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“He’s out, Jags. Fuck, man. He’s out!”
When I heard my brother-in-law’s voice, I went still. Breathing hard, I looked down at Cannon, who was a bloody mess on the floor of the tree house.
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bsp; “What the fuck are you doing here?” I demanded, trying to shrug him off me.
Barrick’s hold only tightened. “Emmie called and said she didn’t trust you to stay home. Told me to watch the GPS on your car, and if you left the house, to do what I needed to in order to return you home. By that time, you were already driving.” He pulled me outside and then blocked the door before releasing me. “I don’t know what’s going on or why you just beat the fuck out of your best friend, but I have to call your mom.”
I shook out my throbbing hands, not even looking to see how torn up the knuckles were in the streetlights surrounding the park. “Do what you have to. Just let me finish what I came here to do.”
He crossed his massive arms over his chest. “I can’t do that, little bro. Mia will kick my ass if I let you commit murder.”
“So leave and say you didn’t find me until after I killed him.” I tried to push him out of my way, but Barrick was unmovable. The guy was not only a security expert but a Marine vet and an underground cage fighter. There was a reason my dad had chosen him to protect Mia when he’d needed someone to watch over her while she was at college.
Part of me was glad Mia fell for him. She would always be safe as long as he was still breathing. But right then, a part of me wished she hadn’t forgiven him for hiding his identity from her, because he wouldn’t have been there to stand in my way if not.
“It’s over, Jagger.” Barrick’s deep voice was full of regret, but he didn’t move so much as an inch. “He’s going to be feeling that beating for a hell of a long time. Go home, and I’ll clean this up. Maybe Emmie won’t lose her mind too bad when she sees him if you go now.”
“No.” I flexed my fingers, grimacing when I felt blood dripping from my knuckles. “I’ll take whatever she throws at me. I’m not a pussy like that piece of shit in there. I won’t run away and hide when I know I did something wrong. Call Ma. I’ll stay right here and let her see exactly what I did.”
“Whatever he did, you shouldn’t have gone all vigilante—” he started to scold.
“He hurt Violet,” I cut him off.
His shoulders tensed, and his dark eyes narrowed. “Hurt her…how?”
“Her mouth was torn all to hell,” I told him. The memory of that picture on Ma’s phone had my rage spiking higher again. “Just let me finish him off so he can’t do that to anyone else. It was just her mouth this time. Next time, it could be even worse. I won’t give him the chance to hurt anyone else.”
For all of two seconds, I saw the indecision in Barrick’s eyes before his shoulders tensed again and he shook his head. “I can’t let you do that, Jags. Not because I don’t want to let you, because I really fucking want to let you kill that little fucker right now, but because Mia wouldn’t want his blood on your hands.”
“Leave, and you won’t have to know what I do to him.”
He thrust his hands into his thick hair, pulling it from the man bun it was tied into. “As tempting as that thought is, I can’t. You’re my brother now. And I have to make sure you don’t do shit that might ruin your life.” Pulling his phone from his jeans, he swiped his thumb over the screen and lifted it to his ear.
I leaned back against the railing as he spoke to my mom. “Yeah, I found him. The boy is going to need medical attention…” Ma’s shout reached my ears, and I sighed, knowing I was really going to get it when she saw me. “Not Jagger. Cannon,” Barrick explained. “Well, maybe Jagger too. His hands are pretty fucked up right now.” He told her where we were and then hung up.
“I’m sorry,” he said with sincere regret in his voice. “I know you’re going to catch hell for this. If I’d known what was really going on, I might not have even answered my phone earlier when she called.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. Like I said, I’ll take whatever happens. I deserve it for not protecting Violet from him.”
“You couldn’t have known—” he tried to excuse.
“I should have, though. I’ve turned a blind eye to his shit for too long. I know him better than anyone, even his own parents.” I stabbed my fingers through my hair, unknowingly smearing blood across my forehead. “I should have realized what he was capable of and stopped him. Or, at the very least, been there to protect the girls.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over this. It happened, and you can’t change it.” He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “All you can really do now is learn from this.”
“Yeah. Well, I know one thing I learned.”
Barrick’s brows lifted. “What’s that?”
“If I’m going to kill someone, I should just break their neck as soon as I get my hands on them, so no one can fucking stop me next time.” I shrugged off his hand and climbed down the ladder.
Walking over to the nearest bench, I sat and waited.
It didn’t take long before Ma arrived, and all hell broke loose.
Chapter 9
