Page 48 of Ivy’s Poison

I inhaled a shaky breath. So, this is what a pissed mama bear looks like.

Her eyebrows lifted in a deranged fashion. “Huh?” Snot dripped from her nose, sliding into her mouth. “You had me fucked, in every hole I have, took the money I earned, and laughed about it. Only to sell me again.” The tip of the knife touched his stomach as she chuckled in an unhinged manner. “And I still forgave you.”

A killer can sense a killer. Stain sensed what his daughter had become at that moment, and I sensed what she was going to do. I stepped closer to his back to offer Ivy support and stability right before the tip of the knife started, in an agonizingly slow pace, to sink into her father’s skin.

Stain’s hand twisted in the restraint, but he didn’t try to move away. Maybe he couldn’t since I had now taken hold of his shoulders to hold him still.

Ivy, barefoot and still in my t-shirt, took a step forward, sinking the knife further. “Do you know I didn’t want my man to kill you?” Tears dripped from her chin. “I, stupidly, still hoped and believed in you.” Stain groaned as the knife started hitting organs. “But you dare to try and hurt my baby?” She shook her head no, her face becoming impossibly red. “Not ever going to fucking happen.”

I didn’t move as the knife pushed through her father, breaking my skin, too. I stood strong for the woman I would respect for the rest of my days.

On her tippy toes, she growled in his face. “You may be twisted in the mind, but I’m fucked in the soul, and damning yours back to hell, where it belongs.”

Ivy stared him down, all the way through his last exhale.

Blinking, she stumbled back, and whispered, “Goodbye.”

Dropping the corpse, I stepped over him for her. She peered up at me as if just realizing I was there. “Bors?”

“Yeah, babe. I’m here.”

Her wet face had the expression of ultimate shock. “I killed my dad.”

I gently pulled her into my arms. “Yeah, babe. I know.”

As her world crumbled apart, I held her together and let her cry in my safe embrace.

“He hurt me so bad.”

Starting to rock her in an attempt to offer comfort to the inconsolable, I was startled to hear leaves crunching. For a second, I thought Stain had recruitments after all, but then I saw the solemn faces of my fellow assassins, stepping out from behind trees. They had come after all. Each nod told me they understood me not calling on them. Each nod spoke of respect for the murders they’d just witnessed. Each nod told me the woman crying in my arms never needed to know they saw her pain, her regret, and her sorrow for her father selling her body, over and over again, no apologies to ever be spoken.

I had imagined an epic battle, a fight of the ages for my little family, but it ended up being not my fight. Not completely. It was Ivy’s.

Epilogue

Ivy

I don’t know what happened to the bodies, and I never asked. There was no point. What was done was done, and now it was time to move forward. I just wanted to be sure we could do so in a safe manner. Three months later, I was still asking, “But, how do we know no one else will come for us?”

Bors gave me one of his sexy as fuck grins. “Babe, it’s like this. When the deadly enters your property and they’re never seen again, who wants to knock on your fucking door?”

“You’re not making a damn bit of sense, Champ.”

“How about this? If the fly knew better, would he land in the mouth of the Venus Fly Trap?”

Blink. Blink.

“Well, would he?” Bors, sitting next to Jade playing on the living room floor with building blocks, plopped his overgrown self on her tiny kid stool. It exploded under the pressure and Bors’ ass hit the ground. “The fuck?”

Jade burst into a laugh that fed my soul the light needed to recover from all I had been through.

With a cup of hot tea, in the proper cup, Beth walked into the living room. “What the hell is so funny—? What the hell happened to Jade’s stool?”

Bors winked at her. “It was defective.”

I wasn’t sure why, but Beth gasped and set down her cup and pulled her cell from her back pocket. Bors leaned forward and whispered in Jade’s ear. She squealed and hopped to her feet while clapping her hands. Bors handed her something. Little Jade, with a closed palm, rushed over to me. “Mama?”

“Yes, baby?”