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I knew there was a smile on my face. There was something so fucking satisfying about seeing him shackled and restrained, the fear and vulnerability in his eyes now that he was the prisoner.
“You thought you’d won, didn’t you?” I didn’t take my eyes off him as I spoke. “You thought you were going to hurt me enough to let her go, wear me down so badly that I’d just hand her over to you.” I chuckled. “Look where we are now, motherfucker.”
My smile widened as I pointed behind me, unsure if he could see my finger or not. “Lily’s asleep in my bed. She’s moving in with me. In no time, we’re going to be engaged, and she’ll be my wife.” I paused. “What about you, David? Where are you right now? What’s your future going to look like?”
I exhaled a deep sigh. “I got the girl, and you’re … going to die.”
He made no reaction, nothing in his face, no movement in his body. He didn’t even try to buck in the chair.
“Bale, do me a favor,” I said. “Give him a nice punch in the face for Diesel. For what that bastard did to my friend, he deserves a broken nose before he enters hell.”
The phone was sitting on a stand, Bale standing at a side angle. As soon as I gave him the request, he crossed into the full range of the camera, reared his arm back, and connected his fist to David’s nose.
David began to groan, and once Bale took a few steps away, clearing my line of vision, I was able to see the blood dripping from David’s nostrils.
“Last words, Brady,” Bale voiced sharply. “Say them now.”
“Fuck you, David. Fuck you for the torture you put Lily through. Fuck you for what you did to Diesel. Fuck you for what you did to my plane. And fuck you for making me resort to this.”
There was a flash of black that came from Bale’s hand, and a sound, a thunder, rang through the speaker of my phone as he pulled the trigger.
The bullet landed straight between David’s eyes.
There was a look that came across his face. Almost a peacefulness as his life left his body, a paleness that rose through his skin right before his head slumped forward.
It was then, that exact moment, when his eyes were no longer visible, that it hit me. That it strung an intricate, complicated web within my chest. That it burst through my veins and muscles.
When I saw the result of what I’d done.
More blood pooled across the chest of his oversized button-down. I didn’t know if it was coming from the wound in his skull or if it was still pouring from his nose or if it was a mix of both. His fingers loosened on the armrests of the chair. His posture, although forced by the rope, became relaxed.
As I continued to watch, I was positive of two things.
David was dead.
And I would never tell Lily about this video chat.
I would burn down the world for her, but I would never subject her to what I’d just witnessed. She didn’t need to know that love had made me want to see him suffer. That love had made me want to watch him be killed.
That love had made me want to protect her at all costs.
THIRTY-NINE
Lily
My eyes were only open for a few seconds, the morning sun not yet risen in the sky, when Brady told me it was done. That David would never bother me again. I didn’t ask for proof—I didn’t want to see it or know what was involved. All that mattered was if Brady told me David would never terrorize me again, he meant it.
I didn’t feel this deep sadness that a life had been taken. I couldn’t grieve a person who had tried to destroy me and the man I loved.
What I had to do now was learn to live without fear.
But in our minds, it was hard to believe that David wouldn’t be waiting for us the moment we stepped outside. He wouldn’t be watching. He wouldn’t be reaching out, texting in detail about where we were going and what he was going to do to us.
Unlike all the other times before, Brady’s phone stayed silent while we were gone.
It stayed silent when we came home.
It stayed silent the next morning and afternoon and evening.
