Leo shook his head once. “This business is mine, and it should have been mine in the first place?—”
“He’s right, kid,” Warren said. “Not about everything, but he gets the gist.”
The shock was immediate on my brother’s face as he looked at Warren.
He was really that naïve?
Then Warren pulled out the pistol from his back pocket and pointed it at my father’s temple.
My father didn’t react, eyes hard on my brother’s face.
“No,” Leo said. “You said you wouldn’t kill him?—”
Boom.
Blood…everywhere.
I screamed and jerked back. My shoes slipped on the blood that now coated the floor.
My ears started to ring again.
I saw everything that happened, saw the brains splatter and the blood explode like a geyser, but my mind blocked it out the second I saw it. My knees gave out, and I slid to the floor as the sobs cracked my chest instantaneously. I could hear my brother screaming in the echoes of the background.
“You said you wouldn’t kill him!”
Against my better judgment, I looked at my father, who was dead on the floor, a huge puddle of blood already underneath him, his eyes lidless and open, his hand soaked in his own blood. “Dad…” I started to crawl toward him, wanting him to be alive when I knew without a doubt he was beyond saving. “Dad…” I gripped his hand, my clothes getting soaked in the red blood that was everywhere. “No…”
“Take her,” Warren ordered. “Let’s go.”
“You said you would let her go!” Leo yelled.
“Well, I changed my mind. She’ll be my little pet. We can play hide-and-seek in my mansion. It’ll be fun.”
All the fight left me. All the hope died in my heart. I was too devastated to care about anything. My eyes remained on myfather, and then suddenly and violently, I vomited all over the floor, my insides mixing with the blood spreading there.
It splashed on Warren’s boots, and he kicked off the debris. “I said, let’s go.”
The guy who held me dragged me to my feet and forced me upright.
My legs weren’t cooperative at first, shaky and weak, and my shoes slipped in the blood and the vomit, and I almost fell. “Wolfe…where are you?” I suddenly sobbed again, grieving the violent death of my father that he should have stopped.
Leo continued to argue with Warren. “This wasn’t the deal we made, and you know it.”
“Oh, I know.” Warren nodded toward his cronies to take me down the stairs. Then he clapped Leo’s cheek a couple times. “With a little more experience, you’ll catch on.”
The man started to escort me to the stairs, and when my shoes hit the rug, they began to dry and lose their slipperiness. I sobbed as I moved down the stairs, tempted to throw myself down and crack my head open. I’d lost my father to a bullet and my brother to betrayal, and the man that I needed most wasn’t there.
I hoped he hadn’t been killed…then I really would throw myself down these stairs.
They got me to the ground floor and escorted me out of the house, and I saw all the men who worked for my father still being held at gunpoint, forced to surrender because they were outnumbered and surrounded. They didn’t move their heads, but their eyes followed me as I was escorted to one of the cars.They could probably deduce what had happened by the way I sobbed as I was shoved toward the car.
“Frankie.”
I recognized my brother’s voice, and I hated him so much I would actually rather get in the car than look at his fucking face. The guy handling me pressed my chest into the side of the car and secured a rope around my wrists.
I didn’t fight it. There was no fight left in me.
“Hold on,” Leo said.
