“What do you have there, Wynter?” Elijah smirks. His eyes lock with the barrel of the gun, and where most men would be scared, his look almost amused.
“I think you should both leave,” I say, ignoring his question altogether. I’m not going to dignify it with an answer, because he’s only trying to get a rise out of me. He wants to throw me off balance, but that’s not going to happen.
“I think we have the answer to where your cousin’s loyalties lay,” Charles tells him from his post by the window.
“As I suspected.” Elijah shakes his head. “I’ve told my uncles so many times he can’t be trusted, but what would I know? I’m the only one in the fucking family with any brains.”
“Well, they’ll be dead after tonight, so you won’t have to deal with them for much longer.” Storm smirks and I can’t help but laugh. The poetic irony of the situation is too good not to get some joy from, even if it is short-lived.
Elijah’s eyes flash with anger, his hand slipping into his pocket and retrieving his phone. He taps on the screen a couple of times before holding it to his ear.
I hold my breath as I listen for voices on the other end of the line. The commotion outside has died down to only tires on the gravel, and I can only assume Rayne and Everett will be here any moment, but I want to know if the Russos are dead.
“Fuck,” he mutters as he dials another number and returns the phone to his ear. Each moment that passes, the rage etched into his features grows more prominent. He’s realizing he could be alone in this, and that’s the last thing you want to be in this business.
“Untie me and give me the gun,” Storm whispers so softly I barely hear the words.
“No.”
His eyes flare with annoyance, but I’m not backing down. I want to finish this. Craig hurt me all those years ago, and I never got my revenge. Storm killed him long before I had the chance to regather my strength and get the closure I needed. But now Charles is here, spewing the same shit his brother did, and it’s my turn. For once, I don’t want to be the weak little girl they’ve always believed me to be. I want to be the queen I was born to be.
The front door flings open, drawing everyone’s attention to the doorway, giving me the opportunity to move around the back of Storm’s chair and step closer to my target. I would have hit him from where I was, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I’ve never actually shot a human being before and something tells me it’s a little different from the paper outline at the shooting range, so I want my room for error to be minimal at most.
Elijah draws his gun and aims it at the doorway and my heart stops for just a moment. Any moment now, the man I love or my brother could be shot, and that’s not something I’m willing to risk.
“Drop it,” I say calmly.
“Or what, princess? You going to shoot me?” He’s mocking me. He doesn’t believe I’m strong enough to pull the trigger, but that’s where he’s fucking wrong.
I hold the gun steady and aim at his shoulder before squeezing the trigger as I breathe out. The power of the shot radiates up my arms, but I don’t move from my position despite the searing agony in my wrists.
“Fuck,” Elijah shouts, his gun hitting the floor in a loud clatter. “You fucking bitch.”
“I’d watch how you’re speaking to me unless you want a matching pair,” I growl, taking calculated steps toward where the gun is laying.
Footsteps in the hall pull my attention away from where I’m stepping for a moment, and I look up just in time to see Everett appear in the doorway. His own gun is drawn, blood soaking through his T-shirt. Rayne is a couple of steps behind him, not a scratch on him. I swear my brother never comes home wounded, probably for the best given how much Emerson worries about him.
I allow the breath I’ve been holding for what feels like hours to release and drop my attention back to the gun, but when my eyes lock with the spot it was a few moments ago, the floor is clear.
“Everyone drop your weapons or little miss bitch here is getting a bullet through the brain.” Charles grabs me around the neck and panic threatens at the edge of my mind. My breath hitches in my throat, the relief I felt just a few moments ago is long gone.
Everett’s face fills with rage, the fury in his eyes almost enough to knock me off kilter, but I stand strong. The gun in my own hand is still expended in front of me. I’m not ready to drop it yet. I’m not ready to give up the power it allows me.
“Charles?” Rayne’s brows pull together as the cool metal touches my temple.
“I said put your weapons down,” he shouts, causing me to flinch at the sound. I don’t want to show any weakness, but if you can’t be weak when you have a gun pointed at your head, when can you be?
My eyes meet Everett’s, indecision dancing in the deep blue pools. I’ve stared into his eyes so many times since the day we met, and it only seems right that if these are the final moments of my life, that I spend them staring in the depths of the soul that brought me peace even in the wildest of storms.
I drop my gun first, making sure to drop it out of Elijah’s reach. The heavy metals thuds on the rug as I drop my hands to my sides.
“You don’t have to do this, Charles. You’ve worked for our family for years, whatever the Russos are paying you, we can pay you five times that much, ten even,” Rayne offers.
“You think this is about money?” He spits, the droplets land on my bare shoulder and an involuntary shudder spreads across my skin. “This has never been about fucking money.”
“What’s it about then?” Rayne asks.
“This bitch is the reason my brother is dead, and you’re all going to repent for your sins, including his death. Every last one of you deserves death, but none more than your precious queen.” He hisses the word, the calm man who first captured us is long gone, leaving a crazed version so painfully similar to Craig it turns my stomach.
“He’s Craig’s brother,” I whisper, filling in the blanks Charles is failing to fill.
“My brother wanted to save Wynter, he wanted to cleanse her of her sins, but instead he was murdered for his good deeds.”
The anger in Everett’s eyes only seems to glow brighter with each word said, but I hold them. It’s the only thing keeping me grounded, the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
“He beat her,” Rayne growls. “He deserved to die.”
The gun moves from my temple and is held over my shoulder at my brother. “She deserved it,” Charles yells. “This slut went to the den of evil. She sinned and sinned. What was my brother to do but cleanser her?”
Everett watches me closely, his gun lowered but ready to be used at a moment’s notice. I take a deep breath before mouthing, Shoot him.
Time seems to drag as he stares at me, uncertainty filling his face. But if there’s one person on this earth I trust not to kill me, it’s the man I fell in love with. The one who was wise beyond his years when I met him, whose demons danced in his gaze, but who wanted to be better. The world is quiet despite the chaos around us, and he’s all I can see, all I can hear, all I can breathe.
I see the moment he decides to do it. We’re out of options, and this is the only one we have, our best chance at all of us walking out of this as unscathed as possible.
The moment the bullet leaves the barrel of Everett’s gun, peace washes over me. Looking death in the face is a funny thing. There are two paths set out for me, one where I continue walking this earth with the people I love, and one where I don’t. But it doesn’t matter which way I go as long as they’re okay.
The bullet tears through my side, agony piercing through every inch of my body despite the piece of metal causing the pain being so small. It takes the air from my lungs, making every breath harder than the last, and the moment the bullet exits my body, I drop to the ground.
Charles lets out a violent snarl when he realizes what’s happening, but there are already three more shots being fired, and red stains the front of his white button-up shirt. “You fucking cunts,” he shouts.
Rayne moves to restrain Elijah who lays motionless on the ground. I thought I only hit his shoulder, but maybe I did more damage than I thought.
I reach up and untie Storm, his hands slipping free from the rope easily. He scoops me up and carries me to the lounge, laying me down to inspect my wounds.
“You shot my sister,” he yells at Everett.
“She told me to,” he defends as he leans over the back of the lounge, his eyes dragging down my body, looking for any other injuries.
“If she told you to jump off a cliff, would you?”
“You know I would,” Everett deadpans.
The sound of their bickering is the last thing I hear as I allow the emotions of the day to drag me under. The pain, the anguish, the anger, it all seeps into one and drags me into a peaceful state I’ve been longing for.
