“Are you following your father’s lead, relighting the Rein versus Shay vendetta? Killing me ain’t gonna pay you any dues.”
“Stop talking.”
Her feet falter at the stone in my voice. Her act of innocence wearing away with every second I’m forced to stand in her company.
“You had to know,” I threaten, letting my eyes drift over the ripped couch and stained carpet. “That your lies, your sins would come back to fuck you in the ass. That they’d make you bleed.” I kick at the trash by my feet, letting myself move closer.
Her feet stop, her fearful act dropping away altogether, the real Sarah Rein showing her face; horns and all.
“How did you find me?” she asks curiously, her head tipping to the side in contemplation. “You’ve been searching for that junkie ex-girlfriend of yours for years without success.” Her eyes widen in mockery, the malice in her irises spiking like wildfire.
I step forward in warning, unable to hide the shock on my face at the mention of Kendall.
“Oh, you didn’t think I knew about her,” she jibes, thoroughly enjoying herself. “I know a lot of things about you, Rocco Shay. Things that that last remaining little family member of yours doesn’t even know,” she sneers, a poisonous smile tracking over her red lips. “You have a thing for the broken ones, maybe it makes you feel like less of a fuck up. First, that street whore and now my defective daughter.”
My jaw feels ready to crack, the might in which I’m holding it shut strong enough to split stone. The ridge of my fury is ready to spill over like a volcano, violence my own reign of lava. The trust Dominic forced upon me forgotten about, my need to kill clouding my vision.
“Anyone ever told you to live in the moment, Shay. That focusing on the past will only drown you.”
“Kendall,” I ground out, my voice like sandpaper. “Where is she?”
She laughs at me. An ear-piercing chuckle that leaves me cold.
I surge forward, unable to control myself, my hand wrapping around her throat before she can register what’s happened. Her skin is warmer than I imagined it. I pictured the cold touch of death to coat her skin. Instead, the thick, healthy rhythm of her pulse throbs under my touch. The wildfire in her eyes dies out, replaced by tears of pain, the blue staring back at me glossed over in evidence of her lack of control.
Still, I feel five steps behind her, waiting for the penny to drop and my world to fall away.
“Shay.”
Pulling my gun from the waist of my jeans, I hold it up to Tivoli, halting his movements. He contemplates me for a beat, feet balancing over the threshold of the shitty apartment.
My hand, still eagerly wrapped around Sarah Rein’s throat tightens in panic.
She smiles—the psychotic bitch—barely able to pull a full breath, grins at me in triumph. I grip harder, shooting my eyes back to Dominic’s man, my chest expanding in want as I feel Sarah struggle to breathe under my palm.
Her eyes bulge in her face, looking too big to be normal. The sickly shade of her skin is marred with large, red blotches, teasing me with the promise of how she’d look dying slowly at my hand.
Hands raised in surrender, Tivoli looks unaffected by the scene before him. He expected this. Or maybe Rein did. Either way, he’s not surprised or panicked by the barrel of my gun aimed at his heart.
“Get out,” I command, my fingers twitching to close completely around the slim line of Sarah’s neck, wanting to steal the last of her breath completely.
It’d be so easy. Two to three minutes and she’d pass out, a few more and she’d be as good as dead. Rid from the world and more importantly, my nightmares.
I feel out of my depth. Control slipping from my resolve with every second that passes blindly by. I’m better than this. I’ve trained myself to be better. I’m the cunt that laughs at the motherfuckers who get caught in their heads, unwilling and unable to foresee their own downfall.
“You know I can’t do that,” Tivoli murmurs, edging closer.
I crack my neck in unfiltered rage. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what to do. I’m strung up, held between my savage need for vengeance and my newly formed fucking conscience.
The thought of killing Sarah Rein has been at the top of my to-do list from the moment Marcus stepped foot into my apartment, unfurling the truth like a never-ending ribbon.
I want this.
I fucking deserve this.
I was convinced I needed it.
Not anymore.
Dominic’s trust aside, doesn’t he fucking deserve a slice of the pie? He had to live with this piece of shit for years, knowing she was betraying him. He lived in fear that she’d steal his daughter away. She and Marcus ruined my life, but she forced Dominic to live in hell for years.
Confident Tivoli won’t jump me and force my hand before I’m ready, I turn my full attention back to Sarah.
“Why’d you do it? Lila? Why did she have to die?”
She stares at me blankly before opening her mouth to speak. My hand, too tight around her neck, cuts off her ability to make a sound. It makes me smile and pisses me off all at once. I enjoy using her like a puppet, knowing her waste of a life is so feeble in my hands. I feel like a god, her completely at my unbalanced mercy. But I want answers. I want to hear her traitorous mouth tell me why she thought she could play God with my mom’s life.
I reluctantly loosen my grip and she sucks in a thick breath, almost choking on it.
“I should’ve known you’re fucking useless. Of course, Dominic found me. You’re just the little bitch he sent to bring me in.”
I step into her, punching a hole in the wall beside her head. “Lila!” I scream. “Tell me fucking why!”
“Why not?” she coughs out, flinching at my fist pulling back from the broken plaster by her face. “She was nothing to me. Nothing but a fucking snitch that could get me and Marcus killed. I weighed it up for about point-one of a second and decided my life was worth more.”
I step into her body, my hand lifting her up the wall to bring her eyes in line with mine. “You were fuckin’ wrong,” I seethe. “See, if you died right here, no one would avenge you. Fucking no one. Not your husband, who sent me here to collect you and deliver you to death. Not your kids who begged me to make you pay. Not your dead little fuck buddy that is far better off bein’ eaten by worms than he ever was breathin’. Your life ain’t worth shit and you know it.”
She rolls her eyes. “You think I care.” She struggles, her legs kicking, hands pulling at mine to loosen my grip. “You think I give two shits about that asshole my parents forced me to marry,” she croaks out, her words barely audible. “Or the fucking spawn I was forced to raise for him. I had hopes for Codi once upon a time, but she proved to be as useless as her sister.”
My body zaps at the mention of Camryn, of how dismissive this bitch is about the life of her own flesh and blood.
“I don’t fear death, asshole. This world didn’t give two fucking shits about me and I’ve paid it the same respect. You think you’re some hero for playing vigilante for your dead mother.” She laughs and I step away from her, no longer trusting my own restraint.
She massages the thick red welts marked along her skin. “You’re exactly like me,” she spits. “Life is worthless; both yours and that of those around you. I could put a bullet in you right now, and you wouldn’t regret your life. Your stupid brother would mourn you for as long as it took for him to lodge his cock in my daughter and you’d be forgotten. You’re no one special, Rocco Shay. Never were. Marcus told me how you were your father’s greatest failure. Too much heart in you to be useful in any way, but not enough to make you a decent human being. He knew your brother was like his cunt of a wife; all feelings and emotion. You, on the other hand, had potential. It’s a shame really that you’ll never reach it. You’re too weak to even kill me,” she whispers. “You’re gonna take me back to Dominic like a good little soldier. Let him take the one thing you fought all your life for. Pathetic.”