I don’t know.” His teeth chatter, either from the cold or shock. “But Kratos feared them, and they felt … bigger. That’s why I took the deal and gave them Zara.”
Why he gave them Zara.As if she were merely a tool to gift them.
My molars grind until I can hear the tiny fractures spreading through them. Until my vision is a blur of forest and blood and my sweet fearless Thorn.
Of rage and retribution.
With the toe of my shoe, I roll him over onto his stomach and lodge a bullet just above his zip-tied wrists, in his spine—one of the most excruciating places to be shot.
Smashing his face in the dirt, I muffle his screams, which still manage to echo through the woods. So, I wait for them to subside enough for me to explain my final verdict. “That’s what you did to her—a sweet young girl who could’ve had any future she wanted. You used her for what you needed and left herparalyzed to a painful life where death would always be chasing her. So, that is how your remaining hours—or if we’re lucky, days—will be.”
No clemency here.
My eyes land on my brothers. “Put the fire out, and let’s go. I’ll call a cleaner to follow up tomorrow and see if he’s still breathing or if an animal finished him off.”
Jax unfolds a collapsible shovel that we brought with us and starts scooping dirt onto the flames. Maddox and Cash help, so the fire is extinguished in a matter of minutes. Ryker lights the path with a flashlight, and we start to trek back the way we came, but Jax’s voice stops us.
“He’s out of his mind right now because you hurt someone he cares about, and that’s the one thing that severs his control. Or let’s face it—makes him as crazy as the rest of us,” he says to Keller, looming over him as the four of us stand, puzzled as to what he’s doing. “Lucky for you, he taught me mercy.” With that, he shoots Keller in the head.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” I bark, so irate that my skin itches from smoke and ashes and embers, like it did nineteen years ago.
“I kept you from losing yourself to this piece of shit, like you’ve kept me afloat all these years whenever I’m drowning in torment.” He walks toward me and grips the back of my neck. “I’ve got you too, Papa Axe.”
“I’m not drowning,” I assure him. “He deserved it.”
“He did,” he agrees. “I wasn’t showing him mercy as much as I was you. The last thing we need—the last thing Zara needs from you—is to stir old ghosts.”
I glance between Keller’s lifeless body and Jax’s tender depravity, cognizant that I helped create both, but one satisfies the sickness inside me while the other is my redemption.
Since I promised my siblings I wouldn’t become my father and that is the furthest thing I want for Zara, I grit my teeth and rasp my vow. “No old ghosts.”
ZARA
When you’re young and innocent and sheltered by caretakers who love with the fierceness of protective armor, it’s almost as if the world can’t touch you. Like childhood is lived inside a picturesque snow globe, where any chill is powdery soft, like sugar, and giggles are an ebullient thing that allow you to take flight with the flurry of snowflakes.
I was only nine when the glass shattered and the biting frigidity seeped in. When the memory of my mother was frozen in time and the excitement of slumber parties with friends was still so tangible that it was a scarf wrapping around the angry red strangulation marks on my mom’s neck. Sometimes, I wonder if we’d stayed in our Tennessee home—where the remembrance of the domed warmth still frolicked around me, teasing pieces and beckoning me to carve out beauty in the dead of winter—if I would’ve become a person she would be proud of.
There’s no mistaking that I am not that woman. I’m a shadow of the little girl she was raising to be well read, athletic, and sharp witted. Maybe I am those things. But they prevail outsidethe globe, where it’s dark and cutting. Where they meld shards of vile truth with crystalized powdered sugar.
All the sweetness of those traits is lost to the jagged slivers—shivs of glass that my own father and brother would use to stab me.Did they send Shep? Will they send someone else when they realize he failed? Did the client do it without their input? Can I bear to know the truth and wake to another day?
On this side of the dome, life only exists in the continuous presence of death.
Perhaps that’s why, curled up on a couch in the penthouse with Mercy and Tessa, I hear my mother whispering from somewhere inside me,“This is what I prayed for. Strong women and laughter and the love of family. Why did you stray, sweetie?”
And my heart breaks, right along with the fullness these women infuse. Good things hurt.
“Oh, oh”—Tessa gulps down her tea, pointing at a movie that Mercy is hovering over—“his pickup line in that one is that she has clean fingernails. It’s a must-watch.”
Mercy and I both choke out a laugh.
“That is flimsy criteria. It’s not on the bingo sheet,” I chide. “And since we’ve only got two months until Christmas, I’m not sure we can afford the detour.”
