Chapter 45 Lexi
Lexi
Power is a funny thing.
It doesn’t announce itself with trumpets or fanfare.
It starts small—hungry like a parasite, just an egg nestled in your chest where hope used to live.
But once it hatches, once it unleashes within you and spreads through your veins like poison or salvation, it fucking feasts.
It duplicates, multiplies, consumes everything soft until there’s nothing left but sharp edges and fury.
And sooner than you know it, you’re not just consumed by it.
You are it.
Twitching with the need for more. Starving for the kind of control that means no one can ever hurt you again. The kind that means you do the hurting first.
I’m driving Atticus’s car I stole through the dark, hands on the top of the wheel, and I can feel that parasite writhing inside me. Fed by rage. Fed by betrayal. Fed by every lie, every manipulation, every time someone thought they could use me as a pawn in their fucking war.
Not anymore.
The warehouse comes into view, exactly where this GPS led me. Axel told me before I left to meet him back here the second I could get away. But for what? He didn’t say. We didn’t exactly have enough time in the bedroom to go over details.
I park the car in the shadows and kill the engine. For a moment I just sit, breathing, feeling my pulse hammer against my ribs.
My boots crunch on gravel as I approach the warehouse entrance—the same one Koa probably walked through hours ago, thinking he was in control.
Men like him always think they’re in control.
Until they’re not.
I push through the door and the smell hits me first—blood and gunpowder and something else, something chemical that makes my nose burn. The warehouse is dimly lit, shadows pooling in corners, and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust.
Then there’s a man face down on a chair in the middle of the room, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. The chair’s tipped over, pinning him, and his neck is craned the opposite way so he can’t see the entrance. Can’t see me.
I blink a few times. It’s Koa.
I stare at him, relieved he can’t see me. He doesn’t need to know I’m here.
My boots echo as I walk deeper into the warehouse, and then I see Axel standing near the far wall, arms crossed, looking older than he did this morning. Looking harder.
He sees me and something flickers across his face. Relief? Guilt? I can’t tell anymore.
“Hey.”
I shake my head, not wanting to speak.
A door to the right opens and Gilbert Kane steps out—our father. He looks the same as I remember but just older now, more line indents on his skin.
He walks to the room to the right, gesturing for us to follow.
I glance back at Koa one more time. He’s stopped fighting, stopped struggling against the ropes. Just laying there awfully quiet, blood pooling beneath his face where it’s pressed against concrete.
Part of me wants to check if he’s breathing.
I follow Gilbert and Axel into the side room, my jaw clenched so tight my teeth ache. Gilbert shuts the door behind us with a soft click that sounds too much like a trap springing shut.
He gestures to two chairs arranged in front of a desk. “Please, sit.”
“We’ll stand,” I say before Axel can respond.
Gilbert’s lips twitch into something that might be a smile if it reached his eyes. “Stubborn. Just like your mother.”
“Don’t talk about her.”
He raises his hands, then settles into the chair behind the desk. Casual, relaxed, like we’re having a pleasant family reunion instead of whatever the fuck this is.
He looks at Axel first, and my brother sighs like they’re sharing some kind of inside joke I’m not privy to.
Then Gilbert looks at me, and my skin prickles at what I see in his eyes. Recognition. Appraisal. Something that looks disturbingly close to pride.
The pieces snap together with sickening clarity.
“Why?” The word comes out strangled, my blood starting to boil beneath my skin.
Axel looks at Gilbert but says nothing. Just stands there like a statue, like he already knows what’s coming.
“Lexi, honey—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off, taking a step forward. My hands are shaking but I don’t know if it’s from rage or fear or the horrible understanding that I’ve been played since the beginning. “Don’t you dare ‘honey’ me.”
Gilbert leans back in his chair, studying me. “I’m only going to touch the surface then.”
“Of what?” I seethe, each word sharp enough to make my jaw ache.
“Vincent is the reason your mother is dead.”
I scoff, the sound harsh and disbelieving. He’s leading with that? Blaming the fucking drug dealer for everything he put her through? He thinks he’s so fucking smart, but the words don’t land the way he thinks they will. I’ve already built armor against this exact wound.
“She’s been dead for years,” I state the fucking obvious.
“Yes.” Gilbert stands, moving to a filing cabinet against the wall. “But do you know how she died?”
“Overdose.” The word tastes like ash. “Pills. I know the fucking story. I saw what happened. I was there, remember?”
“Do you?” He pulls out a folder, sets it on the desk. “Vincent laced his product with fentanyl. Cut corners, maximized profit, killed dozens of people in the process. Your mother wasn’t the only death, Lexi.”
He opens the folder, and I see photographs—crime scene photos, medical examiner reports, toxicology screens. My mother’s face, pale and still, captured by some clinical photographer who didn’t know her, didn’t know she hummed when she cooked or that she cried during sad movies.
“And that little shit tied up to the chair outside?” Gilbert continues, his voice going cold. “He’s Vincent’s heir to this… drug throne. His protégé. His goddamn masterpiece. So you’re going to—”
I laugh. Actually laugh, the sound cracking through the room like breaking glass. “I’m sorry... what?”
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Axel finally speaks, his voice quiet but firm. “This is justice for Mom, Lex.”
I turn on him so fast he flinches. “Justice for Mom? Justice?” I scoff, shaking my head.
“You want to talk about justice? Where were you when I was fourteen and had to identify her body? You refused to go, Dad took off, so I was left to pick up the pieces with grandma! Where were you when a year passed? Oh, right, high as a motherfucker! Do not speak to me about justice because justice hasn’t been served yet! ”
I glance at Gilbert. It’s not until he dies.
Axel’s jaw tightens but he doesn’t respond.
I turn on my heel, heading for the door. This is bullshit—all of it. I’m not playing executioner for a father who abandoned us and a brother who only remembers I exist when it’s convenient.
“Wait.” Gilbert’s voice stops me, and I hate that it does. “Here are the autopsy reports. The real ones, not the cleaned-up version the police gave you.”
I whip around. “Why now? Why wait until the first day of college when I thought I could finally move on from all of this?”
Gilbert’s smile is sharp, predatory. “Because if you fuck me on this, if you walk away or talk or try to play hero, you go down with me. You, my dear, finally turned eighteen. Welcome to being an adult. I’ve got enough evidence linking you to Koa’s activities over the last week to make the DA very interested.
Kidnapping, accessory after the fact, conspiracy—take your pick. ”
The threat lands right at my chest. He played it this way so he could drag me to jail with him? What the fuck is wrong with him? Selfish motherfucker.
I storm over, ripping the papers from his hand. “Fucking asshole!”
“That’s my girl,” he says, and the pride in his voice makes me want to scream.
I storm out of the room, papers crumpled in my fist, rage making everything sharp and clear and intolerable. The warehouse swims in my vision—too bright, too loud, too real.
I’m walking toward the exit, toward Atticus’s car, toward anywhere that isn’t here when I hear it.
“You set me up?”
Koa’s voice. Rough, damaged, but certain—stating it like it’s a fact rather than a question.
I stop walking. Turn slowly.
He’s managed to lift his head somehow, neck craning at an impossible angle to see me. His face is destroyed—blood and bruises and swelling that makes him almost unrecognizable. But his eyes are clear. Focused. Accusing.
“You set me up?” he asks again.
Something in me hardens. Crystallizes into something cold and unyielding.
“Me?” My voice is ice. “Or did you set yourself up the moment you delivered me to Vincent?”
“I was protecting you—”
“By drugging me? By tying me to a chair? By standing there while your psycho stepfather threatened my brother?” I take a step closer, then another. “That’s what you call protection?”
“It was the only way—”
“Fuck y––” I’m standing over him now, looking down at this man who I thought I knew, who I thought I could trust. “Don’t you dare try to justify what you did. You made your choice. Now you get to live with it.”
His eyes search mine, looking for something—forgiveness, understanding, anything that says the girl he fucked still exists somewhere beneath this rage.
He won’t find her.
“Lexi—” His voice cracks.
The word almost breaks me. Almost.
But the parasite in my chest is too hungry now, fed too well on betrayal and lies. It won’t let me soften, won’t let me break.
“You wanted me to understand your world?” I crouch down, getting close enough to see every injury, every consequence of the life he chose. “Congratulations. I understand perfectly now. Tell me more fucking lies, Koa, and I’ll smash your head in myself.”
I stand, papers still clutched in my hand and turn away.
“I lied to protect you. There was no other way.” he calls after me.
I don’t answer. Don’t look back.
Because the truth is, I don’t know where I’m going. Don’t know what comes next or how to process what Gilbert just told me or how to reconcile the fact that my own brother has been working with our father this entire time.
All I know is that I need to move. Need to keep walking before this rage inside me turns into something else—something that looks too much like grief.
I push through the warehouse door and the cold air hits my face like absolution.
Behind me, I hear Koa’s voice one more time, broken and desperate.
“Put the pieces together and think about it, Tiger.”
I keep walking.
And I feel that power settling in my chest, satisfied and patient, waiting for the next person who thinks they can use me.