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“Charles?” Rayne’s brows pull together as the cool metal touches my temple.
“I said put your weapons down,” he shouts, causing me to flinch at the sound. I don’t want to show any weakness, but if you can’t be weak when you have a gun pointed at your head, when can you be?
My eyes meet Everett’s, indecision dancing in the deep blue pools. I’ve stared into his eyes so many times since the day we met, and it only seems right that if these are the final moments of my life, that I spend them staring in the depths of the soul that brought me peace even in the wildest of storms.
I drop my gun first, making sure to drop it out of Elijah’s reach. The heavy metals thuds on the rug as I drop my hands to my sides.
“You don’t have to do this, Charles. You’ve worked for our family for years, whatever the Russos are paying you, we can pay you five times that much, ten even,” Rayne offers.
“You think this is about money?” He spits, the droplets land on my bare shoulder and an involuntary shudder spreads across my skin. “This has never been about fucking money.”
“What’s it about then?” Rayne asks.
“This bitch is the reason my brother is dead, and you’re all going to repent for your sins, including his death. Every last one of you deserves death, but none more than your precious queen.” He hisses the word, the calm man who first captured us is long gone, leaving a crazed version so painfully similar to Craig it turns my stomach.
“He’s Craig’s brother,” I whisper, filling in the blanks Charles is failing to fill.
“My brother wanted to save Wynter, he wanted to cleanse her of her sins, but instead he was murdered for his good deeds.”
The anger in Everett’s eyes only seems to glow brighter with each word said, but I hold them. It’s the only thing keeping me grounded, the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
“He beat her,” Rayne growls. “He deserved to die.”
The gun moves from my temple and is held over my shoulder at my brother. “She deserved it,” Charles yells. “This slut went to the den of evil. She sinned and sinned. What was my brother to do but cleanser her?”
Everett watches me closely, his gun lowered but ready to be used at a moment’s notice. I take a deep breath before mouthing,Shoot him.
Time seems to drag as he stares at me, uncertainty filling his face. But if there’s one person on this earth I trust not to kill me, it’s the man I fell in love with. The one who was wise beyond his years when I met him, whose demons danced in his gaze, but who wanted to be better. The world is quiet despite the chaos around us, and he’s all I can see, all I can hear, all I can breathe.
I see the moment he decides to do it. We’re out of options, and this is the only one we have, our best chance at all of us walking out of this as unscathed as possible.
The moment the bullet leaves the barrel of Everett’s gun, peace washes over me. Looking death in the face is a funny thing. There are two paths set out for me, one where I continue walking this earth with the people I love, and one where I don’t. But it doesn’t matter which way I go as long as they’re okay.
The bullet tears through my side, agony piercing through every inch of my body despite the piece of metal causing the pain being so small. It takes the air from my lungs, making every breath harder than the last, and the moment the bullet exits my body, I drop to the ground.
Charles lets out a violent snarl when he realizes what’s happening, but there are already three more shots being fired, and red stains the front of his white button-up shirt. “You fucking cunts,” he shouts.
Rayne moves to restrain Elijah who lays motionless on the ground. I thought I only hit his shoulder, but maybe I did more damage than I thought.
I reach up and untie Storm, his hands slipping free from the rope easily. He scoops me up and carries me to the lounge, laying me down to inspect my wounds.
“You shot my sister,” he yells at Everett.
“She told me to,” he defends as he leans over the back of the lounge, his eyes dragging down my body, looking for any other injuries.
“If she told you to jump off a cliff, would you?”
“You know I would,” Everett deadpans.
The sound of their bickering is the last thing I hear as I allow the emotions of the day to drag me under. The pain, the anguish, the anger, it all seeps into one and drags me into a peaceful state I’ve been longing for.
66
Everett
Idon’t know whether I did it intentionally, or if it was some kind of coincidence, but I shot Wynter in exactly the same place as I had been shot, and now we have matching scars. It’s been a week since we both had bullets pulled from our bodies, but we’re both healing well despite my insistence that Wynter not move a muscle so as not to slow the healing process.
She’s a little sick of how overbearing I’m being but she needs to understand the guilt that ravages me every time I see the bandage wrapped around her torso. I did that. I shot her. I scarred her. And no matter what I do, I can’t let it go.
