AllFreeNovel
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Monty stands to the side of my chair, looking down at the bullet hole in her temple in disappointment. He turns to me and shakes his head as he yanks her off me and drops her onto the floor.
“Why is it I’m always having to do shit for you?”
But I can’t answer. I can barely even think. My trauma response wraps its arms around me and holds me close, rocking me and telling me it’s all going to be okay, but I know it won’t.
We’re all going to end up just like Riley.
“What is wrong with you?” Mali jeers, finally having enough.
Monty looks over at her in disgust. “Don’t even get me started on you. I never thought you’d be such a traitor. Seeing you hook up with Cam broke my heart.”
“I thought you were dead!” she shouts.
He stares back at her, emotionless, before he breaks out in maniacal laughter. “That’s fine. I was only with you so that Romeo over here couldn’t take Laiken away from me completely.”
Monty goes over to Mali and squats down in front of her, slowly dragging the gun up her leg. “It’s too bad I never got a chance to see what that pussy could do, though. Cam really seems to enjoy it, doesn’t he?”
My brother almost knocks his chair over as he tries to get to him. “Get the fuck off her, you fucking psychopath!”
Standing up, Monty bends forward in front of him. “Or what? What areyougoing to do?”
Cam should keep his mouth shut. Lord knows we’re not in the position right now to be insulting the person who just killed his own sister. But he never has been the type to bite his tongue, and of course, this is no different.
“What’s wrong?” he taunts Monty. “You don’t like when people make you feel less like a man?”
Monty huffs out a sarcastic laugh, looking like he’s walking away, until he swings his hand with the gun and backhands him across the face with it. The force of the hit sends Cam’s head flying to the side, and he looks a little dazed.
But when he cocks the gun and points it at him, the panic that shoots through me gives me back my voice.
“Don’t!” I wail. “Please. Don’t do this.”
Tears start streaming down my face, and Monty softens as he sees me upset. He leaves Cam alone and drops to his knees in front of me.
“No, angel,” he says softly, like he’s a whole different person. “Don’t cry. You’re too pretty to cry.”
I shake my head, praying to God that we make it out of here alive. “You don’t have to do this, Monty. You don’t. You can keep me. We can run away together, but you don’t need to hurt them. Just let them go.”
Hayes is turning an angry shade of red as he listens to the words coming from my mouth, but I don’t care. If that’s what it’ll take so they can go free, I’ll do it. I’ll doanything.
He isn’t buying it. “Hayes has to die. He’d never stop looking for you now.”
“No,” I say a little too quickly. Taking a breath, I calm myself down. “No. He doesn’t. He’ll leave us alone. I know he will.”
Monty’s eyes darken once more as he scoffs. “Unbelievable. Even still, you’re trying to fucking save him. I gave you everything you ever wanted. The big house. The dream job. I made sure you were living your goddamn dream, and youstillwant him!”
“N-no,” I choke out. “Nolan gave me those things.”
The corner of his lips raises menacingly. “You really think you just happened to meet an heiress who didn’t turn her nose up at some girl trying to get into a club she clearly didn’t belong in?”
Oh. My. God.
There’s a level of devastation you feel when you realize that everything you thought you knew was a lie. It was all Monty. Every last fucking bit of it. I believed that I lucked out. That the universe was repaying me for making the right choice and protecting Hayes. But that’s all bullshit.
It was Monty.
That’s why I didn’t hear from him at all once I left. Why the messages stopped and the threat seemed to vanish, only lingering in the parts of me that considered going back home. He was in control the whole goddamn time.
“Yeah,” he boasts. “That was all me, angel. And I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the little show you put on for me every night with that vibrator.”
