Page 35 of Hate Me

“I’ll take them down with me.”

“So this is literally a suicide mission now?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head vehemently. “I won’t allow this. And your dad—”

“My dad is gone! Because of him, because of what Jett did!”

He’d taken my mom from me.

He’d burned our family home to ashes.

He’d torn me from the guys.

He’d ripped them from each other.

And he’d even broken my dad. So much so that six months after we’d come here and things had first started to die down, he’d been filled with so much rage and grief that he’d been on the verge of starting a war against Elijah Bane. That was before we knew Jett had survived my attack and actually ended up in a coma. Jeremy and me had managed to talk him down, but it hadn’t stopped there. My dad had ended up enlisting with a dangerous black ops outfit about a year ago, needing to unleash everything churning him up through that. Since then, it had just been me and Jeremy here in this house.

Well, mostly just me.

Jeremy was here a few days a week, the rest of the time being spent doing security contract work for people needing covert off-the-grid protection like me. He couldn’t go back to his day job of his firm back in Rossun because he’d involved himself in this shitshow by helping my dad and I to disappear that night. It had put him on Elijah’s shitlist by association.

He got in my space again, grasping my arms and pushing me against the wall by the bedroom door. “This is insanity. You’re letting your rage get the best of you.”

“It’s far from insanity or even being that shortsighted.”

He frowned. “Your goal is clearly to murder Jett Bane.”

“Which will draw Elijah out.”

“Jesus fuck. Then you’re gonna end him too?”

“Yes,” I hissed. “Then you can get your life back and I can get out of this cage.”

“Not if you’re dead, you can’t.”

“That’s the worst-case scenario, but, yes, one I’m prepared for. This existence I’ve been forced into for the last two years isn’t living anyway. I can’t remain like this… shackled. If I can’t take down Jett and Elijah without dying, at least I’ll finally be free.”

“I can’t let you do this.”

“And yet you also can’t stop me. You and my dad inadvertently made sure of that when you trained me so hardcore since we came out here.”

“That was in case the worst happened and they found us and you had to defend yourself. We wanted you to have every tool possible at your disposal. You were well on your way with Onyx, but it wasn’t quite enough.”

“And now it is. Now I’m strong enough, capable enough, to do what needs to be done. You telling me Jett had woken up from a coma a few months ago was the in I’d needed all this time. I couldn’t go at Elijah directly, but I can reach him via his brother.”

“I sent a cleanup crew to that dive bar, Skylar. I know exactly what you did. If you continue in this vein, you’ll be blackening your soul beyond redemption.”

I stared up at him, all the concern and care from him bleeding through, trying to infect me, to weaken my resolve, to make me see reason.

But it was reason.

It was what needed to be done.

To fix everything.

“So be it,” I told him.

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