“Hey, hey, it’s okay, love, it’s okay.” Liam’s voice caresses me, his fingers running through my hair. I feel him sit beside me, his body big and warm. “You’re okay, love, you’re okay.”
“Luke… they’re going to kill him, aren’t they?”
His face is grim. “Most likely they’ll want to.”
“Please, Liam?—“
“Don’t beg, love. I’ll do whatever you ask if you beg. Please, don’t put me in that position.”
I sit up, not caring, and touch his cheek. “Help him. Do whatever you can, but help him.”
“He betrayed you. He betrayed his own family.”
“I know, but he did it for me. Kieren lied to him, manipulated him, and I can’t stand watching him die. I can’t survive it.”
Liam’s shoulders tense but I know if anyone can save Luke now, it’ll be him. He can make it happen, and I don’t know when I got so confident in my husband. I can’t remember the moment when I crossed the line and began to fully believe in him, but I’m there now. Liam’s the only one who will do anything for me, and he’s right, I shouldn’t ask this of him.
But I’ve been living for other people for too long. Now it’s time to be selfish.
“I’ll try,” he says at last. “But I won’t promise.”
“I know you’ll do your best.” I lean up and kiss him. “Thank you.”
“Stop crying, alright? It’s fucking me up. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”
“I didn’t even know you cared.”
“Too fucking much, baby.” He slips into bed beside me and wraps his arms around my body. “Now, the doctor said to keep you awake, but you also need to rest, so I’m going to stay right here and poke you in the face if you start to drift, alright?”
“Sounds awful.”
“Yeah, it’ll be torture, but at least you’ll have me.”
“My husband in my bed and my brother tied to a chair. What a wonderful life.”
“You get used to it.”
CHAPTER 30
LIAM
“Iwant you to know that I’ve had a long day and I’m unhappy, and all of this is fucking personal.”
I punch Kieren in the mouth for the fifth time and feel a tooth crack under my knuckles.
His head lolls sideways as he groans, his eyelids fluttering. Blood pours from his lips and dribbles down his chest. He’s filthy, bruised, swollen, and a pale imitation of the man he used to be. Ifmanis the right word for a creature such as him.
I stalk across the basement, rolling my shoulders. Of all the hells I’ve been through, this has to be one of the hardest, mostly because I care about the outcome. Back in the day, when I was a delinquent running around the fucking streets, a stabbing, a fight, a shooting, all that shit flowed around me like water in a lake. I made ripples, I made splashes, but it all ended up back in the pile in the end. None of it mattered, nothing ever clung to me, because I wouldn’t let it.
Now everything’s different.
“You know the sick part of this?” I talk and Kieren listens now. He spent the last half hour screaming, begging, crying, and confirming everything Luke told Regan and then some. The intelligence he gives me about the house in the suburbs is invaluable, assuming it’s not all some fantasy made up to stop the pain. That’s hard to tell sometimes when it comes to torture.
“The sick part is, I’m enjoying myself. I know, right? My wife’s concussed, my brother-in-law is in bad shape, and here you are, a living punching bag at this point. What right do I have? How dare I enjoy myself?” I kneel down in front of him, looking into his battered face. “But god, Kieren, I really love making you suffer.”
He grunts, only half conscious. I flick him on the cheek and he cringes away. I stand and step back.
“I don’t even hate you for what you are. I’ve met men like you a thousand times. Liars, cheaters, manipulators. You played the long game and you almost played it well. I have to give you props. It’s not my sort of thing, but that shit with Luke? I can recognize a master at work, even if I find the end product distasteful.” I pace behind him. “But here’s the thing. You messed with my wife. Oh, she wasn’t mine then, but still. You never should’ve hurt her, you twisted little shit.”
