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I lifted the gun slowly, aiming it squarely at his head. I wanted to pull the trigger so badly, but I knew he would fire off his shot at Iris before I got the chance. I couldn’t let Morgan lose her mother, not a chance in hell. She had been through so much already, and she wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself.
"Just let go of her," I snarled to him, keeping my gun steady. "And this can be over."
He chuckled. He seemed utterly calm in the face of what was happening here, though I didn’t know how. How many times had he looked down the barrel of a gun like this? How many times had he been faced with someone who wanted to kill him?
And how many times had he walked away from it completely and utterly unscathed?
This was where it ended for him. I had to tell myself that. This was where it ended, once and for all; no more room for him to cause his problems or hurt the people around him.
"She doesn’t want you, Gregor," I told him simply. "She never will. And I know you know that. She would never have laid a hand on you if you didn’t force her to. Is that really the wife you want? The wife you have to threaten and violate?"
His eyes flickered slightly, and I could tell I was getting to him. I kept talking.
"She’s never going to belong to you," I continued. "And I bet you already know that. You can do what you want, say what you want, put that fucking ring on her finger, but it’s not going to undo the fact that she doesn’t want you and never will."
"Shut the fuck up," he snarled at me, jamming the gun back against Iris’s head. Iris clasped her hands together in her lap, whispering something under her breath—a prayer, maybe. Leo stared down at her, clearly wishing he could reach out and help her, but trapped where he was for the time being.
"You can take all of this from her, and it’s not going to change anything," I continued. "You could shoot me dead right now, and she’ll still love me more than she’ll ever love you. And that kills you, doesn’t it? You could never get someone like her to care about you, never. You don’t have it in you."
He swung the gun around on me, just as I had wanted him to. I needed to be the one in danger here, not Iris. I stared at him, a grin on my face, pushing for him to give in—pushing for him to admit that he didn’t have any control over this situation, and he didn’t stand a chance, no matter what he did. He was cold, calculated, cruel most of the time, but he knew he couldn’t control her into loving him. Forcing her to marry him was one thing, but I knew it wouldn’t have been enough.
"You don’t know what you’re talking about," he snapped back at me, his eyes flashing with anger. For the first time, he was showing real emotion, unable to hide how much he really wanted Morgan. Not just as his wife, the mother of his child, but as his lover. And she would never see him like that, never look at him as anything other than the pig he was.
"Oh, I do," I replied, slowly squeezing my finger down on the trigger. He was distracted, his gun drooping slightly as I spoke, wanting to hear what I had to say, though I doubted he would have admitted to that quite so easily.
"She’s told me all about you," I continued. "Told me exactly what kind of man you are. And you know what she told me? She told me that she could never love you. Never would. That being married to you felt like being in some kind of prison. That’s what you did to her, Gregor. That’s what you’ll always do to her. And killing me isn’t going to change that."
I could hear the blood rushing in my head, and everything came down to this moment. He parted his lips to argue with me, his hand dropping by his side for a split-second, and I aimed the gun at his chest and pulled the trigger.
The sound was deafening, filling the room around us. Iris let out a scream and keeled away from him just as Gregor fell to his knees—the bullet had gone through his chest, slightly to the left, right through his heart, as I had intended. If he even had one there.
I stepped between Iris and Gregor, letting Leo drop to his knees to help his mother, and fired off two more shots into Gregor’s head, making sure he was actually dead. No way was I going to risk this beast coming back to life again.
Once I had emptied the clip into him, I let out a long, shaky breath I didn’t realize I had been holding, and the ringing in my ears began to dissipate just in time for me to hear the sound of a car pulling to a halt outside. I looked up and saw Paulo in the front seat as Morgan scrambled out and rushed towards the house.
She hurried through the door, and when she saw the chaos in the living room, her face crumpled, but she threw herself at her mother, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing her tight.
"Oh, my God," she breathed. "I thought you were … I thought …"
"It’s okay, Morgan," her mom replied, even though her voice was trembling. I undid Leo’s cuffs, nodding to him in greeting. Not exactly how I’d imagined us meeting again after all these years, but he was alive, and that was what mattered.
I watched as Morgan sobbed in her mother’s arms and reached down to slide a hand over her back, reminding her that I was here, that she was safe, and that, most importantly, Gregor would never have a chance to control her or her family again.
She was free. Just as she had always deserved.
Chapter Twenty-One – Morgan
"This is where you’re living?" Leo exclaimed as he looked around, taking in the penthouse apartment I had been calling home for these last few weeks.
"Just until we can get settled somewhere new," Alex replied. "It’s an old place of my father’s, a hideout, really."
"Damn, if this is what you call a hideout, I can’t wait to see what your actual home looks like," Leo teased him, and Alex flashed him a grin. Since the two of them had come into each other’s lives once again, it had been just like old times—except I didn’t have to worry about hiding my crush on Alex this time around.
"Oh, honey, I love this place," Mom told me as I helped her across the threshold. She had been a little shaky these last few days, and I didn’t blame her.
I could still hardly believe it was all over—Gregor, my marriage, the power he’d held over my head all this time. The terror I’d felt when Alex had rushed off to confront him had been so intense, I’d hardly been able to control myself. I’d called the last number I could find on his phone and managed to get in touch with Paulo, who I had explained the situation to as quickly as I could. Paulo had rushed me down there to try and intervene before Alex got hurt, but as it turned out, he had already taken Gregor out by the time I got there.
When I spoke to him about it, he’d told me how he’d confronted the man who’d forced me down the aisle—reminded him that I would never really care for him. I wouldn’t have thought it would be an issue Gregor would care about that much, but it really got to him. I didn’t know if he’d had real feelings for me or if he’d just been sure that I would eventually fall under his spell once we’d been together long enough, but either way, it didn’t matter. That had been enough for Alex to get the jump on him, and he had killed him stone-dead, right there in the middle of the safehouse.
