Page 47 of Protect Me

“Are you sure?” Vance asks, his eyebrow rising. My father flails and panics, and Vance struggles to keep him pinned against the chair. “You don’t think he’ll keep his promise?”

I shake my head. “I know he won’t. Because I wouldn’t.”

Vance smirks. “Are any of you guys honest?”

A smirk tugs at my own lips. “When we want to be. But he’d never leave us alone. We’d never be able to stay together if he’s allowed to leave here.”

“Yes, I would leave you alone!” My father’s words filter through a throat strained with panic. “You will never see me again. I swear to God!”

“Like we swore to God that I was entering a marriage I wanted?”

“God damn it, Isabella. Don’t be stupid. You can’t kill me without causing an earthquake within this family. You’ll destroy everything!”

I roll my eyes. “That’s the point. If the family is in ruins, they can’t come after us. None of you can come after us.”

“You stupid, stupid girl,” he hisses.

Vance draws back his arm and punches my father in the face. Blood pours from his nose. “Be respectful or shut the fuck up, old man.”

A fine spray of blood spews from his mouth as he spits. He turns to me. “So you’ll kill me, get some of my life insurance money, and run off into the wind with your little bodyguard? Is that your little plan?”

I wrap my hand around my chin. “I hadn’t thought about life insurance. Thanks, Dad.” I turn to Vance. “Do it.”

He looks at me as if he thinks I should turn away before he acts, as if what I might witness will be too much for my mind to bear. He doesn’t yet grasp that my allegiance lies with him.

My eyes harden on my father, and I hand the knife to Vance. He doesn’t bother asking for reassurance again. The confidence I feel about my decision must be written all over my face.

“Isabella, no!” my father pleads, trying to get to the last shred of human decency inside me.

Plot twist: there isn’t one.

When my expression doesn’t change, he tries to plead with the man he hired. “Vance, I’ve given you work when you had nothing. Don’t let her take advantage of you. Isabella is using you. She’s a black widow. You’ll be next.”

A black widow? I was a widow in a white dress.

My gaze leaps to Vance, and I try to read his expression. Does he believe my father’s lies? Is it enough to make him doubt everything we have? His heavy brows pull together, uncertainty dancing in his eyes, but then he draws back his arm and repeatedly sends a fist into my father’s face until he can’t talk any more shit.

Vance won’t be swayed. Thank fuck.

My eyes flame as he tightens his grip on the knife and drives the blade into my father’s gut. With a grunt, he twists and pushes it deeper. I grew up with the sounds of murder. It’s like a lullaby. Secretly, I live for it. And I hate that because it means I have become what Vance thinks I am. A monster among monsters.

By the time the lullaby ends, my father’s breaths are mere gurgles.

“Daddy,” I whisper as tears fill my eyes.

“I’m sorry, Isabella,” Vance apologizes. He must think he sees regret in my eyes.

I step toward the two men, and my fingers graze the blood on my father’s face before I turn to Vance. “Not him. You.”

His lips draw into a smirk. He drops the knife and wraps his powerful arms around me. “My little girl.”

“Fuck me,” I say, shooting a quick glance toward my father’s dead body.

“Now? In front of?—”

“Yes, Vance. You got yours, and now I’d like to get mine.”

“You are so sick and twisted, Isabella,” he growls.

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