Page 85 of Prodigal

“I tried to find out who was behind it, but I couldn’t. And there wasn’t much I could do within The Council, otherwise they would find out about André, and I couldn’t let that happen. His mother didn’t want him exposed to any of that.”

“So, you came for me instead.” The words were garbled to Gideon’s own ears. His fingers flexed on the trigger as he kept the gun pointed at the middle of Ennis’s forehead. “You came for me and you took her in-instead.” The way his voice cracked as he remembered that day. The terror of hiding and then coming out to find his mother on the floor, shot and bleeding out. The agony of begging her not to leave him, telling her she would be okay when he knew, as young as he was, that it was a lie.

His hands covered in her blood.

Her pale skin.

It took years before he stopped seeing it, stopped crying out for her in his sleep. And when he opened his eyes in the darkness, there’d been no one to comfort him because his father had to send him away for fear of losing him too. All those years he’d spent far from home, alone, and here Ennis sat as if it’d been justified. As if it could be explained away.

“Do you know what you took from me?” Gideon asked him. He stepped in closer, legs on either side of Ennis’s body as he stared down at that motherfucker. Voice hoarse, Gideon asked him again, “Do you know what you took from me?”

“Yes.” Ennis didn’t break eye contact. “I do.” There was no remorse. Just like Gideon would feel no remorse for what he would do to him. But first…

“Who was behind it?”Ifhe could even believe anything Ennis had to say in regards to that.

“I never found out.” Here, frustration had the older man’s features twisted up. “After your mother, there was a second note telling me to finish the job. You remained the target, but I said no. I immediately moved André and his mother to a safe house and nobody but me knew where they were. Then I began searching, but nothing ever came up.”

“You tried again,” André said. “You tried to kill him again.” He sounded as if he were crying, and Gideon ached to touch him, comfort him, but he couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.

“I didn’t.” Ennis shook his head. “I was not involved in any other attempts on your life,” he told Gideon. But Gideon knew better than to believe him.

“All these years on The Council, you got a front-row seat to my father’s grief. You sat in his face and watched as he withered away from losing not just my mother, but me.”

“I had to protect my son. If I’d shared what I knew, what I’d done, André would’ve been in even more danger and that could not happen. I will never allow it to happen.”

But he could allow another man to suffer that fate. To bury his wife and send his son off into hiding, not knowing when he’d see him—if he’d ever see him—again.

André let out a sob at his father’s words.

But Gideon, the only thing he felt, the only thing he embraced, was the hate. All he wanted was the oblivion of violence because his wounds—the ones he’d thought were scabbed over—were now raw and bleeding, and somebody had to feel it like he did, somebody had to suffer like he did. He’d been trained for this moment. Had been ready for it for a long time. And here it was. He lifted his head, meeting Samir’s gaze as his head of security stood in front of him, behind Ennis, his gun pointed at the back of Ennis’s head.

“Take him,” he told Samir.

“No!” André grabbed his arm. “Gideon, wait. Please.”

He looked to his side, meeting André’s eyes for the first time since Ennis’s confession. His lover’s eyes were wet, his cheeks tear-streaked. He looked traumatized.

“Don’t.” André’s lips trembled and his gaze darted from Gideon to where Samir and two others were hauling Ennis to his feet. “Please don’t kill him.”

Gideon stared at him. The love he felt for this man was monumental, it was special, it was fucking manna to his soul. He released a sigh and cupped André’s nape, urging him closer so that Gideon could kiss his forehead before bringing their heads together. “I would give you anything,” he whispered as André shook against him. Gideon’s voice was unsteady too, his heart thumping hard and furiously in his chest. Because this moment,this moment,could cost him more than he’d ever expected to lose. “You and your sister have my heart, my soul. You can have everything I possess…” He lifted his head and dropped his hand, stepping away. “But I can’t spare him. I won’t.”

André watched him with wide, heartbroken eyes, a tear rolling down his cheek.

“I don’t want to.”

27

He didn’t recognize Gideon.Not the man who stood before him with all that anger and violence in his eyes. Not the man who’d pointed a gun at Ennis, ready to take his life.

Until that moment, André would’ve said that he didn’t care if Ennis lived or died. He would’ve said there was no way he would ever beg for the life of the man who’d abandoned him to be spared. And honestly, he wasn’t even sure how it happened, how it came to be that he was begging Gideon to spare Ennis’s life.

But he did.

He’d begged.

And Gideon denied him.

André wanted to hate him for that. He watched through wet eyes that felt swollen as Samir yanked Ennis to his feet while the others surrounded them with guns drawn and pointed at Ennis—his back, his temple, his face. He couldn’t believe that the man who’d fathered him had tried to kill a child. Gideon had been a child at that time. Ennis had taken Gideon’s mother’s life instead. Destroying any kind of innocence Gideon might have harbored and in the process ripping him away from the parent he had left.

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