22. Tristan
TRISTAN
T he door to the sauna cracks against the wall as I shove it open, steam spilling out like smoke.
My father stumbles ahead of me, his polished shoes slipping on wet wood, and I drive the barrel of the gun I borrowed from Elijah harder into his back.
He jerks when I do it, but he doesn’t resist. He knows better.
I’m sure in his deluded brain he thinks there’s a way out of this, but there’s not.
It’s a done deal, and I’m ready to move on now that I know the truth.
I think that I thought I’d be angrier, but really I’m just relieved.
The Moretti triplets are already in the room, and Elijah’s grip is tight on the bastard who carjacked us. He’s bloody, lips split, staggering to stay on his feet, but he’s alive. Conscious. Afraid. That’s all I asked for.
Revenge is going to be bitter for him and sweet for my angel, Winter.
My gaze snags on her, just checking to make sure she’s okay. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight for a moment, but I also didn’t want to risk my father grabbing her or shooting her in order to get me to back off. He knows she’s my only weak spot, and that I would do literally anything for her.
Winter’s wrapped in a robe, thank God, not one of those thin towels that barely cover anything. Relief slices through me, jagged, because if she’d been standing here exposed, I’d have had no choice but to slaughter everyone in this room…friends or not. No one gets to see her like that.
Bianca is delayed in her shrieking, but she’s demanding to know why I’ve got my father at gunpoint, and I have half a mind to just shoot her in the head too.
All of this unnecessary shit is keeping me from being alone with Winter, and that’s pissing me off.
She’s shrill and useless, just like her mother and brother.
“Let him go, Tristan. What are you doing? This is such a violation,” Bianca says in an indignant tone like we’ve somehow inconvenienced her instead of the other way around.
“We know you’re fucking Vale, and no one cares especially not him,” Elijah cuts her down with a snapping tone. “Shut the fuck up.”
“What is happening?” She asks in this tiny, whiny voice while she looks at my father with big doe eyes.
I guess that’s the tone she used when she thought she was manipulating him.
He won’t even look at her, which is typical of him.
He has no use for her now. He was using her for sex, but I know exactly what he planned on doing with her when the time was right.
Bianca opens her mouth to scream, and Noah doesn’t waste a word on her.
He walks over and grabs her face, pressing his fingers into the sweet spot on her neck and incapacitates her with such ease that I think I need to get him to teach me how to do that.
I’d obviously never use that skill on Winter.
I love when she talks, she fascinates me.
Hayden and Callum, on the other hand, I’d love to have an off switch for them.
Bianca folds instantly, limp as a ragdoll, and Noah props her against the cedar bench and steps back, calm as if he’d just tied his shoes.
I shove my father into the far corner. He grips the wood, trying to stand tall, but he knows I have the upper hand, and that keeps him small.
“Come here,” I bark at Winter, and she comes without hesitation.
I unzip my hoodie with one hand and toss it to her without lowering the gun.
She pulls it over her robe, whispering, “I didn’t think of it either. ”
My scowl deepens. Ninety percent of it is rage that she’s here at all in front of men and not covered from head to toe in fabric. The other ten percent is the fact that I have to breathe the same air as my father and the man he paid to traffic her.
We didn’t put all the pieces to the puzzle together until an extensive call with all three of the Moretti brothers this morning, and Sebastian even joined for a little while in between his busy schedule of rugby and stalking that poor girl.
My father finally turns his head, sneering, his voice thick with disdain. “You couldn’t let it go, could you?”
I jut the gun out, indicating that I have no issue with just shooting him dead right now.
“Talk if you want to, but this ends one way. I already know everything. I know about Mom, I know about the debt. I know about the businesses that you’re trying to sell off.
And I certainly know about this little gopher and why he’s so fucking hard to track down.
” I point my other hand at the man who laughed when I chose to hurt Winter myself instead of letting him and his lackeys take her with them.
Thank fuck I didn’t risk it. She’d never be found, not when the Black Crown Society is involved.
“He’s a fucking nobody. He’s not important to anyone, and that’s why they use him to run their little schemes. ”
“You couldn’t think past your dick,” Dad snarls, voice rising with every word.
“And that’s going to be your downfall. Winter was nothing more than a pawn.
She was meant for the Onyx Dominion, and in return, they would kill your mother.
I would get the payout from her life insurance.
I’d have the cash to dig myself out of the mess I was in.
But you couldn’t let it happen, could you?
You wouldn’t just let her go. Every time I thought I had an opening, you were there.
Protecting her like she was yours. And even in the end, when the plan was fucking foolproof you still wouldn’t let her go. You fucking rap–”
“Your son saved my life!” Winter screams at him, and I glance at her.
She rarely loses her cool ever. She’s strong, resilient, and I’m so fucking proud of her.
“You’re not going to live past the next few minutes, but I want you to know that despite how awful you are, and probably always have been, I don’t hate you.
Because of your twisted plan and the reason you fostered me, I met Tristan.
He’s my entire life, and I’d go through all of it again just to be able to know him and love him the way I do. ”
It’s clear to anyone who knows Winter or me how much we care about each other, how much we cling to one another, how bonded we are.
But neither one of us has ever said that we love each other.
I am in love with her in an earth-shattering way that someone like my father couldn’t comprehend.
This is just the first step in proving that to her, and I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure she knows that.
All three Moretti brothers’ heads snap toward my girl, and my father doesn’t speak.
He’s just glaring at her. He hates her because she was kind, and sweet, and just what I needed.
If she had been someone else, if she had been like Bianca, his plan would have worked because I wouldn’t have given a fuck about her.
He wouldn’t have had to plan a carjacking simply because I would have never been around to protect her.
But she was mine the moment I saw her, and he never had a chance to take her from me.
I would move mountains to keep her safe, and he never thought that would have been a possibility.
“She’ll ruin your life, son. She already has if you’re willing to kill your own father for her. What will Sebastian think?” He’s grasping at straws here.
My vision tilts with red at his words. I already knew everything he’s just said, but that doesn’t make me any less livid.
I see Winter tense beside me, and that makes rage tear through me.
“She is mine,” I roar, my voice is loud enough it feels like it should be shaking the goddamn walls.
“She’s always been mine. You never had a shot.
And for the record, Sebastian gave me his blessing to torture you and kill you slowly.
He knows what a piece of utter shit you are. ”
My father’s lips curl into something like a smile, smug and ugly even on the floor with a gun in his spine.
“You think you understand, but you don’t.
The Dominion agreed to take her as payment, and I didn’t deliver.
Do you know what kind of backlash that got me?
And you killed two of their men on top of it.
” He huffs at me like he isn’t about to be eating a fucking bullet.
“Do you know what they do to the girls? They strip them down. Break them. Degrade them until they’re crawling.
And if she hadn’t performed after all of that…
” He shrugs, like I’m going to see his point.
“She would’ve been discarded. Killed. All for nothing.
That’s what she was meant for. But instead you wanted to drag her around like a fucking safety blanket. ”
Winter’s breath hitches, but I keep my eyes locked on my father.
“You sold her,” I say, my voice low, vibrating with fury. “You offered her up like she was property.”
“She is property,” he spits. “That’s what you don’t get. Girls like her are bargaining chips. And you…” he laughs, cutting himself off. He sounds bitter and broken. “You’ve wasted your life trying to keep her. You and your brother, weak as ever, letting whores ruin you.”
I snap. The shot tears through his leg and then the other one.
I don’t want him to die just yet. I’m ready to move on, but I don’t want to look back and regret not making him suffer.
He deserves far worse than he’s about to get.
He drops to the floor screaming, blood spreading fast across the cedar, his voice is so pathetic.
Winter flinches, but she just steps closer to my side.
“On your fucking knees,” I growl at the carjacker. He stumbles down, his hands raised, babbling for mercy.
Elijah drives a boot into my father’s jaw, snarling, “Shut the fuck up.” Noah is scrolling on his phone, looking up as if to say, ‘ can we hurry this up? I’ve got things to do’.
Benjamin sighs, uninterested. “It’s fucking hot in here.
I’ll call the clean-up crew and make sure the barricade is still in place outside the locker room.
” He disappears through the door without another word.
Winter steps forward, and I wasn’t expecting that. Her voice is colder than I’ve ever known it to be. She stares the would-be trafficker down. “Look at me. You wanted to look at me that night, didn’t you? So look at me now then.”
He doesn’t answer or comply.
“Fucking answer her!” I bark, my gun raised.
He breaks, looking up at her. He bursts into tears, which is something Winter didn’t do that night. “I—I was just doing a job! Please!”
Winter doesn’t blink. “You’ll never hurt another girl. I was lucky. Others weren’t, I’m sure.”
I lean down, cupping her face in my free hand, my thumb smoothing over her cheek. The room stinks of blood and steam, but she’s all I see. “Any last words before I finish this?” I murmur to her.
She brushes her lips against mine, soft but steady. “I don’t want to give him another thought. I don’t want to know his name. I don’t want to know his story. I just want to move on, and I don’t want him to exist anymore.”
Her words seal it. I put a bullet through my father’s skull. Another through the trafficker’s.
That’s it. It’s over, and we never have to think about this shit again. I hand the gun to Noah, my hands find their way back to where they belong. Winter. I kiss her, reverent, fierce, finally free.
“Come on,” I whisper, pressing my forehead to hers. “We need to get out of here.” The Moretti’s will take care of the rest, and Sebastian and I will owe them. And then one day, one or all of the triplets will call on us, and we’ll show up for them the way they showed up today.
And then they’ll owe us.
Winter’s eyes flick to Bianca’s limp body as Noah picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. He pulls a face like he’s annoyed that he’s the one who has to do the lifting. “Where will they put her since she saw so much?” she asks.
“She’s on the Dominion’s radar. They were a faction of The Back Crown Society decades ago. Long thought to have been eradicated for this very shit,” Elijah says like he’s annoyed, but it’s not directed at my girl. He’s just having a bad time all day every day no matter what.
“We’re duty-bound to take her back to St.Augustine. Black Crown will offer her protection. If she chooses not to accept it, she’ll be released and we’ll be absolved of any responsibility,” Noah adds on.
Before anyone can say anything else, Benjamin pops his head in the door, but doesn’t enter. “You need to wrap this mess up. I just got a text giving me a head’s up that some shit is about to pop off. Apparently two people were found with a bullet to the skull in your father’s suite.”
Of course he killed Josh and Emily when he went up to his room. I confronted him in the elevator and brought him down here, so I hadn’t thought to check where they were first.
“I’ll fucking handle it,” Elijah grumbles, pushing past us and out the door. Whoever found the bodies, and whoever they told are about to get a big pay day.
Worry flashes across Winter’s face, but I stroke her cheek with my thumb. “Everything will be okay, baby.”
I scoop her into my arms, carrying her out into the cooler air of the locker room. She curls against me like she always does, trusting me completely.
And that’s all I need.
The past is dead in that sauna. From here on out, it’s only us. I’ll rip the entire world apart to keep her safe, and I’m glad she knows that.