Chapter 26 – Elias
I stand over my father and watch as the life in his eyes slowly fades.
Closure.
It settles on my shoulders.
“Elias,” Lance whispers, and I hold up my hand.
“He doesn’t deserve our grief. Not after everything he’s done,” I say, still not looking away from the man who ruined my life.
“I don’t give a fuck about him. I wanted to make sure you’re okay. I know that wasn’t easy.”
Finally, I turn toward my brother. He stares back at me with concern and sympathy. Emotions I haven’t earned.
“He made my life miserable as a kid. Killing him was easy because I needed to do it for my own closure. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you that night twenty years ago.”
“I thought you always hated me for killing Mom. I thought you wished I had died instead. ”
The tears I’ve been holding back pool in my eyes, threatening to fall.
“I never... Lance-a-lot... I hated myself. ” I rub my hand over my face. “I hated that you were the one forced to do it. I was the big brother. I should have been there to protect you. It should have been me, not you.”
Lance walks to me, and I expect him to be mad that I pulled out his childhood nickname. Instead, he places his hand on my shoulder.
“It shouldn’t have been either of us.”
A lonely tear falls, and it tickles as it creeps down my cheek.
Crying is such a strange sensation. I rarely do it, but the relief of letting myself feel after all these years is welcoming.
“I’m sorry I let you believe... I’m sorry. I love you. I always have. I’ve been punishing myself for that night, and I dragged you into my suffering.”
Lance brings me into a hug, and I freeze, but only for a moment before I melt into his embrace.
My baby brother.
This might be the first time we’ve hugged since we were kids.
I know it won’t be the last time.
Noah sniffles behind us, and Lance pulls away.
“That’s so sweet,” she sobs.
“What?” Sage screams from the top of the stairs. “Someone fill me in. ”
Lance and I help Noah walk over debris as we make our way out of this hellhole.
Tomorrow, I’m calling in the order to have the place demolished. Mom wouldn’t have wanted us to hold on to this part of our past.
“Are all of Percy’s guys dead?” Noah asks. “How many people knew he was still alive?”
Before I can answer, my brother adds, “And why the fuck did you blow us up? You could have killed us.”
I scowl at Lance, the ungrateful brat. I literally just saved his life, yet he still has something to complain about.
I answer Noah first. “We caught a couple of them for questioning. Hopefully, we’ll have answers soon.”
I turn to my brother.
“And we didn’t blow you up. This place was rigged with explosives. One went off during the gunfight when we first arrived.”
“I can’t believe you brought Sage here.” Noah clucks her tongue at me. “She could have died.”
I puff out my chest. “Are you kidding me? You think I had a choice?”
“I can hear you guys talking about me,” Sage scoffs, glaring at us as we make our way up the unstable stairs. “I wasn’t letting him leave without me. Literally locked myself inside his car. Besides, I was the one who knew where you were. He had to bring me. ”
I would have found out after Lenetti’s call, but I won’t tell Sage that. Especially since I would have arrived too late. Sage is really the one who saved them.
“How did you know where to find us?” my brother asks, narrowing his eyes at my woman.
He better stop looking at her that way or I’ll fight him.
“Noah and I installed apps on our phones to track each other at all times.”
“Right. I forgot we did that,” Noah smirks, and something tells me she didn’t forget. She just likes pushing Lance’s buttons.
“Seriously, Noe?”
Yep. He’s pissed.
He hates leaving digital footprints. I mean, I do too, but my aliases still have normal lives with streaming subscriptions and legit credit cards.
“I texted you about hanging out,” Sage continues. “But you didn’t answer right away, which is normal if you’re with Del because you two fuck all the time.”
I roll my eyes at Lance’s cocky smile.
“I had a bad feeling, so I checked your location. You were heading into Queens, which I thought was weird. You never go that deep into Queens. I called, and you didn’t answer. I panicked and called Boss, um, Elias.”
My cock twitches at the nickname, which I haven’t heard her say in a while.
Did she say it on purpose to get me all hot and bothered ?
Jesus. Inappropriate time to get hard.
I narrow my eyes at her, then clear my throat, needing to distract my horny thoughts.
“Once Sage gave me the location, I knew exactly where you were heading. This was our childhood home.”
I glance around the kitchen where we just emerged from the basement. Mold and mildew cover the walls, and the cabinets are nearly rotted away.
I remember waking up to the smell of Mom cooking us pancakes and bacon. I remember late nights when Percy was busy with QBM business and Mom would let us help her make pasta from scratch.
She was the perfect mom who did everything she could to protect us from the devil himself.
Percy.
“A part of me never believed Percy died,” I say. “Him getting sick and refusing to let us see him on his deathbed always rubbed me the wrong way. Then there was one night a year ago when I swore I saw him. I thought I was losing my mind, seeing ghosts.”
I booked a session with my therapist the next day to talk about it, and she convinced me it was my trauma, which could be triggered by anything... a smell... an object that reminded me of my childhood.
“So, when I found out this is where Noah was being taken, I sent in a few soldiers ahead to scope out the place. One of them spotted Percy through the basement window. ”
“Fuck,” Lance whispers. “At least you were mentally prepared. They drugged me, and I woke up thinking I had died and gone to hell and Percy was the devil.”
Sage brings her best friend in for a hug, and I glance around the home while they speak to each other.
“Are we sure none of these people are traitors?” Lance asks.
I shrug. “I think they would have made their move by now.”
Sage and Noah are done with their reunion and my fiancée locks eyes with me.
Fiancée.
I have a fiancée.
“Thank you for saving them,” she says and tucks her blonde hair behind her ear.
I want to bring her into a hug and announce to the world that I’m going to marry this woman, but I know she’ll want to tell Noah first. Now’s not the time.
Is that why she’s being so shy right now? Because now’s not the time to celebrate?
We might have ended a lot of lives today, but ours is about to begin.
I clear my throat again because my emotions are all over the place. I’ve been on the edge of breaking out into tears ever since killing Percy and letting the relief of closure wash over me .
“Cops are on their way. You two should go,” I say to Lance and Noah.
As much as I want to know what the fuck went down before I showed up, including everything Percy said to them, Noah and Lance are contract killers who do not need to be on the police’s radar.
I have cops and the mayor on my payroll. They’ll help me cover up this mess.
I can follow up with Lance later. He needs to be with Noah right now.
“I’ll stay with you,” Sage offers, and I widen my eyes.
I expected her to want to go with her best friend.
I’m honored that she chose me instead.
Noah and Lance slowly make their way toward the front door, and I walk with them.
“Your father called me after he couldn’t get a hold of either of you,” I say to Noah. “He told me about the strange call and text, which I assume came from Percy.”
“Yeah, he was trying to lure Gio here. I bet that’s what the explosives were for,” Lance concludes. “He was going to level this place with him inside.”
“He was in the Bronx, and it was going to take him too long to get here so I told him I was closer, and I’d check it out.” I nod my chin at Noah. “You should call him back. He’s worried.”
I shouldn’t care about Lenetti and his relationship with his daughter. He’s the monster responsible for our mother’ s death, but Noah should still know he never stopped loving her.
Noah turns to Lance. “Let’s head back to the townhouse. I’ll tell Gio to meet us there. It’s time I finally confront him about all this.”
Lance points his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a guy downstairs. Lenetti’s head of security went rogue. He was working with Percy. Save him for us, okay?”
I nod, then snicker at Noah’s delight. She’s clearly excited to torture the fucker.
Matt, I believe is his name.
I wonder if I can get some information from him first. If he was working with Percy, he might have been working with the Lords too. Or maybe he knows something about Chase. Lance wants me to save him so they can kill him, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun first.
“Elias.” I turn at Sage’s voice. “Are you okay?”
She reaches up to palm my cheek. Her brows furrowed.
“You just killed your father. I know you hated the man, and you already thought he was dead, but he was still your father.”
I turn my head to kiss her palm.
“He wasn’t my father, though. Not in the way that matters.
” Her beautiful blue-green eyes glaze over with tears.
“I was only born so his legacy could live on. He didn’t love me, and I never loved him.
I’m relieved he’s dead. I’m sad, but not because he’s gone.
I’m sad because I didn’t kill him sooner.
I could have saved my mother, and Lance would have never been forced to kill her. ”
“You don’t know that,” Sage says, attempting to reassure me. Her palms are resting on my chest, and I’m sure she can feel my heart thrashing beneath.
I know she’s right, but I still wish I could go back in time and fix this.
“I almost killed Percy when I was fourteen. He came home wasted smelling like booze and cheap perfume. He passed out in a chair in the living room. I went to the kitchen and got a knife. I held it to his throat. But I was a fucking coward. I didn’t kill him, and he went on to become power hungry enough to taunt the Empire and Lenetti.
He made too many enemies which put a target on my family’s back.
I could have stopped it all if I had just plunged that knife into his throat. ”
Tears stream down Sage’s face, and I wipe them away.
“You were just a kid. That wasn’t your responsibility. Please don’t let this burden you.”
Fuck.
I don’t deserve her.
I bring her into a hug, and we stand there for a few minutes, ignoring the people around us as they clean up: removing bodies, confiscating weapons, deactivating and removing the explosives. Police officers are pulling up to the home now, likely with the mayor in tow .
“I’m mad at you by the way,” Sage says when she pulls away.
I let out a tear-filled laugh.
“You are?”
She crosses her arms and raises a brow at me.
“You just drop the ‘L’ word and leave? Without letting me say it back?”
I reach out for her and despite her claims of being mad, she lets me cup her face in my hands. I rub my thumb back and forth along her jaw.
“Well? Are you going to say it?”
She shrugs, failing to hold back her smile.
I lean in and brush my lips over hers.
“Tell me when you’re ready.”
“I’m ready. I just want to torture you a little.”
“Speaking of torture...” I glance over my shoulder and see two of my soldiers bringing an unconscious man up from the basement. Lenetti’s head of security. “I have some business to take care of. I probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”
I devour my future wife with a kiss that leaves her panting when I pull away. I call over Jax, who cringes as he gets close.
“Jax is going to take you back to the penthouse. Try not to hit him over the head with another vase.”
“Sorry about your balls,” Sage says with a wince.
What ?
She must see the shock on my face. “I kinda kicked him in the nuts when he wasn’t going to let me go inside.”
“It wasn’t kinda,” Jax mumbles. “You did kick me in the nuts.”
I lean in.
“I’m proud of you,” I say and place one last gentle kiss on her lips. “But maybe stop injuring my head of security.”
“I did it because nothing or no one was stopping me from getting to you,” she whispers, her breath sweet and tempting on my tongue. “Because I love you.”