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The bastard is pulling me back by my hair, and I feel a sense of weightlessness when he uses his hold on my hair to throw me across the room. A grunt leaves me, stealing my breath, when I hit the ground hard enough for searing hot pain to shoot through my spine and tingle against my toes as I slide on my back. My head thuds against the floor, and my vision dims only for a second before sharpening once again. I stare helplessly as Uncle Marshall casually picks the gun up and examines it like he finds it fascinating.
“All my planning and then you come along,” he says on a sigh. “One crazy coincidence that fucked it all up. Fucking Ben. He couldn’t help himself. Had to have you. I used that.” He looks up at me, toying with the gun as he slowly takes a step toward me. “Backfired when you started letting Herrin’s son fuck you like his whore.”
I don’t move, trying not to spook him. Where the hell is Drex?
“I actually thought you were setting a trap for me with this charade,” he goes on, squatting down just a few feet away from me with the gun casually resting in his hand, pointing it at the ground instead of me. “But then saw Drex all over some girl downtown and realized this was real. He honestly doesn’t give a fuck about you, and I was stupid enough to think he did. No, not stupid. Paranoid. Because of you, this entire fucking thing has gone to hell. Because of you, a beautiful plan has gone to shit. Ben is running, knowing his father is going to slit his throat. Half the men we’d assembled have scattered. The others are dead, thanks to your sweet ex. Damn pussy. All the best laid plans are fucked by pussy.”
My stomach drops as my mind tries to process what he said about Drex and some girl, even though it’s the last thing I should be thinking about right now. Everything boils over until it hits a peak near eruption, and I swallow as he continues to talk, giving that evil monologue I once waited for Ben to do.
My ears hum with a steadily growing white noise, and something inside of me snaps. With one hard push, I’ve launched myself at him, catching him off guard, and I land on top of him as the gun skitters across the floor.
Screaming. I’m screaming again as my fists collide with his face over and over while I straddle him, but it’s not enough. Shoving me off him, his hand connects with my face in a slap so hard I taste blood and hear a ringing almost simultaneously as my head snaps to the side.
When I look back over, he’s standing over me with a gun, but my lips twitch when I see a second gun being put against the back of my uncle’s head.
“I strongly suggest you lower that gun before this gets ugly,” a familiar voice says from the right, and my uncle’s eyes go wide as he glances in the direction where Axle is lounging on my living room sofa across from us. It’s hard to see him from this angle, since I’m still in the dining room, but there’s no mistake about who is right behind him.
My uncle slowly holds his gun out while swallowing hard, and he drops the weapon that clanks against the tile as Drex steps out from behind him and stares at me, putting about three feet of distance between my uncle and himself, but never lowering his gun.
“Your call, Eve. Still want me to do this?” Drex asks as I stand up on unsteady legs.
My breath shakes in my lungs like the oxygen is laced with thousands of tiny air bubbles. My eyes move from the cool blue ones to my uncle’s, and I see the terror in there because he knows Drex will kill him. He knows it’s over.
“Should have went with your first instinct about the trap,” I manage to say despite the tremor in my voice.
The surprise and horror on his face stirs a sense of pride inside me. I hope Dad can see this right now.
“I bet my father was terrified when you threatened us,” I whisper hoarsely, watching his eyes widen as though he’s shocked. Just the look I see in his eyes lets me know it’s true. He did kill him. “I bet he begged you not to hurt us… Not to make him kill himself. I bet it broke his heart to know how sick his brother was.”
His lips thin as he glares at me, and it’s all the confirmation I need. I don’t need closure; no answers will ever be good enough; and I don’t care what he has to say.
