Chapter 43
Music blared through the back part of the house when we returned to Aston Manor. A classical piece I knew all too well.
It was the music my father played when he was celebrating.
“You didn’t beat me,” I said as I stepped onto the outdoor pool deck.
My father spun around, a tumbler of white liquor in his hand and a fat cigar hanging from his mouth. Oh, he was celebrating all right. This was his usual victory lap behavior.
“I’m not dead,” I spat at him.
He grinned back at me like the psychopath he was. He offered me a dramatic gasp before saying, “Oh dear, Dempsey. What happened to your pretty face?”
“You knew what she was planning. You brought her here to abduct me. To kill me because you couldn’t manage it yourself?”
He tsked at me like I was a naughty child. “Oh Dempsey, now that you’re married to Ivers, I don’t want you dead. You’re worth more to me as his bride than a corpse.”
I snorted. And those were the words of a loving father.
“So why the hell would you let your fucking wife take me?”
He took a sip of his drink, taking his time to swallow because he was relishing this moment. He was enjoying my distress, just like he always had.
“You didn’t seem to mind when my first wife took you.”
I lunged for him, but Dacre’s arm came around my waist, holding me back.
“Not yet, Bambi,” he whispered in my hair. “Take what you need from him first.”
My father chuckled at the interaction, spreading his hands wide in innocence.
“I didn’t know that...” He motioned to my swollen face. “...was what she was going to do. Hell, she didn’t know what she was going to do. Not until we came here and she realized just how deep you had your vicious little hooks into her boys.”
He smirked at Dacre, Pres, and Sin behind me.
“Deep indeed,” my father muttered into his glass as he took another sip.
He tilted his head at me like I was slow and not quite understanding his point.
“I knew you’d survive whatever Mona had planned for you because I raised you that way.”
“You raised me in hell,” I spat back, all the disdain and hatred I’d harbored for this man for so long finally rising to the surface now that Boston, Dacre, Presley, and Sinclair were with me. They gave me strength I never could have imagined before we met.
He gave a derisive laugh. “It gave you a hell of a backbone, didn’t it?” He pointed at my face, his eyes locked on me. “It gave you that fire in your eyes.”
I scowled at him. “I grew a backbone in spite of you. And that fire? It’s my own.”
I raised the gun, a slight shake to my hand at not only holding a weapon, but pointing it at the man that had haunted my nightmares both waking and asleep for longer than I could remember.
My father laughed at the sight. “You’re not going to shoot me. You don’t have it in you, and you know it. You might have developed a fire in you thanks to your little band of boyfriends, but deep down you’re still the same scared little mouse you always were.”
Hesitation sparked inside me, my resolve splintering. Despite my best efforts to shut him out, a part of me believed him. My father was a giant I could never conquer, thinking I could was foolish. He always found a way out. He was a human cockroach. A street cat that always landed on his feet.
The gun trembled in my hand, and I wanted to lower it.
“End it, Princess.”
Sinclair’s words filled my head.
I wanted this to end. I wanted the constant fear I’d lived with for years to finally end.
That was the only way to save the people I cared about from the monster standing in front of me. I wouldn’t give him the opportunity to take Presley, Dacre, Boston, or Sinclair away from me. I wouldn’t let him use Boston against me.
And I’d never let him hurt me again.
My finger twitched against the metal of the trigger and the gun exploded in my hand.
I stumbled at the force of it, the gun clattering to the stone pool deck.
My father’s face slackened at the realization that I’d done it. His head tilted to the side in the smallest recognition, blood pulsing from a wound at his throat, coating his white shirt in a slowly ebbing river of red.
It was the only reaction he gave before his body crumpled, the glass in his hand shattering against stone.
Then he tumbled backwards into the pool.