Page 116 of Inflict

“Would it?”

“You barely even cried, and you were blue all over. For all that effort she put into hiding she was carrying you, she damn near killed you. I wish she had, lad. You were never worth the effort—you didn’t understand me, or how I thought and what I wanted. As much as I tried over the years to make you be more like me, you were never quite the same.”

Connor smiled, though he was sure it looked cold. “Two sides of the same coin. One will always be a bit better, won’t it?”

Sean nodded.

Connor saw his father’s finger twitch on the trigger.

Never bring a knife to a gun fight.

Sean thought he had won, but Connor wasn’t going to go down quite that easily. Certainly not without a fight. He never brought a knife to a gun fight, but it was only a gun fight until Connor said differently.

That triple-edged blade he had slid into the sleeve of his jacket fell down into his hand, and in a flash, he drove it into his father’s leg before Sean could even see the weapon coming. Right into the artery, as deep as it could go, straight to the hilt.

Sean stumbled back a step, grabbed at the knife, and yanked it out, not realizing his biggest mistake. He didn’t seem to care about the pouring blood rushing from his leg as he raised his gun at his son again. “You feckin’ cunt!”

“Kill me,” Connor urged, “but you’ll bleed out before you ever make it to the road.”

Connor watched his father’s finger wrap around the trigger, and in that second, he felt peace. Nothing more, just peace. He’d be where he wanted and needed to be soon. Surely, if there was a God and heaven, Evelyn would be the angel that let him in, even if his sins were so great and too many to count.

And then Sean’s eyes grew wide as another loud crack cut through the air, and sent him flying forward. Connor moved out of the way just in time to miss his father hitting the floor. The blown-out back of Sean’s skull was a grisly sight as more blood pooled over the rotting floor.

Killian stood at the very back of the hallway, likely having come from the front door, with his gun still raised. “Front door was unlocked. Apparently you were the distraction, mate.”

Connor wasn’t sure what to do.

He didn’t know whether to hate his friend, kill him, or thank him.

He wanted to die.

Connor didn’t say anything, instead moving forward, checking the room his father had come from. There, he found her. She was tied in a familiar fashion, one he had seen over and over again as he had flipped through too many images of the same scene. Hogtied, with a tension rope attached to her ankles and throat, ready to choke her to death as her body became exhausted and too weak to hold the tension loose. Her body was naked, limp on a dirty floor, her blonde hair matted with blood around her face.

Welts and split skin covered her back.

Her bare, uninked back.

Connor was down on the floor in a second, his hands brushing away the bloody, sweaty hair of the dead woman so he could see her face. He ignored the blood staining his hands and seeping into his pants, instead focusing on the features of the dead woman in front of him. Her slack lips and opened eyes—though dead—were familiar, but not quite enough.

It wasn’t Evelyn.

His heart started beating again.

He breathed.

“Connor?” Killian asked at the door.

“It’s not her.”

“What, mate?”

Connor held the young woman’s face tighter in his hands, unsure if he should be thankful at her death, or horrified at his own relief. “It’s not Evelyn. This isn’t her.”

It was Terri, the slave his father had taken from the house when he left, although in the midst of all the nonsense Connor had dealt with over several days, he’d forgotten about her.

Connor let the woman’s face go, though he closed her eyes before standing. “We need to find her. She’s here. Somewhere. I know she is.”

His father had said so himself.