Chapter 54 Daisy
FIFTY-FOUR
DAISY
I watched in horror as the tiny flicker at the base of the curtain smoldered as the fabric seemed to slowly melt.
Ethan watched it, too, his back to me, as if it were the single thing that ushered in the vengeance he’d come for, my mind still grappling with the few details I had. Trying to discern what had driven this disaster.
Ethan and my sister working together?
My sister who for years I’d assumed dead, though months ago, she’d reached out.
The bare spark seemed to smolder for an eternity, our breaths held, terror palpable as my sisters whimpered, their spirits shouting with their ferocity, no doubt each of them trying to figure out a way to get us out of this.
The toxic scent of scorched chemicals touched my nose as the small flame that ate up the curtain suddenly lashed over the wood frame of the window. Flames licking out. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the entire wall erupted.
Soon the entire house.
I had to move.
I hesitated for one beat, unsure of my strength, of my resilience, if I was brave enough. And I knew it was time I stepped beyond the silence.
I would no longer cower or cave. I wouldn’t let anything happen to Cash or my children, and I was going to give it my all to fight for these women who had become my family.
Desperation shuddering through my veins, I picked up a chair and lifted it over my head, a shout of abomination and hope ripping out of me as I ran across the floor in Ethan’s direction.
I didn’t care that Hadley still held a gun across the room. If she’d come to end me? Then so be it. This was the only chance I had.
Ethan started to whirl around at the same moment the chair made contact with the side of his head. Wood smashed against his skull, and the wood splintered with the impact.
His head rocked back, and I could see where the flesh had opened up. Blood poured out of the gash.
He only roared, swinging wide to hit me across the cheek with the back of his hand.
I stumbled backward and slammed my lower spine into the island.
Pain burst, streaking out as I gasped.
“Ethan, no!” Hadley shouted from the other side of the room.
Ethan didn’t slow. He raised another hand, striking me across the opposite cheek.
“You stupid bitch. For years I waited for you to go after him, lead me to him, but you were too weak and pathetic to ever do it, weren’t you?
So fucking pitiful. I actually started to feel sorry for you, did you know that? ”
He laughed a hollow sound. “Began to think you might actually be mine, even though I’d catch you with that faraway look on your face, and I’d know.
I’d know where your heart and mind really were.
But I accepted it. Figured when I finally caught up to him, I’d make him pay for what he did to you, too. ”
My head whirled with the words he threw at me.
“Then you betrayed me. As if all those years I gave you meant nothing.”
Anger surged through my being. “All the years you gave me? You mean all the years you demeaned me? Made me feel foolish or lesser than? Ignored my needs and my feelings and my thoughts? You only wanted a perfectly behaved wife to act as a cover for what you really did.”
He shrugged a shoulder as the flames behind him continued to grow, getting so close to touching the ceiling as smoke filled the room. “I guess I figured if you weren’t useful for what I originally wanted you for, I had to get creative as I bided my time.”
Disgust churned through my guts. Hatred hot. As hot as the flames that glowed against my face.
“So you’re plan is to kill me and all these women to get back at Cash?
While you stand here in the middle of the flames with me?
” I could barely force it out, wanting to drop to my knees at the thought.
But I had to remain strong. Make him focus on me so the rest would have the chance to get out. “I guess it won’t be a complete loss.”
He laughed in that condescending way he’d always laughed at me.
“No, Daisy. As soon as Cash shows and busts in here, my men will surround the property. Cash will come for you, and I will have the honor of watching both of you burn, him for my brother, you for betraying me, and Hadley just for the fact that she was involved. That she was too weak and pathetic to stop Cash that day, and because of it, my brother is dead.”
He took a menacing step toward me. “That bitch has been in hiding for years because she knew I’d come for her, and now it’s her time. The rest of these women and men will be nothing more than unfortunate casualties.”
I still couldn’t make sense of it all, but it was becoming clear quickly that my sister had somehow been involved in the gambling Matthew had been. And that Cash had…
I couldn’t focus on that. I had to stop this. End it before Cash and the guys arrived. Because they would come. I knew they would, and there would be an ambush waiting for them.
I ripped open the drawer at my side and fumbled around through the growing smoke for one of the knives stored inside. A relieved sob choked out of me as I produced one, and I didn’t hesitate or give Ethan time to prepare.
I lunged for him with the blade pointed out.
A roar of pain tore up his throat when I hit his upper shoulder, but he had me by the wrist that held the knife faster than I could process, holding tight as he delivered a kick to my ribs.
Oxygen gushed from my lungs as pain splintered through my body, and the blade clattered to the floor. A fist flew through the air and landed against my jaw.
My head snapped back, and I fumbled backward, trying to catch my balance as my sight bleared in and out, but the momentum was too much. I slammed against the floor, hitting the back of my head against a side table.
Dizziness nearly had me toppling fully to the side, but I fought it, not allowing the pain to deter me. Because I would do anything for these women who were so willing to sacrifice for me.
Would do anything to get them back to their children, the same as I would do anything to get back to mine.
No longer was I willing to succumb to the idea that I didn’t get to spend this life with them. I knew Cash would take care of them. Shelter and care for them the way he promised me he would do.
Love them.
But I wanted him to do that with me at his side.
Hadley was suddenly in front of me, trying to help me up while she pointed the gun at Ethan with the other. “Oh God, Daisy. Get up. We have to get out of here. I never meant for this to happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It was only supposed to be Cash. Cash, who ruined both of us.”
“If you want to do something for me, then release the women.”
Disbelief pinched her face. “Daisy, I—”
“Do it now!” I shouted as I scrambled to my feet.
Smoke infiltrated the big room, so much that it was becoming difficult to see, the fire growing with each second.
But I could see Ethan.
A demon in the fire. His gun pointed at Hadley. His voice was low and cut with venomous power. “Do not move.”
She laughed a maniacal sound. “I’ve been terrified of you since I was nineteen.
Since you wrangled me and Jaimie into doing your dirty work.
I loved him. I loved him. And you made him do every abhorrent thing while you sat behind your desk acting as if you were clean.
Acting as if there was no connection. No relation.
I lost my sister because of you. Because I knew you would kill me too if you found me.
Do you really think I’m going to bend to your will? Not any longer.”
A gunshot popped off, and I watched in horror as my sister crumpled to the ground. Ethan’s arm was still raised with his gun as he stepped out of the smoke that grew and grew, away from the flames that now swallowed the entire back wall.
A choked sob garbled in my throat as I looked at my sister. My sister, who I had finally been reunited with.
And she was…gone. Gone forever where she was a lifeless, broken shape on the ground.
Agony left me on a roar, the sound mixed with the rage as I forced myself onto my feet.
My lungs burned and my eyes stung. But it was my spirit that wanted to weep.
Sounds echoed from the roof, and Ethan turned his attention that way, fear creeping over him as he realized his plan might have been faulty.
That he might have damned us all.
But I refused to let him.
With him distracted, I hurtled myself in the direction of the front door, frantic as I started to undo the locks.
Hysteria lit inside me, the blood whooshing through my veins just as loud as the flames.
I made it down to the second one when a fiery dart of pain sliced through my shoulder.
Agony filled my scream, and I bowed forward, trying to remain on my feet so I could get to the rest of the locks. Only it was futile.
Ethan was there, shoving me off my feet.
I could feel him rise over me.
A vapid, horrendous silhouette that towered.
The heat of the barrel of the gun directed at me when I tried to push myself back across the floor.
Grief sat on my chest like ten million tons of bricks. The fact that I’d done this. That I’d come to this place and invited evil in. Trapped these amazing women within the walls of Ethan’s hatred.
Their families. Oh God, those men. I couldn’t fathom what they would go through.
The suffering they would be stricken by.
I squeezed my eyes closed as I prepared to meet that same fate.
I allowed my children’s precious faces to invade.
Their smiles and their joy and their love.
I committed it all to Cash.
Prayed through everything he would find a way to stand.
A cry of terror ripped out of me when a crash suddenly boomed from somewhere near the kitchen.
A violent splintering of wood and fiber that reverberated through the tumult.
My eyes darted that way, trying to see through the disorienting smoke.
The ceiling.
It had collapsed, a gaping hole of sheetrock and wood dripping from the edges of the fissure, inciting a plume of dust and debris. No question, the cabin was being fully engulfed by the flames.
The smoke so thick there was no chance of seeing any longer, let alone breathing.
A dark, hazy coating clouded my sight, and I could barely make anything out.
Just the ghastly outline of Ethan.
A harbinger of death.
Only behind him a new form took shape.
An ominous outline that emerged from the shadows.
Volatile and intimidating and so completely right.
I could barely make out the way Ethan was ripped around, his entire body bowing as he was impaled, his body tossed to the side as if it were nothing.
Then those massive arms were around me.
Strong and sure as he picked me up.
A flash of hazel that looked down in the greatest relief.
Then he was at the door and tearing through, our breaths choked and rasped as he ran with me out into the crisp, night air.
I sucked and dragged the oxygen into my lungs as I clung to him.
Those big hands were all over me, the man murmuring, “I have you, I have you, I have you.”
Tears broke free, big gulping, gasping sobs that I expelled into his neck.
He set me outside the range of the fire, in the safety of the trees, before he went running back, an arm up to protect his face as he dove back through the door and into the flames.
Horror robbed my relief as I listened to the slew of gunshots rise up from all around. No question a war was happening between Cash’s and Ethan’s men.
It all blurred with the terrible memory of that harrowing night so many years ago running on a circuit. Battering my thoughts and tormenting my soul.
While I begged to the heavens for the rest of them.
That Cash would get them out.
Relief battered through me when I saw Theo rush out with Piper in his arms, her wrists and feet still bound.
River with Charleigh behind him.
Otto and Raven.
Kane and Emery.
They were there.
They all were there.
Dropping to their knees as they hugged the other piece of their souls to them. Rocking and swaying and crying in reprieve.
Fear drenched me, tears streaking through the soot that lined my face, and I began to crawl toward the cabin.
My soul pleading.
Begging.
Cash. Cash. Cash.
Heartbreaker.
I didn’t think I could survive the pain of it again.
Otto stood and started to run back toward the cabin. The flames now raging up the front side. Crackles spit and jumped, the whooshing roar warning of impending doom.
“Otto!” Raven shouted on a sob.
He started to run up the stairs when Cash came stumbling out.
Nearly bent in two and his shirt pulled up to cover his mouth and nose.
I choked and gasped over the gutting relief. The world tipping to the side. The surging and ebbing of the emotions sending a rush of lightheadedness swimming through my brain.
Cash and Otto turned and ran, jumping off the porch just as one of the supports gave. The cover collapsed in an explosion of shards and dust as they dove to the ground.
Rolling away from the inferno that ripped over the awning and swallowed the roof.
Cash barely made it back onto his feet as I crawled toward him, and he basically launched himself at me, curling his arms around my body as he rolled us away from the flames.
Strong, unrelenting arms holding me tight.
Protecting.
Securing.
Loving.
We rolled to a stop in the darkness beyond the burn of the flames.
Our hearts battering and our breaths raking.
Our hands clawing to get to the other.
“Daisy. Fuck, baby. Tell me you’re okay.” Every word from his mouth was coarse. Roughened scraps that brushed over me like a caress.
Unable to speak, I nodded against his shirt before I let the sobs go.
Because it was finally, finally over.