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I laugh and look down at her with pity. What a foolish woman to think her life would mean anything to me. “My mother died when I was eight years old. I grieved her years ago, and you . . . you are not that woman, but you are right. I won’t kill you, not because I can’t, but because I’m not the one who deserves to.”
Her brows furrow and I glance down at Oakley. “Take your shot, Lamb,” I tell her. “And make it count. She’s survived worse odds.”
Oakley looks up at me, clearly in pain before glancing back at the woman who raised her since she was a child. “Are you sure?” she whispers, her voice somehow traveling through the room. “You won’t hold it against me?”
“No, Lamb. Now take your shot.”
And with that, Oakley focuses on the woman before her, the stranger who wears my mother’s face, and raises the gun directly between her eyes. “Rot in hell, Aunt Liv,” she says, giving her a sad smile before the sweetest sound fills the underground compound.
BANG!
The bullet penetrates straight through my mother’s skull, and the second her lifeless body falls limp to the dirty ground, relief settles through my chest, and for the first time since discovering she was alive, it’s a little easier to breathe.
Priscilla DeVil should have stayed dead. Aligning herself with my enemy was the biggest mistake she ever made.
Turning back, I find the boys have nearly cleared out the room, bodies lying from one end to the other, and I grab Oakley’s arm, pulling her back toward the boys, only she stops, grunting in pain. I look back at her, my brows furrowed as my gaze sails over her body.
“Get her out of here,” Cross calls over the chaos. “She’s injured. Santos swung at her with a baseball bat. We can handle this.”
Looking around, I see that Cross is right. Most of Matthias’s army has been dealt with, while the rest of them have fled with their tails between their legs, knowing damn well what standing against any of us would result in.
Trusting the boys to have each others’ backs, I clutch Oakley’s arm tighter and pull her closer into my side before meeting the boys’ stares. “If anything goes down, get your asses out of here. Understood?”
Cross scoffs. “I ain’t leaving until I’ve found Venom.”
“Shit,” Sawyer sighs, adding a little extra punch into his kill and clearly realizing that tonight is about to be longer than any of us anticipated.
Glancing down at Oakley, I pull on her arm. “Come on,” I say, when she hesitates, glancing back at the guys, not wanting to leave them here. “They can handle themselves, Lamb. They were trained for this,” I remind her. “You’re not. Now walk before I’m left with no choice but to carry you out of here.”
She lets out a resigned sigh before finally agreeing and hurrying along beside me, trying not to let on just how much pain she’s in. We pass a few of her father’s followers, and I’m relieved when they simply allow us to pass without causing any issues, and before I know it, we’re breaking out into the fresh air of the night.
With the threat now behind us, I slow our pace and Oakley lets out a pained groan. “Fuck,” she grunts, doubling over and bracing her hands against her knees. “I just need a second.”
“We don’t have a second,” I tell her, stepping back into her and scooping her into my arms, pulling her tight against my chest. “We’re easy targets standing out here, and I didn’t go through all of that just to clip a bullet in the back of my head on the way out.”
She rolls her eyes and settles against me as I get us out of here, slipping into the darkness and concealing us as best as possible on our way back to my SUV. “I just want this shit to be over,” she tells me. “I’m sick of running and constantly fearing for my life.”
“Trust me, I’m fucking sick of it too.”
The rest of the walk back to my SUV is silent, and as we finally reach it, I open the back and sit her in the trunk before stepping into her and looking over her injuries. My fingers skim across her ribs, taking in the heavy bruising before trailing down to her hip.
Oakley hisses in pain, trying to hold in her groans of protest as she clutches my arm, her nails digging into my flesh. “You’ll be alright,” I tell her, glancing up and meeting her big blue eyes. “Nothing’s broken, just bruised.”
“You sure?” she asks as my hand falls to her thigh. “It feels like I’ve been hit by a train.”
“Positive,” I say, refusing to step out of her space.
Oakley presses her lips into a hard line, looking deep in thought as if trying to convince herself not to say whatever’s on her mind. “Thanks for coming for us,” she finally says, dropping her head and glancing up at me through those thick lashes. “I mean, I know you were coming either way, but there were a few moments where I thought you weren’t going to make it in time, and I just . . . having that gun against my head like that . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to death before.”
