Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Tara
“ J esus, woman, what were you doing up there?” he spat at me, his face now a pale imitation of what I knew to be the reality.
I could see it now, the subtle differences. It wasn’t just those eyes. Kade carried himself with an air of confidence that his twin never possessed. That probably came with the territory of walking around in someone else’s skin, though.
“I dropped the groceries trying to get inside when I got home and got dirt on my clothes. I just went up to change them,” I said dismissively, hoping he’d buy it.
He buried himself in the fridge, rummaging around for a minute before he popped back up. His face contorted into a mask of indifference, though the rage was there, bubbling just below the surface.
I knew that look. And I knew what was coming. I just hoped Kade was gone, so he didn’t hear what was inevitably coming next.
“Where did those beers from last night go?”
I shrugged, pretending I had no clue. “Aren’t they in there?”
He slammed the fridge door, stalking over to the island in the center of the kitchen. “If they were in there, I wouldn’t have asked your worthless ass, Tara.” His hands balled into fists, and I cringed subconsciously as I remembered the other night when he’d finally done what I never thought he could do—reared back and socked me in the eye with his fist.
“Well, maybe you drank them?—”
I was fast, spotting his arm as it launched across the counter in my direction, but I wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed my hair, which had fallen out of my bun, and yanked me over the marble surface as I screamed at him to stop, feeling the roots of my hair give way in his grip.
“Ow, ow, come on, you’re hurting me, Antony?—”
His grip tightened as he stilled, and what felt like an eternity passed as he and I stared at each other, me on my back on the counter, him above me, eyes wide, a new emotion in their depths as he processed what I’d just let slip. What I’d just called him.
Shit.
“What did you just call me?”
I swallowed against the panic crawling up my throat, making me nauseous as fuck as I realized I was about to get far worse than just a black eye.
What would he do to me?
“I asked you a question, bitch,” he snarled, slamming my head against the counter for emphasis. “What did you just call me?”
“N-nothing,” I lied, gritting my teeth as he yanked me closer, my scalp on fire now. “I swear, I-I?—”
“Where did you hear that name?”
My eyes widened as he reached toward the knife block at the end of the island, his hand inches away from a weapon that would mean death for me. I closed my eyes and cursed my sex-addled mind for forgetting the gun I’d bought yesterday to protect myself if it ever came to this. If I ever worked up the courage to leave.
“Who told you?!?”
I closed my eyes, prepared for the end, when a sound over his shoulder stopped both of us in our tracks.
It was the sound of a gun being cocked.
“Who do you think told her, you worthless piece of shit?”
Kade.
Tony dragged me bodily across the counter and put me in front of him like a human shield, watching his brother’s face as the gun followed his head. “How did you get out?”
Kade shrugged casually. “A guard owed me a favor.” His brows rose as that smirk crawled over his lips, reminding me of the look he wore just before he beat someone at their own game. “And you paid the wrong one off, I guess.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he muttered, his hand tightening on my hair, dragging me along with him as he put the island between us and his brother. “How did you find me?”
“Oh, come on, Tony. You use social media more than a teenage girl, and you still work for the same bank I did when you framed me for murder, you sick sonofabitch.”
Framed him for…
“You killed someone?”
Tony’s laughter was unhinged, reverberating through my back as I realized I’d been sleeping beside a killer this whole time. Inches from hands that could take a life so indiscriminately. “She had it coming. Bitch thought she could steal from me and sneak away with another man. So I lured her in, and when she thought she had won, I took the life from her eyes.” He leered at his brother over my shoulder, my skin crawling as his hot breath bathed the side of my neck in spittle. “And this fucker took the fall. He was supposed to get life, but they went easy on him.”
“You were supposed to serve life, not me,” Kade spat, his eyes on me as his brother inched toward the knives. “Why don’t you man up and let the girl go Tony, and we can square up, mano a mano.”
Tony’s laugh raised the hackles on the back of my neck. “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He gripped my arms tighter, and I let out a little squeak of pain as his nails dug into my skin, leaving crescent-shaped marks that drew blood. “Why don’t I just do this one like I did the last one and leave you to take the rap again?”
“You’d burn your only identity to get back at me?” Kade said slowly, his eyes now on the knives and his brother’s hand. “Come on, Tony. You’re not that dumb.”
“With the money I have saved up, I could be out of the country before they caught up to me.”
His hand was less than an inch from the chef knife’s handle. It was now or never. I wanted to live, to survive this, and the only way that was going to happen was if I got out of range of Tony before he got that knife.
I slammed my heel down on the instep of his foot, twisting in his grip as he loosened his hold on me and yelled in pain. Before I could even get two steps away, Kade was yanking me behind his body, the gun all but forgotten as he lunged for his brother, fists flying, angry snarls and broken Spanish erupting from the floor.
I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew this much—Tony had beaten him once before. And I couldn’t let him hurt the first man to make me feel—whatever it was that Kade did to my insides. Not just the sex—it was more than that. It was the bone-deep knowledge that I was safe with him, that he would protect me, even when his life was in the balance.
I picked the gun up from the floor and flipped the safety off, hands shaking as I raised it in front of me and fired a warning shot.
It ricocheted off the countertop and lodged itself in the nearby cabinet, but the sound and the spray of chipped marble were enough to draw the attention squarely back on me.
Kade stood slowly, his breathing slow and even as he approached me with open, outstretched hands, his eyes never leaving mine.
“You’ve hurt me for the last time, Tony,” I spat, rage boiling in my veins as I stared down my longtime abuser, the man who’d made me feel like a failure, who’d forced me to conform to his desires and wants, who isolated me from my friends and made me wholly dependent on him. “Your little plan worked, by the way,” I continued as Kade rounded the counter and stepped behind me, his hands on my shoulders for reassurance. “I’m pregnant.”
“You’re going to shoot the father of your child, Tara? Really? Do you think a whore like you can support a child on that pitiful salary you make?”
“I’m not keeping it,” I said as Kade’s arms wrapped around me, his hands encasing mine on the gun’s handle. “I’m getting rid of it. I don’t want any part of you in me.”
“So you’re a killer, huh?”
“She’s about to be,” Kade whispered ominously. “Go ahead, pretty girl. Pull that trigger and put an end to his worthless life.” His lips caressed the curve of my ear as his twin watched, eyes narrowed, filled with rage. “He’s not human, anyhow. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the air you do.”
My hands steadied as I cocked the gun again, swallowing the anxiety, letting anger take over.
“Take back your life, Tara.”
I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger, sagging into Kade’s embrace as Tony crumpled to the floor before me, bleeding out on the tile I’d painstakingly scrubbed just for him.
“Good girl,” he praised me, holding me up as I nearly fainted from relief in his embrace.
It was finally over.
I’d finally escaped the hell he built for me.
I was free.
I stepped forward and set the gun on the counter, looking down at the man who could no longer hurt me, a satisfied smile spreading across my lips. “Oh yeah, and Tony?”
His eyes rolled up to stare back at me, barely holding on as the blood gurgled in the back of his throat, drowning him.
“Your twin was better.”