Page 25 of Seizing Control: Part One

He’d pick the club, his pride, and his legacy over her.

When that stark reality smacks me upside the head, I screw my eyes shut and try to breathe through the pain this truth causes. A semi with two trailers buffets me from side to side as it passes too close for comfort. I rock from side to side as I contemplate the dual desires surging within me.

Part of me wants to ride back to the bar, smash a barstool over Venom’s head, put a bullet in the trio of douchebags perving on her, and force Cherub onto the back of my bike. We could ride until the sunrise, then bed down somewhere. Just the two of us. I could make her see sense. Compel her to admit the truth. Refuse to let her go until she’s committed to me—and only me.

A second part of my psyche urges me to ride off into the sunset before my duchess poisons me to death with her inability to love me most. Right now, it’s the bigger of the two, a soft underbelly that I keep hidden from everyone, the desecrated section of my soul that hasn’t stopped bleeding for eleven years.

The wound is deep.

Infected.

Septic at this point.

I swallow deep as the memory of my son’s final moments surge into my head unbidden...

Jenna’s gaze is bleary as she tries to see me in the hazy garage. I turn off the engine, then step out of her reach so she can’t touch me. The petrol fumes are overwhelming, having belched noxious gases from the exhaust pipes of both luxury cars contained in the deliberately sealed storage space for God knows how long.

Too long.

In the back seat of Jenna’s expensive vehicle, safely buckled into the car seat that wasn’t designed to save him from his crazy mother, my son lies sleeping. His grey face. Wrinkled little fingers curled into fists around the baby blanket covering him. The shock of white-blond hair, identical to the translucent curls my younger brother sported for his first two years of life. Features relaxed, he doesn’t stir when I wrench open the door and lift him out of his seat.

His scant weight in my hands mocks me.

He’s so small. So helpless.

My son has barely lived.

Yet, I’ve already failed him.

“Your fault,” Jenna croaks as I gently place my son on the bonnet and work to resuscitate him. “Because I couldn’t love you most.”

Her words are hard to make out, but they hit with the precision of an expert archer’s arrow when they settle inside my head.

Over and over, I ignore her to concentrate on my attempts to make my son breathe.

His little chest hollows beneath my ministrations.

It never rises again.

No matter how many times I try.

“This is your fault.” Jenna whimpers, then she leans forward and clutches her still-swollen midsection. “You killed him.”

As I’m forced to admit defeat in my fight to save the little boy I failed, I whirl to face the woman trying to clamber from the driver’s seat. With my son’s dead body gently clutched to my chest, I shove Jenna backward. She slumps back into her original position, one leg outside the vehicle while her knee remains trapped beneath the steering wheel. I leer over her, hatred in my eyes as I glare down at my ex-fiancée.

“I didn’t kill him. You. Did.” The ice in my voice chills the blood in my veins. Jenna’s eyes widen as I crouch low, then lean close enough for her to feel my breath on her face. Cradling my boy in one arm, I pin his murderous mother to the backrest of the leather seat with the weight of my body as I use my free hand to circle her neck. “Now, you, on the other hand… I’ll happily take the credit for killin’ you.”

My grip is unrelenting as I slowly but surely restrict her breathing.

I don’t waver in my intentions when she flops and jerks in front of me.

Her leg kicks out, missing me by mere inches. Jenna’s nails rake along the flesh of my wrist as she tries to free herself. Her hand somehow makes it under my t-shirt. She claws at my abdomen, scoring my skin with her treacherous touch. Drawing blood, she fights to the end, a coward from start to finish with her frantic demand for the reprieve that she didn’t permit our innocent son.

“Isn’t it poetic—the slayer becomin’ the slain.” While the final death throes work through Jenna’s body, my adrenaline drains and shaking wracks through me with deadly precision. My legs turn to jelly. My eyesight wavering with unshed tears. I grit my teeth, determined to watch the final vestiges of life drain from her face. “Burn in hell, Jenna fuckin’ Greatbatch… I’ll make sure no one who matters ever utters your name again. Your memory will be void. Your presence on earth erased. By. Me. The man you selfishly destroyed.”

Once I’m certain that she’s dead, I force myself to place my son’s body in his car seat.

I tuck him in with the blanket he was gripping tight when he died, then I press a solitary kiss to his forehead. A sound from outside startles me. I softly close the car door, permanently separating myself from the son I failed.

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