Chapter 14
VINDICATION
From across the room, Daniel’s eyes flickered with alarm before he quickly blinked it away, backing up into a defensive position.
“I suggest you stop and think for a second before you make the biggest mistake of your life,” Daniel warned, failing to reason with me as I began to cross the room.
I might have laughed at him if I had been capable of feeling anything more than a singular emotion at that particular moment.
“If only you had considered the same, Daniel,” I replied before my fist swiftly connected with his jaw.
He staggered back, thrown off balance as he attempted to spin around to counter, but I didn’t give him an inch of breath.
My elbow slammed into his temple, causing him to bend down low enough for my knee to drive straight into his ribs.
The blow had him scrambling forward into my torso to keep me from lifting my leg a second time, but I turned with his momentum and tossed him away into the wall.
“Why, Daniel?” I rasped, my voice barely recognizable. “Why the fuck would you do this?”
“Because you wouldn’t!” he shot back. “She knows something and if Sloane hadn’t stopped me, I would have gotten it out of her eventually.”
“You stupid motherfucker,” I seethed, shaking my head. “I won’t involve my wife in our business over information she probably doesn’t have, so you decide you’re going to try to rape it out of her?!”
“What difference does it make? She’s a traitorous whor—”
“The difference is she’s MINE! You seriously thought you could touch her and I’d do nothing?!”
“I figured she wouldn’t matter anymore once I confirmed her part in all this,” he reasoned, enthusiasm ringing in his voice.
“And when you were done killing her for it, we could dispose of her together. But I had to remove the shininess from her first so you could stop being blinded by it and finally see the truth!”
I stopped for a moment and just stared at my brother, absolutely dumbfounded at the “logic” he was trying to persuade me with. The man before me may embody my brother, but Matt really had well and truly killed him with that bullet to the head.
“Don’t look at me like that, Darren,” he continued. “You know I’m right. Deep down, you know she’s been conspiring against us, and it’s about time we did something about it.”
I cocked a brow at him, the violence in my veins turning my blood into liquid fire.
“Conspiring against us? How so?” I asked, my steps slowly taking me closer to the table he was currently hunched over. “Was it the same way you just conspired against me earlier today?”
He actually had the audacity to look confused as he moved away from me to the other side of the table. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I could feel my teeth grinding into dust at his denial. “I’m talking about you running your mouth to Richard about that stupid fucking letter mom wrote,” I snarled. “The one I specifically told you to never speak of again because of the serious consequences it would bring us if it ever got out.”
His face twisted into a vicious scowl. “I never said shit to Richard! What the fuck are you talking about!” he shouted back.
I shook my head at him, disappointment and disgust building in my chest. “Fucking hell, you’re a lying coward,” I rumbled. “You can happily own up to betraying me by hurting my wife when you’ve been caught red-handed, but not when you’re caught betraying our entire legacy in a single phone call?”
The scowl on his face intensified. “I told you, I didn’t say shit! That’s got to be your wife’s doing!” he accused, his bloodshot eyes widening with alarm.
“Right. I forgot Jaden knows Richard’s phone number,” I said, then grabbed the table between us with both hands, lifting it up at one end, and then tossed it out of the way.
Daniel responded by bringing his knee up to try to kick me in the chest before attempting to throw a punch at my face, missing both times.
It didn’t help that his one hand was severely compromised by Sloane’s bullet while the other arm pulled at the stab wound in his shoulder I’d given him earlier.
The drugs he was on might help dull the pain, but they drastically diminished his coordination.
He was honestly in the worst fighting shape of his life, and he had no one to blame for it but himself.
“Clearly, you’re more out of your mind than you realize,” I replied, sidestepping him again to extend my foot out and trip him onto the floor.
“I can’t trust you, Daniel. You’ve turned yourself into a liability and a threat to my wife and unborn child.
And I can’t allow that to continue. Richard learned that the hard way this evening. ”
Daniel’s eyes widened for a moment before he quickly picked himself up off the floor, a pained grimace on his face. “What did you do?”
I could feel my gaze hardening as I leveled him with the reality he had caused.
“What was necessary to protect my family, something you’ve clearly lost sight of.”
He blinked several times before it finally hit him. “You killed Katherine’s father?”
I tilted my chin as my continued steps caused him to stumble back. “He should have known better than to threaten me. Just like you should have known better than to open your fucking mouth. Like you should have known better than to touch what’s mine and think I’d allow you to live. Blood or not.”
I closed in on him then, permitting my rage to finally burst through to end what had become of my brother. Over and over, I struck him, his reflexes too dull to properly defend himself against me and my superior build, so he opted for weak tackles I easily used against him.
The liquid heat of betrayal fueled my growing bloodlust, overpowering any thought or consideration that this was my brother I was set on killing.
That I should stop. That he was family. But the truth was he ceased being my family the moment he decided to betray me.
He ceased being the man I knew the moment that bullet had entered his skull.
I wasn’t killing my brother. He was already dead. I was just killing the shitty husk that had been left behind. The lingering rotting parts of him that were nothing but threats to me and mine. The parts that could not be mitigated any longer but instead now required immediate disposal.
When Daniel finally stopped picking himself up from the floor, I knew he was done.
And God help him, so was I.
Reaching into my pants pocket, I pulled out Jaden’s rainbow chrome butterfly knife for the second time today. Flicking it open, I paused to appreciate just how beautiful it was when it caught the light, shining so brilliantly, just like she did.
And Daniel had tried to take that light from me, tried to dull that shine.
What he did was more than unforgivable. It was sacrilegious. And he would pay for his sins against me in blood the same way everyone else did.
His chest was panting heavily as he lay on the floor, his lungs struggling to accommodate his body’s desperate need for oxygen.
“Darren…don’t,” he breathed, lifting his hands in a pathetic attempt to block me. I stood over him, his words driving more hatred into my heart.
“I imagine Jaden probably said something similar to you just a few moments ago,” I murmured, crouching beside him. “And I imagine her pleas were ignored as well.”
Daniel groaned in response, his beaten body twitching under the weight of his impending death, the death he had earned twice over. The fool had finally forced my hand, and I hated him for it.
“Darren…”
“Goodbye, Brother,” I said, and then drove Jaden’s knife straight through Daniel’s chest plate.
The blade pierced into the useless muscle hiding behind it, the one that beat for no one but itself. His body jolted at the intrusion, a choked scream vibrating up his throat, followed by the breathy pants of a dying man.
Leaning down next to his ear, I sent him off with a final request. “Say hi to the family for me,” I murmured, then ripped the knife from his chest, only to plunge it back in for another score.
Red saturated his shirt, the white fabric soaking up the fountains of blood flowing from the puncture wounds, but not fast enough for my taste. I wanted more. Demanded more. I wanted to dull the blade of Jaden’s knife with Daniel’s flesh and bones until it was as useless as plasticware.
And so I did.
Over and over, I mutilated his body with uncoordinated strikes filled with rage and pain stemming from the thorny roots of his agonizing betrayal.
The light had left his eyes eons ago by the time I had finished gouging my wrath into his mangled corpse.
What was left was just as unrecognizable as before, the remains of a person I could no longer identify.
My chest heaved from the strain of my vindication, my heart pumping the tar-like malice through my veins at a rate I couldn’t control. I was consumed by so much blinding fury I would have thrown his body across the room if I didn’t think it would fly apart into pieces.
The knife still tightly gripped in my hand, I stood over what remained of my brother, his blood drenching my body as it dripped from my fist. What had once filled me with an animalistic need for revenge was now replaced with vile revulsion for the remnants of a traitor—a traitor I never wanted to lay eyes on again.
Turning away, I marched toward the back corner of the room to chuck the knife into the large utility sink. Ripping off my blood-soaked shirt, I bundled it up and tossed it into the nearby trash can before turning on the faucet.
I ran my arms under the cold water, rinsing Daniel’s blood from my skin to watch it filter down the drain.
Running my hands across my bare chest, I collected the sticky red residue and washed it away, doing the same to my face and hair until I was no longer dripping with the stain of a mindless traitor.