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Anger straightens my spine. “Why don’t I deserve to be happy, father? Why?!?” I yell.
A trickle of blood oozes out of his cracked upper lip as he draws it back to speak through the wires holding his jaw together. “Because you’re zzpawn of two fucking traitors. Your mother and the man that zzlept with her. Zzhe wanted love. Zzhe got love and a fucking bullet.”
Time stops.
I stare at the monster before me. My mind careens to that time so many years ago. The bullet. The one that killed her in the park. I knew it was from my father. But I always thought he’d missed his mark. I thought he’d made a mistake. A mistake that had cost us her.
Turns out, I’m the one mistaken. And I’m also the mistake.Hermistake. The mistake that cost her the ultimate price.
He did it on purpose. The realization sets a chain reaction in me that locks my body in place. I want to kill him. I want to hurt him. I want to break down and allow this overwhelming hurt to take me and punish me for existing. I want to destroy him. I want to ruin him.
Right now, the only thing that keeps me from jumping on his disgusting face and clawing his eyes out is the fact that my body is encased in ice.
So many painful pieces fall into place. It’s all perfectly clear now—why he’s always hated me. Why I’m so different than my sisters. I always knew I had a different mother than them, but turns out, I didn’t even have the same father.
And now he’s going to steal my happiness again.
I should have stashed that pistol in my bodice after all. He’d take one between the eyes if I had. Instead, the stupid thing is on my leg, inside my thigh, in a little holster that Ariel gave me as a wedding present. I’ll never get it in time.
Patrick Coghlan motions his men forward. “Take her!”
Gigantic guards that I’ve never seen before lurch toward me—a three-man wide wall of muscle in black tuxedos with blank soulless eyes. One grabs my arms, lifts my feet off the floor. One covers my mouth with a ham fist as they drag me from the room.
The third tackles Eva when she tries to stop them from getting me. My father’s evil laugh follows me out the door, curdling my blood in my veins as I kick the guy carrying me with everything in my terrified, broken, infuriated soul.
“Now you’ll finally get your due, bitzzzz.”
And that’s when it truly hits me. My time has come.
CHAPTERFORTY-SEVEN
The second we heard Coghlan’s voice through the bug in Carra’s dressing room, the whole team was moving.
Max leads his small group of men, each dressed in tuxedos over top of their SWAT gear, out the door. The staccato of their feet hitting tile as we run is music to my ears. “Go. Go. Go,” he commands into his headset. Kicking everything in motion.
Seconds later, Coghlan’s face down on the floor and I’m sprinting toward the designated room at the far end of the church. Shouted voices and gunshots reverberate as I run down the hall.
I don’t bother dodging as I draw my own gun, since I’m running away from the action. Men run past me, guns raised, heavy SWAT gear covering their bodies, faces, and heads.
The swarm of federal agents are like a mass of fire ants as they sweep through the entire building.
When I burst through the door to the kitchen, I come face to face with two raised guns.
Never letting go of my gun, I throw my hands up, my heart catapulting out of my open mouth, as Carra loudly gasps.
What the fucking hell? These are supposed to be Max’s men.
As I carefully analyze all the odds and calculate my next move—a bullet to the head on the guy on the left. Or should I start with the guy on the right? I need to reduce the risk of Carra getting hurt or taken to zero—I refuse to swallow convulsively. I never killed anyone but I’m about to and I may be calmer than I should about the prospect ahead of me.
I manage to rasp out, “Easy now.”
One of the men cracks a slow grin as he lowers his gun. “Welcome, Mr. McGregor, the car’s waiting for you out the back exit.”
Holy fucking relief. My body almost sags for a second. I put my gun away. Carra throws her arms around my neck as I lurch forward and grab her off her feet.
The gun fight outside this room is a constant reminder that we are not safe yet. Not missing a beat as I hoist her legs over my arm, I yell for them to move out.
In less than thirty seconds, we’re inside a blacked-out Mercedes sedan. The armored doors are heavier than any car I’ve ever been in. They thud densely when closed around us.
