AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’ve called me that three times,” I say. “Every time you do, I want to cut your tongue out, the way I did an asshole in Iraq after he raped a thirteen-year-old. I can show you my technique. That’d be a good way to demonstrate my surgical skills, don’t you think?”
“Rick!” Candace yells from behind me. “Rick, stop.”
Candace’s voice and presence don’t motivate me to pull back. In fact, her presence motivates me to hurt someone before she gets hurt. “Tell Tag I’m coming for him. Tell him he’s not going to survive this.”
“He said you’d say that,” my father replies. “He said to tell you, that he doesn’t want Candace dead. He wants her alive and well. That way she’s capable of hating you when her father ends up dead because you didn’t keep your blood oath.”
In other words, Tag’s threats didn’t work on me last night so he’s trying again by way of my father. The message there being that he can get to anyone close to me whenever, and however he so pleases. “You still didn’t tell me what you get out of this.”
“I didn’t want to be involved. You got me involved.” His eyes darken. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“Translation: you get a payday that you’re justifying by blaming me.” My lips thin. “You and Tag deserve each other.”
“You did this. You made this happen.”
“Your words or his?” I challenge.
“Both.”
“Of course. You’re a team now. Just to be clear, Pops, you’re already dead to me. You’ve been dead to me for years; therefore, I won’t save you, nor will I grieve for you when he kills you. And he will. He never leaves loose ends alive.” I release him. “Don’t come back here. If you do, I swear to God, I’ll take a finger instead of your tongue, then what little surgical skill you have left won’t exist.” I turn to find Candace missing, which can mean only one thing, the obvious. She not only heard the threat against her father, she’s figured out that I didn’t tell her about it last night.
And again, I think that’s the point of this visit: to rattle me by rattling her.
I walk back inside the house and when Candace is nowhere in my line of sight, I shut the door behind me before locking it. Listening a moment, silence is all that greets me, but that won’t last. If I know Candace at all, and I do, her anger is about to blow its horn right in my damn face.
Walking through the empty living room, I track onward to the kitchen. A light wind flows into the room off the patio and I walk to the open door. Candace is there, waiting for me, leaning on the railing, facing me. “How long have you known that my father was leverage?” She holds up a hand. “Wait. No. Correction. How long have you known that my father’s life was being used as leverage?”
“Last night.”
She pushes off the railing. “And you didn’t tell me?” she demands. “Seriously, Rick?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Were you?” she challenges.
“Yes.” I scrub my jaw and press my hands to my hips. “Probably.”
“Probably? What was your decision-making criteria? If today was sunny, you’d tell me and if it rained you wouldn’t?”
“Tag knows I’ll kill him if he touches your father.”
“He doesn’t seem to care.”
“He cares. That’s the point in today’s visit. He needed you to freak out. He needed you to pressure me to do whatever it takes to protect your father.”
“You mean kill Gabriel.”
“Yes,” I say. “Exactly.”
“So, Tag not only used your father against you,” she says. “He used mine.”
I cross to stand in front of her, encouraged when she actually lets me settle my hands on her waist. And damn it, when I touch her, I don’t know how I lived a day without touching her. “He’s using you,” I say, “and I let that happen when me and my bad friend, otherwise known as vodka, professed our love for you in his presence.”
“Because I’m a weakness.”
“No. You’re the reason you and your father survive this, baby. You’re why I’m here. I meant what I said to my father. Tag doesn’t leave loose ends. He would have killed you, him, and Gabriel. Now, he has to go through me and my team.”
“He had to know you’d be a problem. Why be stupid enough to bring you into this?”
I decide right then and there that I’m not doing her any favors by keeping her out of my headspace right now. She needs to know where I think this is headed. “Think about the headlines. Man kills ex-fiancée and her new fiancé as well as her father, before killing himself. It’s a perfect cover-up, don’t you think?”
“Oh God,” she whispers. “Yes. I’m scared, Rick.”
“Fear is good. It keeps us sharp and alive. Come. I have something for you.” I catch her hand and lead her inside the kitchen, where I pull open a drawer and set a handgun on the counter. “Merry early Christmas.”
