Page 117 of Release Me

“Tired?”

“Exhausted.”

“Sit up, precious, I need to finish with your hair.”

I try to keep my head upright. Really, I do, but as he works, my head lolls and my eyes struggle to stay open. Sebastian doesn’t complain, probably because he knows there’s no point. He just keeps moving from one step to the next, rinsing out the shampoo, adding in conditioner, detangling my matted tresses and rinsing again. Then he stands us up and starts the shower, washing us both off with quick and efficient strokes of his large hands over both of our bodies.

After the shower, he carries me to bed and rubs me down with lotion before pulling a loose night gown over my head and brushing my hair back into a loose bun. The tender way he cares for me brings tears to my eyes once again, and I sink back into the pillows of the bed with a full heart and a scalp that is finally itch free.

Sebastian stands at the edge of the bed, pulling on his own clothes. I watch him get dressed between heavy blinks that get longer with each passing second, noticing that the clothes he’s chosen aren’t meant for sleeping.

“Where are you going?” I ask, slightly alarmed because he hasn’t left my side in days.

“I have some work to do,” he says, leaning down to press a kiss to my forehead.

I reach up, wrapping my arms around his neck to attempt to pull him down onto the bed. “Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“Of course I will, precious.” He sinks into the mattress next to me, and I roll over, turning my back to him and resting my hand on my stomach. Sebastian’s hand covers mine, and I smile, sighing contentedly before slipping off into a peaceful sleep.

42

SEBASTIAN

Ihold Nadia for close to an hour just to make sure she’s fully asleep, and then I slip out of bed. I told her I had work to do, but what I didn’t tell her is that the work has nothing to do with any of my businesses and everything to do with the two lives it’s my responsibility to end.

When I got Nadia home from the hospital this evening, Russ pulled me into my office and gave me an address to a run down apartment building where Beau and Vince have apparently been holed up, hiding from me. As I walk down the dark alley behind the building that smells faintly of piss, I smile to myself, wondering how the two of them could be this dumb. Beau doesn’t know me, not yet at least, but Vince does. He knows how single minded I am. He knows that once I decide to do something, I won’t stop until the task is complete. That once someone or something has my attention, there’s no corner of this Earth dark or remote enough to hide them from me.

This building is both dark and remote, and judging by the silence in the hallways, it’s also probably abandoned, which is good for me. It means there won’t be any witnesses, no one to remember a man dressed in all black with a glock in his hand and murderous intent on his face as he stalked the halls alone. Russ insisted on coming with me, but I needed him with Nadia, watching over her while I wipe Beau Montgomery and the threat he poses to her life off of the face of the planet.

I find him exactly where Russ said he’d be, in the apartment at the end of the hall on the third floor. He jumps to his feet when I bust through the door, the gun in my hand already aimed at his head. Most people would go for center mass, riddle his torso with bullets until they emptied the clip, but I’m aiming for efficiency and that many shots would be loud and leave an even bigger mess for the cleaning crew I have coming in behind me.

“I was wondering when you’d come,” Beau says, blue eyes glittering with excitement because idiots like him thrive on chaos. He tilts his head to the side, sizing me up as his greasy blonde strands fall into his eyes. “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be.”

“And you’re exactly what I thought you’d be.”

“Nyla’s told you a lot about me then?” He licks his lips when he says her name, and the finger I have on the trigger twitches.

“Don’t say her name.”

“Why not? All she could do when I was beating her ass was scream yours. She thought you were going to save her.” The laugh that passes through his lips turns my vision red. “Vince and I both got a kick out of that. We laughed about it for days. We probably would have still been laughing when you got here, but as you can see—” he gestures grandly at the couch in the corner of the room where my cousin is passed out with a needle in his arm “—he’s not really in the laughing mood right now.”

It takes me all of five seconds to realize that Vince isn’t breathing.

“He’s dead.”

Beau glances at Vince and then back at me, blowing what’s supposed to be a regretful breath out between his thin lips. “Damn, sorry for your loss.”

He’s getting a kick out of this. I can tell by the gleeful crinkle of the corners of his eyes. By the way he’s barely containing a laugh as he searches my face for any trace of pain. He wants me to be hurt, to be broken up by the death of a man I came here to kill.

I take great pleasure in showing him how truly indifferent I am. I shrug, my features still and stoic. “It’s not my loss. Vince was a waste of skin, and the only person in this world who will miss him is his mother, but even she will get over it eventually.”

“Still, that’s gotta suck, huh? Only being able to turn one of us in to the cops.”

“Cops?” I laugh, and it’s a dark and lethal sound. “Who said anything about the cops?”

For the first time since we’ve come face to face, I see a flicker of fear pass over Beau’s haggard features, and now I’m smiling because he’s finally realized that I’m not the man he thought I was.

That I didn’t come here to make a citizen’s arrest and haul him off to jail.

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