Chapter 41 Violet #2
“It means she knew this would happen. She knew they’d come. And she wants them dead.” My shouts for help turned into warnings. “Don’t come in here! This place is trapped!”
But it was too late for them to hear me. Somewhere above me, something exploded, the crack like a hundred tiny bullets whizzing through the air and finding a resting place somewhere vital
Whip’s scream of pain echoed back to me, and my blood ran cold.
I clutched Nyah’s arm, probably hurting her with my fingernails digging into her skin, but I couldn’t breathe.
Thumps of footsteps on the steps confused me, shouts and swearing, and above it all, more howls of pain.
And that robotic voice, that warning that played on a loop, threatening and ominous.
I knew what came next. How long would it be before a countdown started?
“Francine!” I screamed. “Francine!”
The hatch above our heads slid open. “What!” she snapped. “Quit yelling. They can’t get to you. The entire house is surrounded by traps. Ones that clearly work as intended if your man’s hollering was anything to go by.”
Her eyes were wild, unfocused.
Nyah clutched the sharpened piece of plastic, but what the hell were we going to do with that when she was nowhere near us? In the same vein, I held the bottle of bleach.
Francine’s gaze strayed to it, and a cruel smile twisted her mouth.
She gave a bitter laugh. “What are you going to do with that, Violet? Spray me in the face?” She snorted a derisive laugh.
“Terrible plan, but I like the gumption. This is exactly why we let you go, that night in the warehouse.” She shook her head.
“Travis didn’t want to. He said we should just kill you then and there, but a deal is a deal, right?
And I liked your spark. You remind me of myself. ”
Despite the fact I’d been grappling with the same idea, hearing it on her lips cemented it wasn’t true.
“I’m nothing like you,” I snarled back. “You used your business to feed young women to predators. How many women did you do it to, Francine? It was more than just me and Nyah and Elizabeth, wasn’t it?
How many women did you help Paul Jeddersen murder?
How many did you help Travis murder? How much blood is on your hands? ”
Francine sat on the edge of the hatch, legs dangling down into the hole, though still far enough above our heads that we couldn’t touch her. “I can’t remember all their names.”
“But you remember their faces, don’t you? Because you watched Paul Jeddersen kill them on that nanny cam.”
More shots pierced the air, more screams. My heart thudded against my chest.
My guys were out there, fighting a war I couldn’t see to get to me. And there was literally nothing I could do about it.
Nothing other than keep Francine talking. And keep Nyah and myself alive.
Francine’s eyes narrowed, and she shifted, waving her hand around, as if my question had agitated her.
She had the gun in her hand again, but it clearly wasn’t the one being used to shoot at my men.
“I remember every single one of their faces,” Francine admitted. “And I remember the way he touched them like he loved them. Remember the way he made me keep their bodies so he could look at them whenever he wanted to.”
“Oh God. I’m going to be sick,” Nyah whispered.
I couldn’t blame her. My stomach twisted into painful knots. “How could you?”
Her eyes narrowed. “He loved me! That’s what you do for someone you love, Violet! You do things to make them happy! To make sure they stay!” A tear dripped down her face, and her voice softened just a little. “I just wanted him to stay.”
I would have felt sorry for her if the things she’d done hadn’t been so horrific. I understood what it felt like to be unloved. To feel like you had nobody in your life who cared. Nobody who wanted to stick around and stand by your side.
But Francine was sick and twisted and just as much to blame for the deaths of countless women as the men she’d claimed to love were.
“You took them from me. Paul. Then Travis. You took them both,” Francine whispered. “You owe me, Violet. You owe me a family.”
“I owe you nothing.”
She laughed. “And yet your men are out there, dying one by one trying to save you. I warned them not to try to come in here, but they didn’t listen. That’s the universe, Violet. That’s the universe punishing you because you stole what was mine.”
Bile rose in my throat. I could hear the shouts and the thumps and the pain all around but could see none of it. Their voices drifted in and out between the red-hot rage building inside me.
“Stop this,” I said in a voice that shocked even me. It was low. Sharp. Deadly.
There were none of the insecurities that normally plagued me. None of the quiet timidness that had characterized my entire life and every conversation I’d ever had.
I was a fully grown woman with children who needed her, and three men I would fight to the death for.
Because that’s exactly what they were doing for me right now.
I cracked open the lid on the bleach. “Stop the games. Stop the traps. Stop it all.”
The voice sounded like it didn’t come from me at all. Even Nyah let go of me and took half a step backward.
But my gaze was only for Francine. She and I locked eyes and didn’t turn away.
“Or what, Violet? What the hell are you going to do down there with your bottle of bleach? You aren’t going to reach me from your hole.” Her smile was so evil it chilled my bones. “A hole where you’ll stay until I have a baby of my own.”
I lifted the bleach to hover just over my lips. “I can’t reach you. But I don’t need to. What you want is inside me. But if I’m dead from swallowing down a bottle of bleach, then the baby is too.”
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to end my life or that of the baby I so desperately wanted.
But no baby of mine was going to be raised by the woman sitting above me. A woman who would kill me the moment she got what she wanted.
So it wasn’t a bluff, and she knew it. I would rather die in this hole and take my baby with me than live and watch her snatch it from my arms.
I’d already lost too many people. I wouldn’t lose any more.
I tilted the bottle up.
Francine threw herself over the edge and into the hole with us.
Nyah screamed as we broke Francine’s fall. Pain jolted through my neck and shoulders, the sharpness of it loosening my fingers. The bottle of bleach hit the dirt, splashing over our legs and rolling away, the acrid stench burning my nostrils.
It took a good few seconds for me to even register what had happened and to think through the pain that radiated through my body from having a fully grown person land on top of me when I was already injured. The chemical smell clogged the air, making it hard to breathe.
Nyah’s shouts, my name a short, sharp blast from her lips, jolted me out of it. “Violet!”
She grabbed for Francine’s gun, the two of them fighting for control, Francine taller and stronger, Nyah weakened from so long in the hole.
The gun went off with an ear-splitting explosion that rang in my ears, only adding to the pain in my body.
Nyah and Francine both stared at me with wide eyes.
And for a moment, I had no idea why.
It wasn’t me who’d pulled the trigger.
And yet it was Francine who crumpled to her knees.
A plastic shiv sticking out of her neck.
Nyah took the gun from Francine’s fingers and turned it on her.
“Are you shot?” I whispered.
She shook her head, both of us staring at Francine, slumped at our feet. She fumbled at her neck, and I didn’t stop her when she yanked the shiv out, making the bleeding so much worse.
I watched in morbid fascination while the blood flowed from her neck across the dirt.
“You moved so fast,” Nyah whispered. “I barely even saw you pick it up after I dropped it.”
I had literally no recollection of doing it.
All I remembered was the red haze of anger and a blinding need to protect what was mine. My friend. My baby.
Myself.
Francine spluttered and choked on her own blood. She clawed at our legs, her mouth opening and closing silently, and I knew in my heart she was begging us to save her.
Neither of us made a move to help her. I let the dark part of me take hold and just stood there, watching a woman die.
It didn’t take long. The wound in her neck had clearly caught something vital, and the blood pumped hard and fast, emptying from her body until she stopped fighting at all.
Nyah didn’t lower the gun until Francine’s chest stopped rising. But once she did, she looked up at me with a new fear in her eyes. “What do we do now? What if they can’t get in here, Vi? What if she’s…”
I filled in the blanks.
What if Francine’s traps had killed them all and nobody else knew we were here?