Page 106 of Where We Ended

“Wait…this is a trap.”

I didn’t care. That was my fucking husband tied to a chair. Was he unconscious?

“Silas!”

Alec continued to pull me behind him.

Silas’s dark hair, soft as feathers, didn’t shift even the slightest. His head just hung there. Fable suddenly walked out from the side, where a wall had concealed him. His silver hair nearly matched Alec’s in texture, and his eyes were so similar to the man in front of me. But tonight, he held that similar ghost-like glare that I’d witnessed so many times in his oldest son’s gaze. That gaze landed on me, severely, as he made his way to the center of the room, clapping his hands in a slow, menacing way.

“Thank you, Natty, for being so zealous about locating me. This was exhilarating for me. It really was. Getting to watch how close you got, and when you thought you’d found me on your own. You don’t think I planted that information in those men, knowing you’d go out of your way to dig this little hole you’re in? And my sons, the puppy dogs obsessed with protecting you and ensuring you’re safe. I taught them better than this.”

My hands shook as I watched him walk to Silas and grab his hair, lifting his face. Blood poured from his nose and lip, but otherwise, he seemed to be okay.

“You’ve reduced them to this, Natty.”

I saw Silas open his eyes, and then it felt like two blue moons inspected every inch of me, then ever so slowly they moved to his brother and froze.

“It was you all those years that kept Silas from truly focusing on the vision I had. You that had come between the brothers, and why Alec refused to join the Death Raiders when I asked him to take Silas’ spot. You have single handedly ruined everything.” Fable yelled.

My stomach dropped like I’d fallen off a rollercoaster, barreling out of the car and plunging to my death.

Alec pushed me again, until I was completely behind him.

“Oh what Alec, you don’t want me to play with the toy you’re hoping to get to keep?”

Alec didn’t reply, which was probably best because Fable was just provoking us.

But I couldn’t stop my mouth from opening and questions spilling out. “What do you want?” I wasn’t even sure why I asked it. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me and to punish his sons.

He pointed at me, smiling as if I were a student who just asked the right question.

“You. I want my sons to watch as you breathe your last breath, cry your last tear and say your last words. Will you save them for Silas or Alec?”

Alec shifted the smallest bit on his feet, as if he were preparing to fight. I tried to focus on that instead of the fear braiding itself around my limbs, freezing me in place.

Silas started laughing and the eerie way it slid through my rib cage had me moving again. Even shifting back to avoid whatever was coming next. I’d never heard this sort of laugh come out of him.

Fable glared at his son, then swung his gaze back to me.

“You think this is funny, Silas? Is it hilarious to think that I’m about to murder your wife?”

Alec scowled over at his brother, the two of them seemed to speak without using words.

Fable still held onto Silas’s hair, bending at the waist to scream in his face.

Silas just continued to laugh, manically so, as if this was all so funny. But I knew…deep down, I knew this was the madness that his father had sewn into him, stitch by stitch all those years he forced Silas to do his dark bidding.

“You touch her and you die,” Alec warned, reaching for my hand but coming empty because I’d folded them across my chest.

Fable let Silas’s head go, and I saw the thick column of his throat, covered in black ink, glisten under the lights.

“Don’t start acting like you’re her savior, Alec. It wasn’t long ago you had her cuffed to you, sleeping in your bed. You coveted your brother’s wife, and now you assume if you step in and play hero, she’ll want you?”

Alec’s jaw flexed, but that’s when Silas stopped laughing and the air in the room seemed to shift. “Never assume your enemy’s weakness.”

Fable’s focus swung over right as Silas stood from the chair, as if no rope had bound him there to begin with. It forced Fable to stumble back a few steps, being caught off guard while Silas advanced with a murderous expression on his face.

“Never take your surroundings for granted,” Silas yelled, dipping down to grab something from the ground. It was a metal rod.

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