My eyes narrow as I inspect every inch of the ink, and it all hits me at once, like a ton of bricks.
“You were right about loyalty,” Dalton sneers. “It’s a valuable asset, when they’re truly loyal to you.”
My mind flashes from that night, to the conversation with the Bratva we had in the shed.
“Ah, you mean Forbes’s bitch. The one hanging on his arm all the damn time.”
And lastly, Saxon herself.
“Kage, you’re not hearing me!” she yells in a panic. “She didn’t do it! It wasn’t her!”
“How can you be so sure?”
Saxon’s shoulders sag. “Because I know who did!”
“Oh my God,” I breathe.
I push away from my desk, not caring as the chair crashes into the filing cabinet behind it, and rush out of my office to find Saxon. When I do, she’s sitting on the bed, wrapped in a blanket. I walk around until I’m on her side, and kneel down in front of her.
Putting my hands on her cheeks, I stare into her eyes so I know she’s listening.
“I get it,” I tell her. “Do you hear me? I get it, and you’re not alone in this. She will pay for what she did to you. They both will.”
Her eyes start to water. “You know.”
I nod. “I know. And I’m on your side. We’ll give them everything they’ve earned. We’ll burn the whole damn city to the ground, you and me. If that’s what you need, we’ll do it. Together.”
She throws herself at me, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck while I hold her just as close. I press soft kisses to her shoulder and come to a conclusion that scares me as much as it intrigues me.
“It’s time I stop shielding you from the truth.”
Heartbreak and betrayal go hand in hand. If you really think about it, there’s no having one without the other. After all, betrayal never comes from your enemies. It comes from those closest to you. The ones you were so sure would never do something so cruel.
“Y-you think he killed my grandfather?” I ask.
Kage treads carefully, speaking in soft tones that show me he knows the severity of what he’s telling me. “We don’t think, babe. We know.”
I take a deep breath. Since the day I found out he knew where I was and wasn’t so much as trying to negotiate my rescue, I knew my father was not at all the man I thought he was, but this is another level.
“There’s more,” Kage tells me. “We think she’s the one who delivered the final blow, with a dose of air shot into his IV.”
That hits me right in the heart. My grandfather was a good man. He had a kind soul and always put his family first. The man would literally give you the shirt off his back if he thought it would make you the slightest bit happier. And for them to do that to him…
“He deserved so much better than that.”
Raff nods in agreement. “That he did.”
I roll my shoulders back and force myself to stay strong as we keep going. “What else?”
“Sax,” Kage says warningly.
“I can handle it,” I assure him. “What else?”
He looks like he doesn’t believe a single word that just came out of my mouth, but he continues anyway. “Your father was the one who arranged for you to be killed. Your death was required of him to prove to Dmitri that he’s trustworthy.”
“And then he had the audacity to stand there and look distraught at my funeral,” I scoff. “Both of them.”
Thinking about it, I get so fired up that I could spit nails. Since the night I was shot, I’ve grappled with the fact that she was the one to pull the trigger. To fire two bullets into my body and then leaving me there to burn. Hell, at one point, I even started to convince myself that I was delusional. That maybe the pain of being shot was so bad that I imagined the familiar heels stepping over my dying body. But there’s no excuse for the truth, and there’s definitely no excuse for the betrayal.
“Okay, is that everything, is there something else?”
Kage looks anywhere but at me, his eyes going from one side and then up and around to the other. “For the sake of full disclosure, I killed Brad.”
My jaw drops. Out of everything I thought would come out of his mouth, I never thought it would be that. For some reason, him being the reason Brad went missing just never occurred to me.
A giggle bubbles out of me but I swallow it back down. “You killed Brad.”
He says nothing, just staring back at me like a deer in the headlights, but I can see the shadow of curiosity. He’s wondering how I’ll respond.
“Why on earth would you do that?” I ask, but before he can answer, I keep going. “He did nothing to you! Are you that twisted that you couldn’t stand to see someone else interested in me? I didn’t even know your name at that point!”
He grabs my wrist and pulls me into him, making me crash against his chest. “Since you want to know so fucking badly, your good friend Brad was trying to slip drugs into your drink so he could get laid. But since we’re on the topic, no. I can’t stand it. I would rather skin myself alive than see someone else’s hands on you.”
Looking up at him, I don’t stand a chance at fighting the smile off that comes from his possessiveness. “You’re such a fucking caveman.”
AS I LEAVE KAGE’S office, my mind feels like it’s on a hamster wheel. So many overwhelming feelings that I don’t want to acknowledge threaten to force themselves through. The only thing I can manage to do is force them all down, burying them deep until I’m ready to face them.
Kage would say that I shouldn’t do that. That I shouldn’t bottle them up like that and should instead take out all my frustrations and daddy issues out on the punching bag. But I can think of something much more effective.
The memory of the guy in the shed is still fresh in my mind, and one I think about often when I need an escape. With every cut and every stab, blood flowed from his body like a river. The way it felt to drive the knife into his stomach is something I’ll never forget. And as he screamed, begging for me to stop, I felt stronger than ever.
In there, I wasn’t the helpless girl that got kidnapped and held captive, or the girl that got shot and lost her baby.
In there, I was the one who got to decide when he lived and died.
In there, I was the one with all the power.
But instead, I’m here, where the only outlet I have is to cry. And so I do, letting it all out with harsh breathing and clawing at my own chest until it becomes easier to breathe. Kage leans against the doorway, probably feeling as helpless as he looks, knowing that there are times when I need him to hold me and times when I don’t. This is one of those times where I just need to be alone in order to feel the pain.
To burn in it.
To live in it.
To survive it.
I WAKE FROM A well-needed nap to find Kage standing beside the bed. He looks conflicted, as if he’s not sure about what he’s about to do, but he’s going to do it anyway. I cock a brow at him, waiting for him to tell me what he wants, when he tosses the same hoodie and hat on the bed that he had me wear when we ended up at Raff’s.