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Chapter Eighteen
The words echoed in Lindsey’s brain. Her uncle, the man she despised and the same one who had scared her so much growing up, actually thought she would choose him. Take money over integrity and happiness.
“Prove to me you are as strong and independent as you claim.” Simon continued to push the gun in her general direction.
Holt stared at the gun with an intensity that suggested he thought this whole barbaric exercise was real. Somehow her idiot uncle thought she could be bought and brought back into the sick family fold with the equivalent of a fancy watch.
“It’s him or you, Lindsey.” Simon’s hand stayed steady.
“I won’t do it.” She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill another human being in cold blood. The heartlessness and sheer depravity of that act tore at her. If he’d offered this deal before to other people, members new and old, that meant others died, and she couldn’t think about that.
Beyond all that was one very simple fact. She loved Holt. She didn’t know how or why it had happened. It had started out with attraction and she thought it would always simmer there. He’d come into town and eventually move on. Instead, he’d stayed and lured her in.
Even as she’d waited in that cell for death to come, she’d thought about him and the pain subsided. There were so many facets to him. Pieces she kept learning that helped explain the man.
He was stubborn and good, handsome and gruffly charming. He made her knees weak and her head spin. And if she managed to get out of here, she would say it. Somehow.
But no matter what Simon promised or how much he egged her on, she would not capitulate. She would not kill Holt.
That was when it hit her. Not Holt. The choice became so clear then. She would die first.
“This is your last chance.” Simon nodded in Holt’s direction. “You kill him or I will.”
Only if he came through her. “I said no.”
“Lindsey, do it.” Holt’s voice carried over Simon’s shouting.
Her gaze flipped to him and she shook her head. Her heart flipped inside out as every cell ached for him. She knew he meant the words. He’d made her a promise and was willing to ride it into death. The idea of losing him, of living in this world without him, sent a numbness spreading through her. She couldn’t feel or taste or think.
But one thing was absolutely clear. She would not be the second person he cared about—and she was pretty sure he did care—to shoot him and leave him to die. No way. He’d survived once. There was no telling if he could survive a second time. And even if he could she couldn’t. It would be a move she’d see for the rest of her life.
Shooting him to save her. Never going to happen.
“Be a smart girl and listen to your boyfriend.”
Simon was an idiot in every conceivable way. She thought it back then and thought it now. “I’m a woman, not a girl.”
“If it’s between me and you, you live.” Holt’s voice, sharp and focused, bounced through the open room and back at her. “I need you to live.”
No, no, no. This was not a sacrifice she would allow him to make. “And I want you with me.”
“Lindsey, please.” The begging in his tone slapped at her.
“I...” She could not make the admission among all this hate. She loved him, but that was between them. Private. “I care about you. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t.”
She didn’t know what that meant. Desperation filled her as she tried to ferret out the clues and figure out a safe way through this for both of them. Because her life dragged them to this place. Her vile past. The shocking sight of her uncle. This was all on her.
“You are weak.” Simon shook the hand with the gun sitting in it. “Prove to me you understand what’s happening here and end this. One bullet to...what do you call him, Holt? To Holt’s brain and we restart. All will be forgiven.”
Her uncle’s sickness spewed out and covered everything. Wallowing in it made her long for a bath. “I don’t need your forgiveness.”
“Lindsey, be careful,” Holt said in a tone she’d heard so many times over the past few days. Not preachy or demanding but concerned.
Simon’s face was a mask of pure fury. Red and blotchy with teeth snapping. “Yes, he’s right. There is such a thing as respect, and you are not showing any.”
He could not possibly think she owed him anything. He and her dad had kidnapped her and stolen her life. The stress killed her mother. That sealed their relationship and guaranteed that the only thing she would ever feel for the man with many names who claimed to be her uncle was hate. “Not for you. Never for you.”
