The text message keeps flashing behind my eyes:
I need to talk to you about her, alone.
I can’t let them have her.
My mind didn’t want to believe it, but I knew immediately who it was.
And as I stare down the trail towards the oncoming blacked-out jeep, the sender is in the passenger seat.
The sound of gravel crunching beneath tyres grows louder the closer it gets. Black-clad bodies emerge from the foliage like fog, slinking onto the road, and standing guard the minute the car rolls to a stop.
My pulse roars in my ears like ocean waves, and rage rattles every vertebra in my body. It’s the most I’ve had a reminder I’m alive in days. All this coiled-up anger and grief just waiting to be unleashed the minute she gets close enough.
If she’s lying, I’ll kill her with my bare fucking hands, and it won’t be as quick as I gifted her husband.
The car door slowly pushes open, and when her heel hits the ground, every single gun points at her. One wrong move, and Louisa will be filled with bullet holes.
She closes the door shut, hand resting against it as her shoulders work up and down, and then her weary gaze lifts to meet mine.
Fuck this.
I let the coil snap.
I surge forward on instinct. Two pairs of hands land on my shoulders and shove me back against the door, the metal rattling with the force. “Speak first, kill her later,” Rex says, patting me on the shoulder as he throws a death glare at my sister.
I have to give it to her; she’s got bigger balls than me, anyway. When Dawson contacted her, she agreed to come alone and get into one of our vehicles an hour out of town, knowing every single person here wants her dead.
She didn’t give him any answers; her words were nothing more than a desperate plea to see me. Half of me doesn’t want to hear her bullshit excuses. If she’s here to cry over Barry, she can kiss my ass, then the tip of my knife before I plunge it into her.
The other half though? It screams I need to hear her out, especially when she’d mentionedhisname.
Louisa holds her head high as she walks over to me, hands in the pocket of her brown winter coat. Despite the confident show, she looks dishevelled, hair tied back in a loose ponytail and eyes holding evidence of lack of sleep.
Each step she takes towards me sends the atmosphere shuddering. The air grows colder as if death itself follows behind her. It probably does; who knows how many lives she’s responsible for.
When she’s a few inches from me, it feels like an arctic wind is spiralling around us. It’s at this moment I realise, Ihateher.
I truly fuckingloatheeverything about her.
“I killed Morgan by the way. He made up for your husband getting off lightly,” I mutter, waiting for a reaction. She was always friendly to him when he first entered our lives, too friendly when I think about it. I guess they were old buddies and had history.
She’s probably the damn reason he was in it in the first place.
Rex notices my wrath making a reappearance, giving my shoulder a squeeze before he returns to his prior stance.
I wait for the colour to drain from her face the same way it did in the cell, but it doesn’t come. Louisa stands stone faced as she stares at me, but the wariness in her eyes is like a beacon, flashing each time she breaks it to nervously glance at Rex and Dawson. “Can we talk alone?”
“No,” they both reply in unison.
My voice laces with venom. “Anything you have to say can be said in front of them.”
She swallows. “You killed Morgan?”
Still no change in her features when she voices my act. “I did, and he cried like a bitch. Seems to be the kinda men you surround yourself with.”
Anyone would if they were gutted from the gut to their breastbone, not to mention what happened when Saint got his turn. Emasculating these men that my sibling seems to think so highly of is making me feel better.
Her lips twitch upwards as she glances at the ground, and if my gaze hadn’t been fixated on her, I’d have missed the swift tug. “Right after he held me down and was going to let Conrad rape me, I don’t doubt he had the same intentions,” I add, and her gaze snaps upwards.
