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There were supposed to be a couple of guards keeping an eye on the back of the house, but he must have managed to keep out of their view. I held myself still and considered my options, fear tickling up my spine.
“Don’t even think of raising the alarm either,” Xavier warned. “Or it’s going to be a bloody massacre for not just you but all your pathetic followers. But I think you know a thing or two about that. Do you have any idea how many men you blew to bits tonight? Most of those idiots weren’t even headed for Paradise Bend. But what do you care about the havoc you wreak?”
“The only person wreaking havoc around here is you,” I said, pitching my voice just a little higher than usual so it wouldn’t be obvious I was trying to catch the guards’ attention, but loud enough that I could hope that they would hear me anyway. “And we’re going to keep destroying the Storm’s resources until he realizes it costs too much to stay in the Bend.”
“Why do you feel the need to explain that to me?” Xavier asked in a taunting voice. “Oh, that’s right.” He waved the gun toward me. “Under all the pretense of a badass leader, you’re a just a little girl with a gun. You’re a weakling with no spine, and you have no idea what you’re up against. So far, you’ve gotten real lucky, but that’s only because I was toying with you. Now it’s time to put you down for all the misery you’ve caused me.”
“The miseryI’vecaused you?” I retorted in a disbelieving tone, letting my voice get just a little louder. “I’d never have had anything to do with you or the Storm if you hadn’t barged into my home. Maybe you’re the weakling, scared of this little girl.” If I got him angry, affected his focus, I might have the chance to take a shot after all.
But Xavier just snorted in response. “Scared of you? Oh, no. I loathe you. I loathe your very existence. You took away the only thing I’ve ever cared about.”
Genuine anguish reverberated through his fierce voice. I frowned, racking my brain to figure out what he might mean. Had one of the Storm men we’d taken down been important to him? It’d never seemed like he cared about their lives.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.
Fury clouded Xavier’s face. Unfortunately, his gun hand didn’t dip. “You took Josey from me,” he snapped.
My heart stopped. The words tumbled from my mouth before I could think better of them. “Don’t you dare try to use my mother’s name to mess with me.”
Xavier shifted his weight. His voice came out thick with rage. “Before she was your mother, she meant much more to me than she could ever have mattered to you. She was my entire world.”
“Stop fucking with me,” I said, but my voice faltered. I gathered myself and put more force into my next question. “What the fuck do you mean?”
Had any of the men nearby caught on that I was in trouble yet? They might be sneaking closer to make sure they were in a good position before they jumped right into the fray.
And maybe I didn’t want them to jump in yet. I wanted to know what connection this sick bastard had to my mother.
Xavier’s pupils were dilated and the veins on his forehead pulsed as he began to speak. “Your mother and I grew up together, and somewhere along the line, we fell in love. Or at least I thought she loved me back until she ran off someplace too far for me to find her until years later. She said I was hurting her. As if I’d ever do anything that wasn’t for her own good.” His tone had taken on an odd rambling quality.
He laughed suddenly, the sound echoing around the backyard. He wasn’t even trying to hide himself now. He dropped down on the lawn in front of me, and I instinctively drew a step back. Anger emanated from his every pore. His eyes were bloodshot, his face tightened into a mask of pure fury—all directed at me.
“She looked just like you,” he went on. “Innocent and pure, and you wouldn’t even suspect that she schemed behind my back to leave me. Took off one night while I was on a job—I came back to the apartment and found her and her things gone.”
My stomach twisted. Maybe I didn’t really want to hear this story after all. But I needed to understand—and to give any help that was coming time to get into the right position to take this monster down.
“How’s that my fault?” I asked. “I wasn’t even born yet.”
“No.” He gave me a dark look. “I spent a long time looking for her, looking for my answers. But it was only after she was completely gone from this world that I discovered where she’d ended up. She came here and decided to play house with that prick Tyrell Katz, got herself pregnant by him… I treated her like a princess only for her to become another man’s whore. And then when I finally had my chance to get her back, she was already out of reach. All that was left was him and you, the two people she left me for.”
He wasn’t making any real sense. How could Mom have left Xavier for me when I hadn’t existed yet? But in Xavier’s mind, it was obviously my fault somehow.
He hadn’t loved her. He’d been obsessed with her. He’d thought he owned her, just like Dad had thought he owned me. Josey had escaped one monster only to get wrapped up in another one’s life. Maybe my father hadn’t been quite as awful as the man in front of me, but they were cut from the same cloth, weren’t they?
How could I doubt that she’d ever been with Xavier when she’d given Dad at least seven years of her life? She’d had a type, one that really wasn’t good for her.
“You’re lying,” I challenged him, even though I didn’t really believe that.
Xavier stared at me as if he wasn’t really seeing me. Maybe he was imagining my mother superimposed on my features. “She would have come back to me. She would’ve come back where she belonged if it wasn’t foryou. She stayed so she could pretend to have her happy little family, and by the time I found her, it was too late.” His voice cracked. “My Josey was dead.”
He sounded so sure. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe she got away from youandmy dad like she deserved.”
Xavier focused in on me again. His expression hardened. “Younever deserved her. And you’ll pay for stealing her from me. You’ll pay and pay and pay some more. The Storm would have never cared about a pathetic little place like this if I hadn’t pointed it out to him. I convinced him that taking over Paradise Bend would be a good investment. I wanted to get to Tyrell, but he was already dead before I got here. Now I’ve got the next best thing. I’ve got you, Mercy, and it’s time for you to die.”
He leaned forward, his aim steadying. Just as my muscles tensed to throw me toward shelter, a shot rang out from a different direction.
A bullet clipped Xavier in the shoulder. He flinched and ducked, his aim faltering. In that split-second, I jerked my own pistol up. But even as I pulled the trigger, the enormous man was vaulting over the fence and thumping down on the other side.
A couple morebangsof gunfire split the night. I dashed to the fence, hoping I could get in another shot, but when I scrambled up to see over the pickets, I couldn’t make out his hulking form at all. He’d raced off through the yards.
