Page 72 of Not Your Hero

Anger surges in my veins as I scream louder and tug at the chain holding me in place. I’m pissed at him. I want to hurt him for the way he hurt me. And maybe that’s crazy. Maybe that’s unbelievable to want to hurt him for hurting me because was he really hurting me? No. He made me feel better. He made me feel like someone cared about me.

Gannix wasn’t just a black-hearted killer. He gave to charities for fuck’s sake. He tried to help kids who were like him. He hid who he was because he thought he was fucking damaged, and those bitches, those dead bitches, made him feel even worse.

Maybe they deserved what they got. Maybe they deserved to die for making him feel lesser than he was. And why? Because hewas scarred? So fucking what? We all have some sort of scars, whether they’re visible or not.

I know I have scars. Now I have more. Scars I can’t escape from, scars that run deeper than most.

I sit back in the chair as tears run down my face. I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know where to turn.

The door opens once more, and Ren comes in, pacing the room and running his hand through his hair. He doesn’t say anything to me but keeps muttering the word fuck.

I reach up with my free hand and wipe the tears away as I watch him. He almost seems panicked.

“What’s wrong?” He glances over at me shaking his head before sighing and walking over to the corner chair and sitting down.

“What are you prepared to do for Gannix?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Just what I said. What are you prepared to do for him?” I shake my head, none of this is making sense. What does he mean? Gannix is dead. There’s nothing to do for him.

“You’re not making any sense right now,” I tell him. Maybe it’s the death of his best friend, I don’t know. Ren stands from the chair and moves toward me quickly, grabbing my face in his hand and squeezing it to the point of pain.

“I need an answer. I need to know what the fuck you’d do for him? How far are you willing to go for him?”

“He’s dead!” I scream through the hold he has on me. Ren releases my face and shakes his head.

“This is all fucked. All of it.”

“What’s happening?” I ask him as he moves through the room. He’s pulling out drawers and shoving them back closed until he finds a gun. He turns to me, and my heart leaps into my throat.

“You ever shot a gun?”

“What the hell is going on, Ren?” I yell louder this time.

“Can you aim? Can you shoot?”

“I … I’ve shot a few times with an old boyfriend.”

“Okay. Good. He won’t know you have this,” he says, coming to unhook my wrist and shoving the gun into my hand. “Hide it. In your pants,” he orders me. I take the gun and look at it before shoving it into the front of my pants and covering it with my shirt.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is happening?”

“Gary isn’t dead,” he snarls in my direction. My heart stops. It literally stops. How can that be? Gannix wouldn’t have killed himself if his brother wasn’t dead, would he? He wouldn’t have left me to that. There’s no way.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he’s out there, Emerson. He’s still on the property somewhere,” he tells me. I shake my head. This isn’t happening. This can’t be.

“Gannix ….” I say his name, but for what? What am I hoping will happen?

“He took his body,” he adds.

“What?”

“Gary took his body. It’s not out there, not where it was.”

“Why the hell would he take his dead body?”

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