Chapter 28 #2
Ethan follows the team, but Nick stays by my side. “I’m going in alone,” I remind him.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t cover you on the way.
” He leads me through a maze of corridors while I call out directions, firing at one, then two men who might as well announce their presence before showing their faces.
It makes sense in a twisted way. This is a new group of guys, men Donovan scraped together after we eliminated so much of his original team.
He doesn’t care whether they’re any good, not really.
They’re just more bodies to churn through.
The appearance of power with no substance to back it up.
It’s almost too easy, but then he would want to make it that way. He wants me to find her, because finding her means finding him. The reason he took her to begin with.
“Go back,” I tell Nick once we reach a door at the end of the corridor. The blue dot blinks away on the other side. “I’ve got this.”
He doesn’t want to leave, but he knows better than to defy an order. After hesitating for a beat, he doubles back to get into the fight along with Ethan and the others.
While I fire at the lock, then kick the door open to find exactly who I expected.
She’s alive. My relief is short-lived once I take in the situation.
“Took you long enough.” There’s laughter in the psychotic bastard’s voice. He’s alive and well, all right, seemingly in perfect health, standing with his back to a small bed in what could have been a closet at some point, but was transformed into a cell. Once again, she was in a cell.
She stares at me, unblinking, frozen stiff. I would be, too, if my own father had a gun to my head and used me as a human shield.
“See, here’s one thing I figured out a long time ago,” Donovan says with a sneer while clutching Aurora to him. “Never have women on the team. They’re too emotional. It’s too easy to find their weak spot.”
He tsks at my silence. “I mean, come on. That cute piece of ass you had working for you? It took nothing to convince her to turn against you. She was jealous, and you were too fucking blind to see it. And now?”
He glances at his daughter before winking at me. “I mean, come on. You can’t trust a woman to think rationally. She’s always going to react to emotion.”
“Suddenly I’m supposed to take advice from you?” Would he shoot her if it meant saving his own neck? I don’t have to think about it. He absolutely would.
“Consider it a lesson.” His teeth flash when he smiles. “Not that you’ll have much time to do anything with it. Do you think I’d make it this easy? Let you walk right in, take what’s mine again?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I counter. There’s no other way out of this room beyond the doorway I’m currently standing in. If he wants to get out, he’s coming through me. “But she’s not yours.”
“She sure as fuck isn’t yours,” he snaps. She sucks in a gasp when he holds her closer, jamming the gun against her temple. “She’s mine. I made her.”
His smile widens. “And if I decide to blow her fucking brains all over the wall, that’s up to me. But you can help change my mind.”
“How can I do that?” I ask, though I already know.
“Put down the gun.”
Everything around me goes silent and still. This is one of those moments the rest of my life hinges upon. When nothing else exists but the decision in front of me. There’s not a doubt in my mind he would kill her if it meant getting back at me for coming after him in the first place.
“Then you let her go,” I grunt. “Do what you want to me, but let her go.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he asks with a laugh. “You don’t call the shots here. I will fucking end her life if I choose, and you’ll watch,” he adds.
A tiny whimper squeezes its way from her throat when I slowly crouch, never taking my eyes off him. “I have no choice,” I tell her, lowering the gun to the floor.
“Kick it away,” he barks. I do as he asks. Tears roll down her cheeks while she gasps for air.
“Now you’re starting to get it,” he says with a chuckle. “You don’t have a choice. You never fucking did.”
“What about me?” Her voice is shaking, but there’s strength running through it. Defiance. “Don’t I get a choice?”
He didn’t expect her to speak up, and the surprise makes him look away from me to glare at her.
Which is when she slams an elbow into his ribs.
I launch myself into the room, my fist connecting with his mouth and knocking him onto the bed.
She screams as the two of us land there, where I knock the gun from his fist. “Just you and me,” I snarl.
Something primal explodes, and I release it, punching almost blindly, thinking of my team, my home, my family.
Everything he so carelessly and even gleefully destroyed.
He lets out an otherworldly roar and shoves me off him, knocking me to the floor, throwing himself on top of me and screaming in my face close enough that droplets of his blood hit my skin. “I’ll eat your fucking heart!”
“Try it!” I roar, reaching out to dig my thumbs into his eyes until he screams again. The sound feeds my soul, making me crave more. “Come on, you bastard!”
Before either of us can land another blow, a gunshot rings out, deafening, echoing.
We both freeze, except to look at where Aurora fired at the ceiling. She’s breathing hard, sobbing, but she has control of the room.
Because now, she holds the gun on us.