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What he did to Willow… that shit hits close to home. I know how it feels to be powerless, to be used. I know how it fucks with your head and tries to break your spirit.
“Malice—”
“No,” I growl. “He touched you. He hurt you. I’m gonna kill him for it.”
Willow shakes her head. “I know. Malice, I know. But just… wait. Please.”
I drag in a deep breath and then another. The monster in me is sayingfuck it. Telling me to pull the trigger. To end this man’s miserable life now and give him what he deserves.
But Willow looks at me with those luminous brown eyes, and she says ‘please,’ and I have to listen.
Every part of me resists it though. It’s a slow, torturous thing as I drag the gun from Troy’s mouth, my muscles hardly wanting to cooperate.
Willow swallows hard and moves forward on wobbly legs. Vic and Ransom are right there, supporting her, helping her come closer and making sure she doesn’t fall.
She takes a few steps toward me and Troy, her eyes hard.
Troy starts to struggle more as she nears him, but it’s weak. It’s the struggle of someone who has no fight left, like a wounded animal that knows it’s going to be killed as soon as the trap closes around its leg. He doesn’t have the strength to break free, and he’s clearly realized by now that we took care of his bodyguards on the way in.
It was messier than I would’ve liked, with too many close calls where either my brothers or I almost got shot. But we didn’t have time to make it a cleaner operation. Vic did as much recon as he could, but we made the choice to go in partially blind—and it’s a good fucking thing we did. If we’d gotten here any later, I’m not sure I would’ve ever forgiven myself.
Willow comes to a stop just a few feet away from Troy.
Even though she has to still be in shock, she looks so strong now. Although my brothers are still flanking her, she’s standing on her own now, the shaking in her legs subsiding a little, her head held high.
Pride flares inside me.
No matter what this fucker did to her, he didn’t break her. He didn’t destroy her strength or her spirt. She’s facing down her tormentor, her nightmare, standing up to him without flinching, and I love her more intensely in this moment than I ever have before.
She draws in a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling as she gathers herself. When she speaks, her voice is low but audible.
“Do you remember what I said to you when you brought me to that room to marry you?” she asks him.
Troy blinks at her, not saying anything.
I shake him a little, narrowing my eyes. “She asked you a fucking question.”
He rasps something unintelligible, but it doesn’t matter, because Willow answers for him.
“I asked that you and Olivia just make the deal without me,” she whispers. “That you leave me out of it. I begged you both to just not make me do this. But you said no. You said you can’t get something for nothing, and you insisted on making me your wife. You wanted to be married to me. So now… I’m going to take what’s owed to me as your wife.”
Her voice twists on that last word, and it’s almost enough to make me shove the gun back in his mouth and empty the entire clip. But I don’t, because I’m starting to understand what Willow is getting at. Admiration floods me all over again for this beautiful, indomitable woman—so soft and delicate, but with a core of steel that runs all the way through her.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Willow presses, taking a step closer to him. “You forced a ring onto my finger. You bound my life to yours. You said it was your job to take care of me. So now you’re going to make sure that your precious little ‘wifey’ is taken care of. You’re going to sign everything you own—your fancy houses, your shares of your family’s company, all of it—over to me.”
Troy scoffs, some of his smug asshole nature coming back to the surface now. I’d be impressed that he can manage such a holier-than-thou look while impaled to a wall if I didn’t want to blow his head off.
“No,” he bites out. “Why the fuck would I do that?”
I grin at him, and I can tell from the fear that floods back into his face that the look on mine is just as feral and vicious as it feels.
“I’m so fucking happy you said that,” I murmur quietly, moving in closer to him.
Troy’s face goes white. “W-why?”
“Because now I get to make you say yes.”
To give him a little taste of what I mean, I grab one of the knives from Troy’s hand, yanking it roughly out of the wall and out of his palm in one vicious tug. He screams in pain, and the sound is music to my fucking ears—but it’s still not good enough. It mightneverbe enough.
