His body slowly weakens beneath mine,like the energy is being drained from him. The hands on my waist loosen but don’t let go. I straighten and look down at his face.
He's a handsome man, beautiful like one of the marble busts in his library. A real gentleman on the outside. It’s such a pity he’s so ugly inside.
“Della,” he murmurs.
His eyes roll back, and he’s gone but still breathing.
I need to go. It’s time to take Landis and run. But something stops me, keeps me sitting on his inert body.
What Leland did to me meant nothing to him. He said he couldn’t even remember it. In the confusion of being so young, so vulnerable, I still don’t know for certain if he meant to do it,or if Landis was the result of pure negligence. But either way, it doesn’t matter. He still did it.
It still hurt me.
And now,I have to carry my broken, porcelain heart everywhere in my hands.
All the nervousness seeps out. In my mind’s eye is the sight of Jensen beating Leland with a terrifying anger in the pit.My ownrage is socalmnow.I’m sinking in a river of it.And I understand what he felt in that moment.
Brothers Boyd told Leland to tell the devil who sent him, but no man will send him to hell. That privilege is only for the most broken, for the woman he loved and destroyed with that love.
And yet, I’m still alive.
My broken heart is still beating.
Tears welling in my eyes, I lift my head. Hanging on the wall is Leland’s most prized heirloom, the dagger with the Caudill family crest, handed down from son to son.
Slowly, I reach out, gripping the headboard I’ve gripped many times before, and pull it from the sheath. The hilt is so cold. Asob works its way up my throat. Maybe anger, maybe sadness. I shake as I draw the knife to the side, but the hand that grips his dark hair and pulls his head back to expose his throat is steady.
Brothers tried to outwit him.
Jensen beat him.
But I will kill him.
I might be a woman who came from nothing, but I know every empire ends.
It’s time for his to fall.
Crimson spreads across the white sheets, spilling over the pillows, abright red flower that keeps blossoming. Burning tears pour down my face, but I don’t stop until Leland Caudill is in two pieces.
In the distance, I hear a gunshot. At first, I think it’s nothing, a firework maybe. Then,it comes again, loud and clear this time. Someone’s shooting in the back field. It snaps me out of my trance, sending me running to the bathroom to wash the blood from my hands. It ripples down the drain, pink, sticky. Stumbling into the bedroom, I snatch one of my dressing gowns out of the closet and pull it on.
I don’t look at the body on the bed. There’s no desire in me to ever look back again. Stepping into the hall, I pull the door shut, but not before locking it. Another shot rings out. Someone is yelling, rattling the fence.
I run down the hall and push open the nursery. Landis is upright in bed, eyes enormous.
“Mommy, what’s happening,” he croaks.
I’m at his bedside, gathering him in my arms. He’s big for his age, heavy, but right now, he feels like he weighs nothing. Clasping him to my chest, I wrap a throw blanket around his head.
“Keep your eyes down,” I order. “Just look at Mommy. Don’t look anywhere else.”
“Mommy,” he cries out, arms wrapping around my neck. “I’m scared.”
“You’re safe,” I breathe. “Just hold me.”
I don’t have courage, not really. I’ve let myself be pushed around.I’ve been a doormat for people all my life. But when it comes to my son, I am the bravest woman who ever lived. I fled to Montana for him. I faced my worst fear and cut its head off for him. There’s no world in which I don’t get my son out alive.
Holding him tight, I run as fast as I can down the stairs.
