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“Don’t!” I begged. “God, please don’t.”
Cedric didn’t flinch. “I trusted the wrong people, and I think a few of us in this room are guilty of that. And you didn’t do much better,” Cedric noted as he lifted his chin in my direction.
“Stop it, please. I’m begging you both.” I turned to Daniello. “He would have killed him, like you.”
“Like me?” Daniello’s smile was sinister. “I assure you this man is nothing like me.”
“Looks like we have a problem then,” Cedric said as he took a step forward.
Daniello turned to me. “Take her to the penthouse.”
I stood my ground as the air thickly filled between them. “No.”
Cedric spoke next. “Take her, Taylor.”
I swallowed the scream in my throat as I again pleaded with Daniello. “Please. Don’t do this. He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know your name. He doesn’t know anything.”
“Taylor.” It was a warning from Cedric. “I really don’t like your new boyfriend. But you need to listen to him. You need to go.”
“Phoenix.” Daniello jerked me into reality as my eyes finally fixed on his.
“Take her to the penthouse. Go.”
“Amber,” I breathed out, barely audible to my own ears. I walked over to the door and knocked. “Amber, we’re leaving.”
Amber slowly opened the door and looked past me. Daniello stood behind me, his gun still pointed at Cedric, blocking her view of the dining room.
“Joseph’s bag is still in the car, meet me there.”
“Okay.” Amber clutched a sniffling Joseph to her and made a beeline for the garage door. I turned back to Daniello who spoke to me without looking my way.
“Go. I will be behind you.”
Tears multiplied as I stared at Cedric. His eyes softened on me briefly before he barked his order.
“Goddamned it, Taylor! Get Joseph out of here, go!”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
I nodded as Amber looked at me with tear-filled eyes and then back at her sleeping son. Laz’s sleeping son.
An avalanche of guilt covered me because of Laz while growing fear budded for Cedric.
Amber looked over to me with salt-filled eyes. “He would never have left us alone, right?”
“No. Even with the police involved we would have never been free of him.”
“Does it hurt?” She lifted soft fingers to the side of my face, and the ache wasn’t nearly enough to break through my torment.
“No.”
“Jesus, Taylor. Who is that guy?”
She was referring to Daniello, but my thoughts were still on Laz, his eyes, his words, his devastation. I felt it. I felt all of it, and I would probably carry it with me for the rest of my life. In the sickest of ways, he’d remained loyal to his love for me long after I left him. I had no compartment for that, no place to shove it away. He loved me with his last breath, though I gave him no reason to, and I was sure as I stared at his lifeless body that I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him gone, I wanted to keep my sister and her son safe, but I never wanted to see him that way. And Daniello would never have let him live.
By the way he handled him, I could tell he would have done so much worse if I hadn’t begged him to stop. And if Cedric were lying on my kitchen floor lifeless, I would never get past it.
Laz’s words echoed through my head. “Laz killed Momma?”
