My words were paralyzed somewhere in my body, far from my mouth, because I had two fists and he had a loaded gun. On his computer there was a message offering him a bonus for my head. It wasn’t his job to fuck me or protect me. Assassins killed people. That was his job. I was his job. “Yeah,” I finally managed to find the whisper of a voice, blinking out another few tears. “That’s what it feels like.”
“You still want to fight?” He focused on my hands fisted by my face like an unbreakable statue.
“I want to live … I want to go home.”
“This is your home.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
My eyes flitted, gaze focused on where he had the gun. His attention followed my line of sight, and he slowly pulled the gun back out and set it on the dresser behind him.
“It’s loaded now. Just for you. Get the gun, Livy.”
I remembered loving him, wanting nothing more than his arms around me, the look in his eyes when he was inside of me. My hands remembered what it felt like when he took them and guided me to the car, across campus, or out of the sand at the beach.
The tenderness.
The love.
The smiles.
The whisper of promises.
And all of that just … made me livid.
My heart free falling into Slade Wylder’s world.
Vulnerable.
Frightened.
Suicidal.
Stupid, crazy, impulsive heart.
I shoved the lamp off the nightstand. His gaze followed as I landed a fist into his face, a knee to his ribs … another jab to his face, his nose, his groin. He did nothing more than let his body move naturally with the force of strikes. I drew blood from his nose, his lip, the corner of his eye … I drew blood from my knuckles, channeling the pain into my next breath.
With each hit, I counted my breaths. I waited for him to fight back, but he didn’t. He also didn’t go down. A dead expression took over his face. I couldn’t recognize it. Nothing I did was new to him. He was like Jessica—fearless, focused, and conditioned to take everything. It was like someone took his life long ago without actually stopping his heart or stealing his breaths.
I stepped back, straightening my fingers slowly. They were covered in blood and pulsing to the beat of my heart. Throbbing. Aching. “Wh-who did this to you? Who tortured you?” My eyes shifted up to meet his face.
It bled, but his eyes remained two dark holes like pieces of coal, no life. He didn’t answer.
On the nightstand, his phone vibrated with a call. I glanced at it and then at Slade while slowly grabbing it. I slid the bar to the right and pressed speaker.
“Livy …” Abe’s voice rose from the phone. “What did you do with my boy?”
My eyes narrowed.
“You’re wondering how I know. Aren’t you? Easy … he doesn’t respond to his messages. Ever. I just send him things to prod him into action, to remind him that I’m always watching. Now … what did you do with my boy?”
Slade made no attempt to speak, no attempt to move, not so much as a blink.
“Why …” The word tore from my throat, barely audible by the time it reached the air. That was it. That was all I wanted to know. Why did someone want to take my life? Not on a whim. A plotted assassination. “Why me?”
“If you did anything to Slade …” His voice carried an edge.
I blinked at Slade again and again. Why didn’t he speak? If it were my uncle trying to see if I was safe, I would have yelled and pleaded for help. I would have said something.
“Why me?” I repeated. In my mind, it was the only question that deserved an answer.
“Because your dad is the reason Slade grew up without a father … the reason I no longer have a brother.”
My head shook. He had the wrong person. Not my dad.
“Jackson Knight, formerly Jude Day.”
My head continued to shake as my attention shifted to Slade’s face. He held me captive with just his presence, but the look in his eyes morphed from resignation to something darker.
“No …” I said.
“A soldier in the dismantled organization called G.A.I.L—Guardian Angels for Innocent Lives. Jude Day was trained to protect the innocent by removing threats. Just like Slade.”
“No …” I whispered as Slade’s forehead tensed along with his jaw, hands curling into fists.
“Yes, Livy. Daddy Dearest was a trained assassin … just like Slade. He took more lives than your pretty little head can even imagine. On his final killing spree, he put a bullet between my brother’s eyes out of revenge. And he left a little boy without a father … he left me without my brother.”
“Y-you don’t know my dad.”
“No, sweetheart … you don’t know your dad. He’s an animal that needs to be put down, but not before he suffers … the way I’ve suffered without my brother, the way Slade suffered without his dad, the way Mary suffered as a single mom. That’s three. Three lives destroyed. So I’m taking three lives to even the score. Well … two. I already took one.”
“Dad …” I choked on his name. He killed my dad.
“Not yet. He’ll be the last … after he knows I took his world. And let’s be honest … it will be a mercy killing. I honestly didn’t think he would survive after your mom’s accident. Did you know he slept on her grave for days while you were with your aunt? I watched him. I fed off his suffering. It felt so fucking good, but not as good as it’s going to feel when I deliver you, well, part of you, to him.”
The phone fell from my hand as waves of pain gripped my body, shaking me to the core. My breaths came one right after the other so quickly it felt like I wasn’t getting any oxygen at all. It wasn’t an accident. Abe killed my mom. Or …
I stepped back until the wall caught me as Slade studied me. Was he just an extension of Abe? The killer giving all the credit to his handler? I began to crumble, sliding down the wall. “Y-you killed my m-mom …” I glared at Slade and hugged my bloodied hands to my chest as my butt hit the floor.
Slade reached behind him and grabbed the gun. I jumped when he pulled the trigger, shattering his phone on the floor and ending the call with Abe while my ears rang from him firing the gun. “I didn’t.” He lifted his gaze from the gun to me, his tone eerily calm. “But it sounds like your dad put a bullet in my dad’s head, and that’s a problem, Liv.”
I didn’t—I couldn’t believe that about my dad. Some black ops group? An assassin? Then again, I thought about Jessica and her skill set that I knew nothing about until the day she fractured a piece of my innocence with her fists.
Clarity blurred.
Colors faded.
Reason and purpose for my own existence started to wither like a starved plant after months of a summer drought.
Nothing in my life was what it seemed to be just weeks earlier. Twenty-one years of lies. If you didn’t know where you came from, it was hard to know who you were—are.
“We have to go. Get up.” He aimed the gun at me, jerking it in an up motion like the threat of dying mattered to me at that point.
It didn’t.
He retrieved a bag from his closet and set it on the bed. Pulling out his holster, he secured it around his waist and filled it with the gun in his hand and another gun from the bag along with extra ammunition magazines. Then he covered everything with his shirt and nodded at me. “Get. Up.”