The Mercenary and the Mortician (The Silent Hollow #1)

106. Cal Walker

Alexa, play: Glass Houses - Bad Omens

R yan didn’t even look at me; he only had eyes for Damian. The dust from the explosion billowed in the room from behind, and he sighted down his arm. Almost casually, my little, innocent ginger snap fired a shot.

Holy shit, that was hot… Why was that so hot?!

The bullet caught Damian in the shoulder, but the fucker had learned from his mistakes.

Bitch was obviously wearing a vest under his shirt.

Still, getting shot with a vest on will wind even the toughest guys, and Damian was no exception. He stumbled back, shouting out in alarm as Ryan stalked toward him.

Ryan had a look on his face I had never seen before. His eyes were blank, and his face was white with rage. Even his freckles were pale.

Suddenly, he winced, and his attention became divided by something I couldn’t see.

Fuck. I’d dropped my talisman.

I swear to god, if my bitch ass mother was attacking him…

“Free Cal! I’ll deal with this fucker,” Theo shouted, darting past her brother toward Damian.

Damian was still trying to recover from being shot when Theo executed one of the most elegant roundhouse kicks I’d ever seen in my fucking life.

Her foot connected with the side of Damian’s head, and he went flying. My mouth dropped open as I watched Theo descend upon him again.

I knew Theo fought in underground rings, but knowing something and seeing it were two different things.

Her fighting style was incredibly unique. It was an elegant mix of Krav Maga and Judo, which gave her an edge against someone Damian’s size.

She was fast and evasive but ruthlessly efficient when executing offensive moves. She wasn’t aiming to just injure. She was aiming to maim.

Despite how good Theo was, she was much smaller than Damian, so it was still high stakes. She would be in serious trouble if he even landed one hit on her. Her clear Judo background allowed her to use his size and momentum against him, but she could tire and possibly make a mistake unless she knocked him out soon.

I needed to get out of this fucking chair before that happened.

Ryan was suddenly on me, working on the ropes that bound me to the chair.

“Baby, I can’t believe you’re here!? Where’s Vox?” As happy as I was to see my ginger snap, I hadn’t expected him to be the one to bust through that door. Where was my vampy bestie?

“Vox has Naomi; he’s getting her to the car,” Ryan grunted as he ripped one of the knots on my wrists loose. Relief rushed through me.

Fucking Damian.

Getting me all worked up for nothing.

I should have known Vox would never let anything happen to Gnomes.

“Fuck,” Ryan rasped, sounding like he was in pain.

I glanced over my shoulder at him, frowning as he shuddered.

“What is it?”

“Your fucking mom. God, she’s a cunt. I’m glad Cass killed her,” he grumbled, and I scowled.

I hated that she was able to hurt him. And I hated even more that there was nothing I could do about it.

As soon as my arms came free, pain shot through my shoulder. I’d forgotten I’d injured it in the car accident, and I swore softly under my breath.

Ah well. I only needed one arm to use a gun. Doing my best to ignore the screaming pain in my shoulder, I bent down to undo my left ankle while Ryan worked on my right.

“Baby, I can’t fucking believe you’re the one getting me out of this mess. How did you even manage this?” I asked, sliding the rough rope out of the chokehold it had on my leg. My brave, brave ginger snap… he was wearing fucking Kevlar, for Christ’s sake!

Fuck me sideways.

I was going to marry the shit out of this man.

“A lot of help from a lot of unlikely people. Your friend Gavin… His spirit is here. He’s helping wrangle your mom. Also, Logan, Ronan, and Dakota helped us get in.”

My eyebrows raised in surprise at that. Holy shit.

What?

Gavin was here?

I didn’t have time to ask any more questions, however, as there was a crack and scream.

Both Ryan and I looked up to find that Damian had finally landed a hit on Theo. She went down, and he leapt on top of her, jabbing that fucking needle in her neck and slamming down the plunger.

“You fucking bitch!” Damian roared, and Theo’s body almost immediately went limp as her bloodstream filled with whatever it was Damian had put in the syringe.

He tossed the needle aside and pulled a switchblade out of his pocket.

“Theo!” Ryan screamed, just as I finally managed to leap up from the chair. I launched myself across the room and was on Damian just as he plunged the knife deep into Theo’s side.

She let out a choked moan, working against whatever was in her system to try to get away from Damian.

She was wearing a Kevlar vest, but Kevlar wasn’t designed to prevent stab wounds. When Damian ripped the knife out of her, red blood poured onto the concrete floor.

He went to stab her again, but I was quicker. With my good arm, I ripped him off my future sister-in-law and tossed him across the room.

His head hit the concrete wall so hard there was a satisfying crack. He slid to the floor, and I rushed to Theo’s side.

“Don’t worry about me!” she slurred, clumsily holding her hand to the wound in her side. “Kill that fucking dick!”

I glanced down at her side. There was less blood than I had expected, which was good. It meant he likely hadn’t hit an artery.

“Try not to move,” I instructed her, and she blinked at me, a sloppy chuckle tumbling out of her lips.

“No problemmss therrree. I feelll liiiike myyy booody iz made uvv sannnd.”

“Fuck. We’ll get you a doctor; just hold on.”

I spun around and stalked toward Damian. He was struggling to get up, and my gaze clocked his hand sliding to draw the gun he had strapped to his hip.

Without blinking, I cracked him across the face hard, and he went back down. I ripped the handgun away from him and pressed it to his forehead, a vicious snarl on my lips.

He looked up at me, his horrifically scarred face now even more bruised and bloody. I waited for the dopamine I usually felt over a good kill to wash over me… but I felt nothing.

The thought of killing him didn’t make me happy.

I was sick of killing people. I had never wanted to be like this in the first place. This man had raped me, mind, body and soul.

I’d already killed him once. It felt cosmically unfair that I was being forced to do it a second time.

Looking into his whiskey eyes, I was suddenly overcome with an unexpected rush of sorrow, not for his impending death, but for myself.

I was suddenly so fucking sad for the little version of me that had fallen prey to this man.

I was so sad for the adult version of me that I’d grown into.

In that moment, as I stared into Damian’s eyes with my finger on the trigger, I mourned the pieces of my soul I’d sacrificed with each kill I’d been forced to make.

“I hate you for making me this way,” I told him. My voice cracked on the words.

It felt like we were suspended in time, and for once, he didn’t have anything to say back to me. He knew he was going to die and that I was going to be the one to kill him.

I just wished I didn’t fucking have to be.

“Angel,” Ryan said softly, coming up to stand beside me. I glanced at him, and he frowned.

Ryan’s eyes darted from my face, which was now somehow wet with tears, down to my hand, which was holding the gun directly against Damian’s forehead.

It was trembling.

“Angel. Do you want to kill him? Tell me the truth,” Ryan whispered.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, tonguing my lip ring in agitation.

“No, ginger snap. I don’t want to kill him. I don’t want to kill anybody. But I have to.”

Ryan reached out and brushed a tear off my cheek, meeting my gaze head-on.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, angel,” he whispered. “Give me the gun.”

“Baby, I have to kill him.”

“No, you don’t, angel. This isn’t who you are anymore. Give me the gun, Callum,” he repeated, his eyes never leaving mine.

Reluctantly, I handed him the Glock, even as more protests began tumbling from my mouth.

“I can’t let him live, Ryan. We’ll never be safe as long as he’s alive.”

Ryan took the gun from me and brushed another tear off my cheek with his free hand.

“Oh, angel. I never said anything about letting him live.” Without looking away from me, Ryan pointed the gun directly at Damian’s head and pulled the trigger.

The deafening BANG! of the gunshot was lost on me. I barely even felt it as blood and brain matter splattered across both of our faces.

My mouth dropped open in shock.

Ryan didn’t smile. He looked so serious, and there was a cold satisfaction in his gaze that I’d never seen before.

“All I said was you didn’t have to be the one to kill him, angel.”

He rose up on his toes and brushed a delicate kiss against my lips.

“Now… Let’s get you home.”