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Cat screams louder, and I become frantic, jerking and pulling with every bit of strength I have left. Just as my hand starts slipping through the rope, Cat’s screams abruptly cease and her frightened eyes dart over my shoulder. A second later, the barrel of a gun is pressed to my temple by someone who must have stepped from the hallway.
“You didn’t honestly believe I came alone, did you?” Jimmy asks, his lips twisting into a cruel smirk. “After all, Henry deserves to be here after he spent so much time in jail.”
Henry Stephens steps forward just enough for me to see him. He wears the same sick smile as Jimmy. I’m not surprised to see him. My guess is he went straight to Jimmy the moment he got out of prison. Which means he, Terry, and Howard lied when they said they didn’t know who Whisper was.
The muscle in my jaw pulses and my hands ball into fists, itching to wrap them around the fucker’s throat.
“I don’t believe you two were ever properly introduced. Hunter, meet Henry Stephens, your nephew.”
“Your son?” I ask. How many more fucking surprises will he come out with today?
Jimmy grins. “Yes.”
“And Terry and Howard?”
“My adopted boys. Well, not technically,” he shrugs, “but they were friends of Henry’s, and I took them in when their shit parents left them on the streets.”
“How fucking generous of you,” I grate out.
“I thought so. Anyway, they were all too happy to play their part when I told them what I had planned for you. Especially when I showed them pictures of your children. Apparently, it was a fantasy the boys shared to rape and break a child.”
Red coats my vision with his taunt.
“And you loved them so much that you just let them rot in prison,” I state.
“Only for as long as it took to get them out. Of course, since Henry is my blood, I had to get him out first.”
“Terry and Howard are still in the pen.”
“Their time is coming.”
Not if I have anything to do with it. That’s if I can get us out of this.
“So, you staged a break-in, tortured my family, killed my children, and were going to kill my wife all because you were a jealous spoiled brat when we were kids?”
“Of course not. That would be insane.”
I grunt. The guy is definitely off his fucking rocker.
“After the fourth time I tried to kill you, our parents took me to a shrink. They thought something was wrong with me.” He rolls his eyes, for the moment not touching Cat. “They put me on medicine, but it only made me angrier. I wasn’t just angry at you anymore, though, but at them. I hated them for choosing you over me. Life was fucking perfect before you came along.”
My joints lock as he looks down at Cat and something ugly crosses his face. The knife is put down on her stomach again and he pulls out a gun from the back waistband of his pants. He presses the barrel of it against her pussy, pushing the tip inside.
Before I can say anything—what can I really say?—he continues talking. I keep my eye on the gun, hoping like fuck he doesn’t have twitchy fingers.
“I overheard them talking one night about sending me away to a boarding school. So, I killed them,” he says, casual as you fucking please. “Our father kept a gun in his nightstand. I took it out, shot him first, and then shot our mother. I knew from watching our father kill a man once that I needed to wipe the gun down so the cops wouldn’t know I did it. It never occurred to them that it was an eight-year-old boy.” He laughs maniacally, as if it was the funniest thing he’s ever seen. “I thought since we were brothers they would put us with a family together, and I’d bide my time before I finally killed you, but that didn’t work out. We were separated. I was willing to let it go, until I found out years later that our parents left you a fucking fortune and me not one fucking dime. Oh, and since we’re clearing the air, once I found out about the inheritance and the people who took you in who informed you of the money, I had the brakes cut on their car.”
I grit my teeth. “You killed Thomas and Sandra?”
“With fucking pleasure.”
Just another reason to enjoy killing this bastard once I get free. I didn’t spend enough time with Thomas and Sandra for me to get close to them, but they were the only people who had given me anything good. Through them, my life changed for the better.
“The inheritance came from Patrick and Summer St. James. Another fabrication,” I add more to myself than to him. I look at Jimmy. “How in the fuck was that my fault?”
He jams the gun further inside Cat and she cries out. I hear the click of the hammer, and I freeze, my blood running cold.
“It wasn’t,” he says frostily.
