Chapter 37
thirty-seven
The acrid taste of fury is hot on my tongue as I glare after the silent footsteps of my sister.
Seeing her cry, holding her in my arms, it felt almost wrong.
Kenzi has always been the strong one between the three of us.
The pillar. Now it feels as if she is a shell of the person she used to be, beaten down by the trauma she’s been subjected to.
I can’t begin to imagine what she must have gone through while I thought she was away at college.
There are no words of reassurance I can offer her.
No flowery platitudes or pretty prose meant to wash over the stains beneath the exterior.
The minute Kenzi wrenched herself from my embrace, I knew she was shutting down.
Matthias does the exact same thing. She is protecting herself.
Hiding her weakness beneath layers of stone so that no one can use it against her.
“Is she—” Kendra’s voice filters through the silence. “Is she gone?” The bitch’s tone is soft and hesitant. She is playing at being the damsel in distress when she is nothing but a viper.
Growling, I bend down and grab the collar of her dress, dragging her up from the floor. Dante steps forward to intervene, but the icy glare I cast his way freezes him in place. I won’t hurt her, but that doesn’t mean I won’t give her a piece of my mind.
“You can quit with the act, Kendra,” I snarl, shifting my hand to her hair and wrenching her neck back.
Without her heels on, we are eye level with one another.
“You aren’t the victim here; you’re the villain.
The sex trafficker. And if you weren’t pregnant with an innocent baby, I would gut you from stem to stern. ”
“I didn’t—”
I yank harder on her hair, cutting off any excuses she is about to offer me.
“Fuck your excuses,” I snarl. “You sold your daughter to become a fucking assassin. To learn how to seduce and kill people for a corrupt corporation you profited off. Don’t pretend like you had no idea, because I have proof that you were complicit. ”
“You don’t understand,” she whines. “I didn’t have a choice.”
I laugh, the sound grating and devoid of warmth. “We all have choices, and you chose the wrong one. You should have protected her.”
“Like you protected Libby?”
My breath stalls in my lungs as my gaze darkens.
“What did you just say to me?”
“Ava…” Dante warns from beside me. I ignore him.
“You blame me for not protecting Kenzi,” she hisses at me. The viper’s fangs are starting to show. “But you did nothing to protect Libby. None of you did.”
“Neither did you,” I remind her, my tone deathly low. “It was your son who had her murdered.”
“And it was you who led him to it,” she sneers.
“You are just like your mother. Prancing around and ensnaring other people’s husbands.
Seducing them with your innocent smiles and big green eyes.
You are both nothing but home-wrecking whores.
If it wasn’t for you, Kenzi would never have had to be sold, and Christian wouldn’t have been driven to kill Libby. ”
She spits at me.
“You led her down the wrong path. Seduced her to your side, and now she is dead,” Kendra keeps on, her face growing to be a plum shade of purple as her ire mounts. “Your mother is no better. It seems Ward men have a sickness when it comes to McDonough women.”
Oh, this bitch is unhinged. She is still talking about my mother in the present tense, as if she is still here. Still seducing her husband. But she isn’t. She is dead, and Kendra knows it.
“My mother was a victim,” I hiss. “Your husband stole her, she didn’t seduce him, and she sure as hell didn’t love him. The only one seducing other people’s husbands is you.” I shoot Dante a cold look. The man at least has the decency to look ashamed.
Yeah, buddy, don’t think I didn’t guess that you and Kendra were hooking up while your late wife was still alive. Pathetic. If I ever found that Matthias did that to me, I would cut his dick off and staple it to his forehead.
Limp dick leader would be his new name.
“Your mother is not a victim.”
“Stop talking about her like she’s still alive, you fucking bitch,” I roar, my hand coming down on her face.
“Ava!” Dante surges forward to pull me away from Kendra, but Matthias intervenes, holding him back.
“It is a small slap,” Matthias grumbles. “She is fine.”
Vas snorts. “For how long?”
“She won’t hurt the baby,” Matthias assures Dante. “Let her work this out. It is a long time coming.”
The slap stings my hand, leaving a weak red handprint on Kendra’s cheek. I let go of her hair in my rage, and she slumps back to the floor, holding her cheek with a shocked expression coating her face.
Then she looks up at me and smirks.
“I thought you would have figured that part out by now.” She chuckles mirthlessly. “Ward men don’t let anything go.”
“What are you saying?”
My chest tightens painfully, breaths coming fast as my heart beats against my ribcage.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It is all I can hear as I wait with bated breath for her next words. She can’t mean what I think she means. There is no way. I have seen the death certificate. The crime scene photos. The autopsy.
Kendra is lying.
She has to be.
Otherwise, she would have come for me. Her heart. Her star. She wouldn’t have left me all alone.
“You honestly think my husband let her die?” Kendra scoffs. “No, your mother is very much alive.” Then she shrugs. “Well, as alive as she can be anyway. Comas are a bit of a bitch.”
My mother is alive.
My mother is alive.
My mother is alive.