Midas is alive, and he came to save me.
“We just want, Faith. Let her go, and we won’t kill anyone,” Scythe growled, his eyes trained on me. I could see the worry creasing his brow. He eyed the knife in my thigh before meeting my eyes again.
Angelique was breathing heavy. The woman standing next to me had nothing to lose and I knew right then that she had no plans to let me leave here alive. Her hand gripped the knife. She briefly glanced at Marco who gave her a nod of approval.
“Don’t do it,” Midas yelled. “I’ll fucking shoot you.”
“Midas!” I cried out. “Shoot her before it’s too late!”
Angelique’s fingers clenched the hilt of the blade. “I’d rather die than see this bitch live one more day.” In a violent rage, she pulled the knife from my leg. Blood gushed out of it like a geyser, squirting in intervals like the Trevi Fountain. I screamed, pain ripping through my body like a vicious tiger out for blood. The second the blade left my leg, Angelique was on the ground, head rolled to the side, bullet wound right between the eyes. Her body convulsed in periodic shudders, bright red blood spilling out of the corner of her mouth.
“You motherfucker! You’re going to pay for that!” Marco shouted, as he turned his gun on Midas, not hesitating to pull the trigger.
“Midas!” I screamed, watching the bullet fly across the room and hit Midas square in the chest. His body hit the ground as shots rang out all around me. I watched in horror as the rest of the Armada unloaded their clips into Marco’s naked torso, his body twitching and jerking until that motherfucker hit the ground dead.
“Faith!” Scythe screamed, but somehow his voice sounded muffled and so far away. I briefly saw him fall down at my side, and tug at the ropes wrapped around me, but that’s the last thing I remembered before everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Faith
I woke up in a daze.
My body felt weak and I could barely move as I forced my eyes to open, despite them feeling like they weighed a million pounds.
“She’s waking up,” someone said to my left. I felt a familiar hand slither into mine and squeeze. I tried to squeeze back, but I couldn’t move anything on my body, let alone my fingers that felt brittle and on the verge of breaking.
My brother stood above me, tears covering his bright blue eyes. “I thought I lost you, Faith,” he whispered, when my eyes finally focused enough to see his face.
“I’m not dead?”
Scythe chuckled. “No, Marco missed your artery by a half an inch. He nicked it, which is why you lost so much blood, but if he had completely severed it, you wouldn’t be alive right now.”
“Marco? Angelique?”
“Both dead.”
It felt like a small victory, but then something else from the gunfight resurfaced. “Midas?” I choked out, pain suddenly overwhelming my whole body when I slightly moved. “Fuck, everything hurts.”
“Don’t move, I’ll get the nurse. Switchblade saved your life, ya know? Bastard had unknown medical training we were unaware of. He fucking swooped in and saved your life.”
I looked across the room to where Switchblade hovered against the wall. How could a man so vile and angry have saved my life?
“Why?” I questioned, throwing it out to everyone, not just him.
Switchblade moved away from the wall and stood next to the bed. He didn’t take my hand, although he looked like he wanted to.
“You’re my family, Faith, and the Armada protects their family.”
The word family felt so bittersweet. After everything that happened with Guerrilla, it was hard to trust that anyone in the Armada cared about family anymore.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Scythe asked, squeezing my hand again.
I fought the bitter tears biting my eyes. He still hadn’t answered my question about Midas, and for some reason it felt like he was stalling. Was he dead? Was my brother trying to protect me from being broken all over again?
“I don’t remember a lot. I was in the bathtub with Specter, then Daisy came in. I remember her helping me get dressed, then I woke up in that room. I think she drugged me.”
“She did. She injected something into your neck,” Scythe remarked, filling in the blanks.
“I don’t think she wanted to do it. Guerrilla made her. She said she was jonesin’ and wanted a fix and Guerrilla was denying it. He . . . he took her. She didn’t want to go, but he took her with him.”
“Where?”
“Underground. That’s all I remember. Marco was Guerrilla’s brother and your . . .” my eyes wandered over to Switchblade who stood stoic beside me. I bit back the words, wondering if it would do more harm than good.
“My what?” Switchblade growled.
My eyes closed, I looked to the other side of the room as the word whispered from my lips. “Father.”
“Bullshit! That man is not my fucking father. My father was in the military and died in the Gulf War.” Switchblade was seething. I could see the pain in his eyes, even if he tried to hide it.
“I’m sorry, Switchblade, that’s what he told me. He said he knocked up your mom and to keep her quiet he fed her meth habit.”
Switchblade’s eyes were saturated in betrayed tears, but he refused to shed a single one. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe anything that comes out of that motherfucker’s mouth. It’s not true. I’m not part of that man’s DNA, he’s a fucking coward and he betrayed his brothers.”
“He said he took pictures of me when I was younger and masturbated to them.” I gulped down bile that rose in my throat when I said the word masturbated, trying to break the image of Guerrilla’s decaying body stroking off to my image. “He said he has young girls, too—a prostitution business he’s running in the Armada’s name.”
“That motherfucker! I’ll kill him,” Scythe growled. “Nobody fucks with my family and gets away with it.”
“He’s gone, Scythe. We aren’t going to find him.”
“I’ll fucking find him, and when I do, I’m going to tear him apart limb by limb.”
“That’s not all, he said he has hooks in all the clubs, and Daisy told me he’s the one who shot Midas. He admitted it to me, too. He said Midas was in the way.” Images of Midas being shot by Marco flooded my thoughts, and I couldn’t handle being in the dark a second longer.
“Is he okay? Did Midas survive being shot?”
Scythe looked sheepishly away from me.
The second he couldn’t meet my eyes my heart felt like it was made of thin ice and I just fell through the icy surface drowning in my own sorrow.
A gruff voice cut into my despair. “Midas died seven years ago, buried in a shallow grave on the outskirts of town. The man who rose out of that grave left the man you knew as Midas behind. So, in the metaphorical sense, yes, Midas is dead.”
Through teary eyes, I watched Specter cross the room toward me. A bandage covered his shoulder, and he was moving in slow motion, but he was there alive and walking toward me.
“Midas?” I cried. “You survived!”
“I’m not Midas anymore, Faith. I can’t be. Midas left you behind. He let you fall apart without him and I won’t be that man anymore. I have to move on from that life and be the man you really need—a man that will stand by your side no matter what life throws at him.” Specter took my hand, not afraid to shed the tears of guilt that rimmed his eyes. “I’m so sorry that I lied to you, Faith. I should’ve come back for you. I shouldn’t have let Guerrilla win and fear run my life. I should’ve been a better man for you.”