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“You can’t kill me, he whispers, voice shaking. “She’ll hate you for it.”
As if her hate could help him now.
“I know,” I reply, because I have no doubt he’s right. “But not as much as she’ll hate you.”
Maybe she’s already started hating me, or gone back to hating me, or maybe she never really, truly stopped, even when she began loving me. Because she’s started screaming at me like a banshee, her cry forming a raw shape around the syllables of my name.
She wants me to stop.
But what she wants has never been my priority. If I cared solely about what she wanted I never would have taken her in the first fucking place.
No. I care about what she needs.
And what my wife needs is a world without this piece of shit in it any longer.
I don’t answer my wife’s cries. I speak instead to her father.
“You forfeited your life the moment that you took my wife from me.”
O’Malley’s face pales so fast he looks like he’s already dead.
Deirdre isn’t just screaming my name now, but something else. Another word tacked on the end. “Elio, Elio, don’t!”
“I love you, Songbird,” I tell my wife as I press the barrel of my gun against her father’s forehead. “And as your husband I will honour you and your wishes to the best of my ability. Starting tomorrow.”
I slide my finger against the trigger and it feels so fucking good.
“You might want to close your eyes.”
I’m saying it to Deirdre, but pathetic O’Malley is the one who actually does it, scrunching his eyes shut as if I’ll disappear if he can’t see me. One glance tells me that Deirdre’s baby blues are wide fucking open. She’s stopped screaming at me, her mouth tight and bloodless, her gaze glued to me, to her father, to the gun. Like she’s searing this unholy trinity of violence into her brain. For half a second, I wish I’d taken her out of the room for this.
But I’ve always been a monster to her. She told me that herself.
Might as well prove her right. Let her see who her husband truly is.
Let her see what happens when anyone tries to take her from me.
And I have to hand it to her – she doesn’t look away. Deirdre’s eyes are blue fire. I can’t tell if she’s pleading or condemning.
She doesn’t blink.
I’m not sure she even breathes.
But I do. And I speak. One last word for my father-in-law before he dies. And maybe not the one he expects.
“Thank you,” I murmur to him, and I mean it, too. Because producing Deirdre was the greatest thing he ever fucking did and then he turned around and brought that treasure straight to my goddamn door. In a twisted way, I got my perfect bride because of him, and that deserves some small acknowledgment.
Even now.
Even if it’s not enough to save him.
And so, less than twenty-four hours after I married her, as my wife looks on with those soulful, scorching eyes I love so much, I sweep my finger back against the trigger…
And I send a bullet straight through her father’s head.
Chapter 46
Deirdre
