Page 51 of Vengeful Vows

He gets one of the tarps laying around the warehouse floor, putting it in the back of the SUV and throws the bodies inside. I help him with the last couple, looking into the kid’s dead brown eyes and wanting to vomit.

I have killed so many by now, I should be numb when I kill anymore. It’s like after the first time, the second time, the third—it should start feeling like a chore instead of taking a life.

It doesn’t. I still feel each life I take as a slice of my soul being torn away.

Finn and I drive to the Escalade, and he drives the SUV as I follow behind.

We leave the bodies rotting in the Nevada desert, and I take the chance to change my shirt, burning the bloody one. Before starting the engine, I look down to make sure there’s no stray droplets on my skin.

We drive to an area that is notorious for crime, where we know the car will disappear from our hands soon enough and leave it with the keys inside in plain sight.

By the time we drive back to the hotel, I’m exhausted all over again.

I check in with Sean, to be sure that nothing happened.

He cracks his jaw in a yawn as he opens the door. “She’s been fine. Stayed in the room. I think she’s still asleep.”

I nod tightly. “Good.”

“How’d it go?”

“It’s handled.”

I don’t want to think about it anymore, about the way that kid’s brown eyes stared lifeless at me. How he never even got to beg for his life.

All I want is to get back into bed with my wife. See for myself that she is there. That she is real.

Sure, it’s terrifying to think that she’s the one person that can calm me down, and she’s Niall Murphy’s daughter, but right now, I’m just seeking comfort, craving her touch.

I push away all the fear as I head into our room and climb back into bed with Bree.

She hums, turning toward me, and she tucks her face into my good shoulder. “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere important,” I tell her, and she mumbles something incoherent and presses herself into my arms.

It’s the first time she’s initiated this kind of contact, this kind of intimate contact that isn’t sex, and it makes my heart skip a beat.

“Is it time to go?” she asks, and I draw in a breath.

“Yes,” I murmur, some part of me wishing we could stay here forever, in this little bubble, and I could pretend that I didn’t just kill three men and leave them to rot in the Nevada sun.

I could pretend that I’m really on my honeymoon, with a woman who loves me instead of one who I started having feelings for but merely tolerates me.

Bree yawns, flipping over to wake up, and then she heads to the bathroom.

I rub my hands across my face, knowing that I have a long trip ahead of me.

Bree and I head to the private jet, Sean and Finn drive to the airport to fly first class.

“Why don’t they ride with us?” she asks.

“It’s our honeymoon,” I tell her, and she smiles slightly. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

I know she knows that something happened today. She’s not stupid. After all, she grew up in this life, too. She knows that I have blood on my hands, just like her father.

Even though I’d like to claim I’m nothing like him, that’s one thing that we do have in common.

The plane ride back seems longer than the plane ride there.

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