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“Devan is going to ask a lot of questions.”If he makes it.
He has to make it. There’s no other choice. And he’s got two good women there looking out for him. Both of them love him in different ways. They’ll make sure he’s fine. He doesn't need me anymore.
“He’ll ask even more if you move the body. Won’t it look a little bit suspicious?”
Gabriel has a point, and I barely suppress a laugh at the look on his face. The sexy, raven-haired bad boy who used to run the underworld of this town, and right now, he’s got eyes as big as a puppy’s and just as innocent.
As though it’s not the biggest pleasure of his life to kill Broderick Stevens.
He steals another kiss from me, a kiss melding of our lips. “Too quick a death for that piece of shit. He should have suffered more. We both know it.”
“True,” I agree, “but we should go. Before we fuck up and someone sees us. The police are going to swarm this place as soon as possible, and I want to be long gone by the time they do.”
Gabriel nods. “Fine. You’re right. Let’s get the fucker dismembered and go home.”
It’s not the direction I thought for my life, by a long shot. A million miles away, and yet I’ve never been happier.
Except for one thing…
With Gabriel’s taste in my mouth and death hanging in the air around us, an almost visible cloud of ecstasy and truth, I turn toward the door. Devan will be fine. I’ve got to believe it. Struggling to handle his shit without me, sure, but he’s on his way toward healing. Struggling to do anything except exist in the bleakness of his reality, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. It’s not my place.
But this—I stare down at the cooling body— this I did for him. This moment, this death.
He’ll never know it’s me or Gabriel, and that’s how it has to stay, butIwill know. Devan has been tormented for too long. Maybe, with Broderick out of the way…he’ll finally be able to live the way he deserves to live.
To be happy.
It’s asking a whole fucking lot, and I know it. Trust me, I know it better than anyone else.
“You know what? Dismembering him will take too long.” I narrowly resist kicking Broderick’s corpse with my shoe. More for my sake than for his. I can’t risk leaving DNA at the scene, not when we’ve been careful. “Leave him here to rot.”
“His men are going to find him,” Gabriel argues. “Or the police, and they’ll have questions.”
I shake my head. “Devan and his new crew will get it handled. But I’m still a little surprised he hasn’t figured it out.”
Gabriel blinked. “Figured what out?”
“That I’m really alive.”
I stare into the direction the redhead and his new partner had dragged him. Not his usual type, the redhead, I think to myself. She gave me the impression of something raw, untapped, rather than the put-together and polished princesses he’d gone for before. Things really do change.
This time, it’s my old partner who has done the changing, and he’s morphed into his real self. About fucking time, too. He’s wasted far too much of it mourning me. Lord knows I don’t deserve that kind of dedication.
Gabriel clicks the safety on his gun, and I turn in time to watch him tuck it into his pants. “Because I’m too fucking good at my job. I already told you that. There’s no way he’ll ever figure it out, Layla.”
I sighed, scratched the side of my head. “Sure.” Better that way.
“I wish I had a lighter to drop on this fucker,” Gabriel says, staring at the corpse.
“At least he’s going to be found with his pants full of shit.” It’s a small victory in the face of a much broader one.
Broderick Stevens is dead.
“Since you’ve made up your mind, can we please go home and fuck? My dick is starting to hurt.” Gabriel grabs his crotch and laughs when I roll my eyes.
“Daddy Thor always has a hard-on. Let’s get you out of here and take care of things.”
Our lives might be determined by the paths we’ve chosen, those outside of our control. But Devan is free after this.I hope.
