Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Kash
I stood in front of Arthur Howt as his head slowly bobbed with his struggle to hold it up.
Blood dripped from his ears, nose, and mouth.
He was starting to choke on it too. Once he had begged me not to kill him and admitted to the things I’d read him in the texts he had with Cressida, I’d gone a touch mad.
Whatever control I’d been trying to hold on to vanished, and I’d seen red.
I wasn’t sure he was even aware of his surroundings anymore. His eyes were a touch vacant. But he did still whimper when I took my knife to him. He was feeling pain if nothing else.
“We gonna leave him strung up here? Or ditch the body elsewhere?” Than asked.
The abandoned mine we’d brought him to was one that I’d been in before.
Two years ago, several of the guys in the Alabama branch had been sent to help the Arkansas branch handle an issue.
The issue had been brought here and tortured until he talked.
No one came here. It was closed due to safety issues and illegal to mine in.
While the Arkansas branch took their victim’s body parts to feed the hogs, I didn’t want to spend the time doing so, nor did I trust them not to report our being here to Linc.
“Yeah. He can hang here and rot. The Arkansas branch will find him eventually and dispose of what’s left,” I replied.
“Sweet. So, we’re about done? Not sure he’s mentally with us anymore,” Gathe said as he lit a cigarette that he had clenched between his teeth.
“Yeah. We’re about done.”
I stepped up closer to the bastard who had hurt Cressida both physically and emotionally. He made a gasping sound, then a gurgle as blood came from his mouth.
“You touched what belonged to me. My little Songbird was broken at your hands. She survived you. Escaped you. And I’ll take care of her now.
You can go to hell, knowing she won. She defeated you.
And that sweet body she would never give you?
I’ve had it. I had it first, and I’ll have it last. She gives it to me.
She wants my cock. Those pretty legs spread for me. ”
I smirked as hatred glinted in his eyes. He was still in there. He understood. I grabbed his face, squeezing his cheeks together as more blood ran from his nose and the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll see you in hell, you son of a bitch,” I drawled, then took the blade in my hand and slid it right between his ribs. The exact way I’d taken Pirate’s life four years ago.
The struggle to breathe was instant for him, and I twisted the knife in his lung that I’d punctured, watching his wide-eyed panic when he realized he was going to choke to death.
“And there he goes,” Gathe drawled as the fight in his eyes slowly faded until as did the sounds of him struggling to breathe.
“Are you gonna tell her he was the one who killed her mother?”
I wasn’t sure. That was information I didn’t think he’d meant to divulge.
The affair that Cressida’s father had been having and his refusal to leave his wife because of her emotional state had led to the current Mrs. Beck bribing her brother with Cressida one day being his if he killed her mother and made it look like an accident.
I wasn’t sure Cressida needed to know that. I’d gotten her revenge for her.
“Are we gonna kill the stepmom too? Because if we are, I suggest putting some time between the two deaths,” Than said.
I turned and walked back toward them. “No. But I’m going to make sure her sins are revealed and she pays for her crime. She has to suffer, too, but I’ll let the law handle that one.”
“Thank fuck. I hate killing women. Even terrible bitches like that one,” Gathe said, falling into step beside me.
We walked out of the mine into the evening air. I was ready to get back to Madison, clean the bastard’s blood off me, and go see my little Songbird. Reassure myself she was safe.
The sight of Bane’s truck outside my house when I finally pulled in the next morning wasn’t what I wanted to deal with right now. I’d texted Cressida ten times, and she’d not responded once. I’d called, and it would only beep once, then start recording for a message. No ringing. Nothing.
Bane being here meant he was aware I’d left town and possibly why.
Dammit. Leaving Cressida and going back to Alabama was not happening.
Not yet. I needed more time to figure out how to stay.
How to have her too. Yes, I’d acted out of rage four years ago, and if Cressida hadn’t lied, I would have very likely gone to prison.
But I hadn’t. She’d protected me, and I hadn’t protected her.
I sure as fuck wasn’t leaving her unprotected anymore.
Why couldn’t I have her? What was it the family’s business?
So I’d killed a man over her. I could tick off at least ten family members who had killed a man because of a woman.
Yeah, maybe I’d been too young to feel what I did for Cressida, but four years later, and I still felt it.
All of it. Just as strong as I had back then.
Opening the front door, I stalked inside, ready to face whatever bullshit was waiting on me.
I had barely gotten inside the foyer when Bane stepped through the open entrance of the parlor on the left to face me.
His arms were crossed over his chest, and the scowl on his face just pissed me off.
I wasn’t dealing with him. He wasn’t the boss.
If Linc had a problem with me, then send him.
I met his scowl with one of my own but kept walking passed him.
“Kash!” Oz’s sharp tone stopped me.
I didn’t want to fight with my brother, but if he was siding with his best friend over me, I would.
“What?” I asked, spinning back around to glare at them both.
“Why were you in Arkansas?” Bane demanded.
He knew where I had been, but not why. The son of a bitch had a tracker on me. I’d left the phone they knew I had here and taken a burner with me. That meant he had one planted elsewhere. We’d left my truck at Gathe’s and rented an Escalade so the tracker had to be on me somewhere.
“Did you put it in my fucking boot?” I asked.
He didn’t respond. “Why were you in Arkansas?”
I was tired. I wanted to see Cressida. And my temper was short because of both. I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Yelling at Bane wasn’t going to help matters.
“I had some business to handle.”
“What business?” he snapped.
“Personal. Last I checked, we are allowed a personal life. I don’t have to report to anyone about that.”
“You do when you go to the city your former girlfriend lived for the past four years,” Bane replied.
“Why is that?” I asked, taking a step back toward him. “Huh? Yeah, Cressida lived there. She’s not there now. So, what did I do that makes this your business? Linc doesn’t seem to care. He’s not here.”
“Linc is letting me handle this,” he replied.
“Why? Because it involves your best friend’s younger brother? Or because he thinks it’s a waste of time? There is no reason for all this … this fucking … monitoring. Pirate is dead. I can’t kill him again. What is it you’re worried I’ll do?”
Bane’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket and answered it.
“Yeah?” He didn’t take his eyes off me, as if I were going to run.
This was all too over-the-top dramatic. “Fuck,” he muttered, and anger thinned his lips.
“Yeah, go ahead and clean it up. Thanks,” he said, then ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket.
“This. This is why I was monitoring you. This was why you couldn’t be near her. You act without consequence or reason.”
“What did he do?” Oz asked, stepping up beside him. Concern marring his brow.
“Howi and Avett found a dead man sliced up and hanging up in the abandoned mine they use for their underground. Identified him as Arthur Howt,” Bane said, turning his hard glare at me. “Cressida Beck’s step uncle.”
Oz ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
“He broke her bones, beat her, punished her to control and manipulate her. She was here because she had run from the narcissistic bastard,” I informed them.
“He also killed her mother. Something she doesn’t know.
She found her mother drowned in a hot tub.
Thinks she passed out from mixing antidepressants and alcohol. Yeah, I killed the son of a bitch.”
Some of the anger in Bane’s expression eased, and he glanced at my brother, who was staring at me. He wasn’t angry, but something was wrong. It was … he seemed … pained or sad. It was odd, considering the situation.
“All right. He deserved to die,” Bane replied.
“But taking Than and Gathe and sneaking off to do it, then leaving his corpse for the Arkansas branch to clean up wasn’t the correct way to handle it.
That’s the problem with your obsession with Cressida.
You don’t think clearly. That is shit that will get you killed. Or someone else killed.”
“I want to talk to Linc. Have him talk to Hughes. I want to come home. The threat of my killing Pirate is over. The case was close and sealed.”
“We all want that. And Blaise has agreed to it,” Oz said, still with a tone that didn’t make sense, much like his expression.
“I get to stay?” I asked, hope surging through my chest.
Bane nodded. “Yeah, you do. But …” He paused for a moment. “Cressida is gone. Contact with her is off-limits. She is your crazy trigger, and before you can start getting as deep in with her as you once were, she’s been moved out of your reach.”
The words sank in slowly, but my move to get in Bane’s face was much faster. His shoulders might be wider than mine, but I was an inch taller and not scared of the motherfucker.
“WHERE IS SHE?!” I roared as my temples began to pound.
“Jesus Christ, KASH!” Oz shouted, grabbing my collar and jerking me back.
Bane’s entire body had gone rigid, but there wasn’t fury glinting in his eyes, like I’d expected, but sympathy.
What the fuck?! He didn’t get to feel fucking sorry for me!
“Where. IS. SHE?” I demanded, pulling free of Oz’s hold.
“She is safe. Provided for. I made sure she had all she needed. Including a good job.” Bane’s tone was reassuring, as if that was all I needed to hear.
“Tell me where!” I started at him again, and Oz’s hand clamped down on my shoulder, stopping me.
How the fuck was he so goddamn strong?
“Let go of me,” I sneered.
“This is why you can’t be around her, Kash. Listen to yourself. She makes you psycho,” Oz said.
“No. Her being taken away and hidden from me is making me psycho. This goddamn family I didn’t ask to be born into is making me psycho! Now tell me where she is!”
Bane blew out a heavy breath, and his gaze looked past me toward my brother, who was still holding on to me.
“Someone needs to start talking,” I warned them. “What if someone took Halo from you?” I asked Bane. “Or Winslet from you?” I asked my brother. “You’d both lose your goddamn mind.”
“Not the same,” Bane told me. “Halo is my world. My center. My calm. She is also my wife.”
“Who you get to keep protected. Safe. You don’t have to worry about anyone hurting her. That’s not a threat you face, but you can’t tell me if someone hurt her, you wouldn’t show your own version of crazy. She wasn’t always your wife, but before she took your last name, did you love her less?”
He shook his head. “No, but I don’t just love Halo. She saved me. Brought me back from the darkness that I didn’t think I’d ever return from after losing Crosby. She owns me. Without her, I have no soul.”
“I wanted to come home,” I snarled. “I thought being home meant Madison. My family. But I saw her again. Nothing had changed for me.” Stabbing my chest with my pointer finger, I leaned closer to Bane.
“My home isn’t a fucking town, and it’s not family.
Because the moment I looked into her eyes again was when I felt it. Home. SHE is my home.”
Bane was looking at my brother again, who had remained silent through it all. Not trying to convince me he loved Winslet more than I loved Cressida.
“I’m sorry,” Oz said behind me. “But right now, we need you focused. She doesn’t focus you. She distracts you.”
“Her being taken from me fucking distracts me!” I yelled and jerked free of his hold to turn and look at him.
What was his deal? Why did he look so goddamn torn up? Was this because he didn’t agree with them taking Cressida, but wasn’t going to admit it?
“Mom has stage four liver cancer.” Oz’s voice cracked as he said it.
The oxygen felt as if it had been sucked from the room.
“What?” I asked.
I hadn’t heard him right. I couldn’t have.
“She thought she was allergic to something she was eating. She was having abdominal pain.” His words came out hoarse. “It got better when she cut out her glass of wine in the evening, but that was short-lived. Then there was swelling, and she went in for testing.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No.”
The emotion on his face, the pain in his expression, his silence—it all made sense now.
“What?” I asked. “What does the doctor say? I mean, what about treatments? How are they going to get rid of it?”
Oz glanced at Bane, and I didn’t like that. When his gaze came back to me, I saw the answers I did not want to hear. The sorrow was deep.
“Stage four means it’s spread beyond the liver. It isn’t curable, but there are treatments to slow its progression. Prolong her life.”
I took several steps back until I had the wall behind me for support. “But we can afford the best treatments.”
“Yes. And she will be getting them. But all the money and connections in the world can’t cure cancer.
” Oz’s words came out raspy. “She wants you home. Her baby boy under her roof. She wants her Christmas to be happy. She needs you to be here. With us. Not going psycho over your obsession with a girl. Please, Kash, give her that. Let Cressida go. For now at least.”
In all my life, I knew I’d never face anything as unfair again.
Being asked to choose between the woman who had given me life, loved me, raised me, who was the only gentleness I had known, growing up, who needed me while her body turned on her, and the one girl who had stolen my soul seven years ago and would own it until the day I died.