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It’s the Christian thing to do.
“I’m going to gut them. I’m going to rip them open like they did my wife. One by one, I’ll kill them all just like they murdered my daughter.”
It’s the first thing anyone has said to me that makes me feel something other than numb desperation.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it makes me a sick monster. But the idea of inflicting pain on the bastards that hurt Cassie is the first thing I’ve had to look forward to.
“Where is he?” He knows I mean Jack, because he’s the only fucker with any fucking idea of where my grandfather has disappeared to and who else is involved.
The cunt’s still alive, patched up and awake. While Cassie’s still lying here, blood crusting her hair and face grazed to shit. She’s not waking up.
“They won’t tell me,” he chuckles bitterly. “But don’t worry, I’ll find him.”
With one last look at his sister he turns and leaves.
* * *
Francis is sat in exactly the same chair Christopher was in earlier. His words are still twisting and turning in my head and it’s making me restless. It’s been almost ten hours since Cassie came out of surgery. Nothing has changed.
The thought of retribution brought me hope but watching her like this is killing me.
“Here,” he says looking up from the bag he has at his feet. Taking out my MacBook, he hands it to me. “Plan something. For you, for her…for you both. Give yourself something to look forward to.”
“I already have something to look forward to.” I take my laptop from him. Setting it on the footstool beside me, I grab my cigarettes.
He’s right I need something to do, and I need something that will blur my thoughts. My head.
“What’s that?” he asks as I get up and start for the door.
I know he doesn’t mean my cigarettes, but I hold them up so he can see them. I’m pissed at him and he knows it. He knows that I trusted him enough to bring down my family’s company because we were working towards something together.
But clearly, it’s not a mutual trust. Maybe he’s a lot more like my grandfather than I thought.
My grandfather, the man I looked up to most of my life. He was my upgrade from superheroes, he turned out to be the villain.
“Sit down, son.” He nods at the chair I vacated. “You’ll be the first person she wants to see.”
“I can’t, Francis.” My voice quivers from all the fucked-up shit going on in my head. “Look at her. I did that. I put her in that bed. Just look at her!”
Tracing up her banged-up face, I cringe at her swollen nose and puffy eyes. Still, she looks so peaceful. So fucking beautiful, even like that.
“I do,” he murmurs, taking her in. “I’ve looked at her every day since I first held her. Cassie was so small, she fit in my hands.” Smiling fondly, he holds out both hands like he’s still holding his baby girl. “Christopher was a big, bulky baby, but Cassandra was tiny. She was so small that we lost her in her clothes. You’d have this tiny head, with wiry white hair and a pea sized nose with a little duck pout, sticking out of this bundle of babygrow.”
Francis takes a deep breath, looking at her face with the same adoration I’d imagine him to look at her as a baby. Taking one of her hands, he traces her white, glitter speckled nails, using his own to try and clean the dried blood around her cuticles.
“She looks just as lost in that bed right now.” His chest inflates and then deflates just as quickly. “Cassie’s my little princess. It doesn’t matter how old and tall she gets, I’ll always see that little baby girl that burrowed into my arms and suckled on her thumb when she laid on my chest.”
I shake my head because he’s wrong. “She’s not a princess, not to me.”
His lips quirk up with a nod as he pats her hand lightly. “One man’s princess will always be another man’s queen.” Francis bows his head and presses a kiss to the back of her hand.
“Why did you let me take her? You knew all this shit, and you still let me take her.”
He looks up at me with an indignant scowl as he retorts, “I didn’t let you take her, I let you have her. Cassie let you take her, she chose you, and she chose well. I think you could do with some of her softness to remind you that you have it in you. Penny always said she was too soft and too trusting, but I think she’s just perfect. Maybe a little bratty, but she’s my baby, so…” sighing, he smiles up at me. It’s the truest smile I’ve seen all day.
When I look back at Cassie, my heart pangs in my chest— longing for her like the moon longs for the light of the sun. Eternally. The force with which I need her is magnetic and elemental. It feels like something that was woven into my DNA before she or I existed.
“Lucian isn’t a good man, the things he’s done I’ll never pretend to understand, or think are forgivable, but he was trying to protect you and Kit. A man isn’t born a brute—unfeeling and volatile—a man becomes what he is surrounded with. Fire only burns as bright as you make it. It only grows in the right environment, but one wrong move and it can destroy. Something good always has the potential for badness, but evil can never do anything other than corrupt and devastate.”
