Page 118 of Three to Fall

Hayley Jade screamed, her high-pitched squeal piercing through my ears. She reached her arms to them, her fingers twisting in the secret sign language Hayden and Kara had been teaching her. “Daddy!”

Hawk, Chaos, and Grayson all stopped.

Even I was surprised by the ragged sound of her voice.

Hawk’s face crumpled, and he stumbled forward, reaching for her. “Ice. Give her to me.”

I pointed my gun at him. Idiot wasn’t even armed. Wasn’t even fully dressed, his bare torso streaked with soot and dirt.

Now he knew what it felt like, to feel small and useless. Incapable.

“Daddy,” Hayley Jade sobbed again, her voice stronger this time, her fingers still making that same sign.

Chaos looked like he wanted to vomit. His gaze trained on her hands. His voice was wobbly when he finally turned to me. “What are you doing? You’re scaring her. Let her go. She’s just a kid.”

I took a few more steps toward where I’d left Kara.

Hawk’s bleak expression morphed into anger. “Get your hands off my daughter. I swear to God, if you’ve hurt her—”

He lunged for me, but again I was quicker. And now I was pissed off. I shot a single round into the air. Then lowered the gun to point at Hayley Jade.

“Stay back.”

Grayson held his hand out, blocking Chaos and Hawk from advancing any farther, but his gaze was trained on me. “Okay. We’re not coming any closer. Let’s just talk, okay? What do you want? You have to want something, right?”

I tried to keep the tremble out of my fingers. “It’s not what I want. It’s what the Lord wants. What I must do to enter His kingdom! Prophet Josiah has foreseen it!”

Hawk blinked. “Prophet…you’re with him? You’ve been with him this whole fucking time?”

Anger coursed through me. “I was with you! I did everything for you! All the chores! All the shit jobs! Anything you asked of me! But it was never enough, was it? Never enough to get you to accept me.”

Hawk shook his head. “We’ve been waiting for you all afternoon. War and I decided to patch you in.”

I froze. “No. You’re lying. Just like Tulip lied.”

Hawk screwed up his face in confusion. “Tulip? What the fuck is Tulip?”

But Grayson swallowed hard. “Tulip was Alice’s code name on that app we found on Kyle’s phone, remember?”

Chaos’s head snapped up in horror. “You’re Golden? You’re the man she was texting?”

Hawk screwed up his face in confusion. “No. That man said his name was Xan. That’s not your name.”

I stared at Hawk, a seething anger rising inside me that, even after five years of being here, waiting on these men hand and foot, not one of them had bothered to try to get to know me, even at the very base level. “Isn’t it? What’s my name, Hawk? My real name?”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t fucking know, okay? Is that what you want me to say? That I’m a prick who never bothered to ask? You aren’t a special fucking snowflake, Ice! I’m a prick to everyone! I don’t know anyone’s real fucking names! Gunner has been with this club since I was a kid, and I wouldn’t have a fucking clue what’s written on his birth certificate. I never asked because who you were before you joined this club doesn’t matter. You were some street trash no-hoper, right? Most of the guys were! Did you want me to remind you of that by asking about your messed-up childhood or the parents who didn’t give a fuck about you?”

“It’s Alexander,” War said quietly, coming up behind Hawk, his gaze steadily trained on me. “Your name is Alexander. Xan for short, I guess.”

Hawk hadn’t been wrong. I hated the name Alexander. It only reminded me, that at some point, I’d had parents who’d given me that name. And then they’d decided they didn’t want me enough to keep me not long after.

Grayson fixed his stare on me, his expression unchanging, though I saw the flicker of something in his eyes.

“What do you want?” he asked again.

I laughed bitterly. “What do I want? I want to walk out of here and take Kara and Hayley Jade back to Ethereal Eden where they belong.”

Grayson’s voice was eerily calm. “You know we aren’t going to let that happen. So let’s talk about what else you want. Because there has to be more, right? You didn’t just kill Alice for no reason.”

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