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Dirk laughed, cracking his knuckles. “You stole from me eight years ago, Wes. I’m here to collect.”
I laughed, because fuck them both.
“You stole fromme, you fucking prick, and if you think there’s even a chance that you’re going to touch Callie, you’re insane. I’d die before you even breathed in her direction.”
Dirk smirked, peering at something behind me.
“That can be arranged.”
I turned in time to see Silas but failed to see the bat.
“River, ru—”
The hit came with a sickening crunch, paired with a sound that echoed off the walls that practically tore the skin from my bones, and it wasn’t my scream. It was hers, and that hollowed, painful sound would follow me straight to hell, and like the selfish fucker I was, I’d be grateful for it. Because in the end, that kind of pain could only mean one thing.
River loved me, and perhaps she never stopped.
TWENTY-FIVE
CALLIE
“Wes!”
I was still screaming, as if I could wake him up.
My voice had gone hoarse, and two of the men in the room had already yelled at me to shut the fuck up, but I wouldn’t.
There was so much blood. There was no way he was alive. I needed to get closer to him to see if his chest was rising, or if there was a pulse. The cracking sound was still rattling around inside my head, making me relive that moment when his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he fell over.
My dad had continued to pull me away, and my legs were kicking at thin air but there wasn’t anything else I could say. Nothing else I wanted to say. It was just Wesley’s name on my tongue, crying until he answered me back.
“All right, Dirk, let’s talk terms,” my dad said over my screaming.
Dirk gave me a salacious smile, all teeth and venom. “Marriage, and a truce.”
I spat on the ground, my voice a wobbly whisper. “I’m not fucking marrying you.”
Silas was silent as he hung in the background, but I wanted to hit him. I wanted to take that bat and bash his disloyal brains in.
“Wait, I changed my mind.” Dirk suddenly snapped his meaty fingers together. “Let me burn his house down, while she watches, and I won’t need to marry her. Afterall, I still want the freedom to fuck whoever I want without worrying about defiling the marital bed.”
Seething angry, I reached for something, anything to keep them from torching this place while Wesley was unconscious inside it.Please just be unconscious.
“This isn’t even his house, so it’s a waste of your time, and I saw cameras. The owners have already seen you.”
Silas and Dirk laughed at me, and not for the first time, I felt foolish and like I was the butt of the joke.
Dirk jumped, sliding his butt on the counter, looking like an oversized toddler. “Stone, don’t you have a way of provin’ it to her?”
My dad relaxed his hold the smallest bit and cleared his throat. “Honey, you still have that key you used to carry around everywhere with you? When I asked all those years ago, you said it was for the house Wes was going to get for you one day.”
I felt sick.
He didn’t. Wes would have told me. He would have brought me up here and shown me and asked me to marry him.
Would it make a difference?
He’d asked me that when I asked if he wanted me to stay.
