Page 96 of Fracture

But I can’t get lost in him right now. Now we need to clean up the mess surrounding us.

Dylan opens the hatch to the crawl space, where the tub of hydrofluoric acid is waiting to eat away Iverson’s body. We roll his dead weight across the floor, and drop him into the tub beneath us, where he lands heavily with a wet thud. Dylan kicks the hatch shut, and walks to the trough, scrubbing off as much blood as he can.

“What do we tell Stella?” I ask.

Dylan shakes his head. “We head back home separately, you clean the gun and the knife at the shop. I’ll go shower all this shit off in the garage. She’ll never know. She’s probably still out with Zee.” He shakes the water from his hands, then turns to look at me. “We’re going to kill them all. Every single name in that book.”

“You really think my mother would keep something that would incriminate her?” Even as the words leave my mouth, Irealize what I’m saying. Dylan cocks an eyebrow, and I know he’s right. I huff out a cynical laugh. “Leverage. Of course she still has it.”

“It’s in that house,” Dylan says with steely certainty. “And when we find it, we kill every single one of them.”

“There’s some powerful names on that list.”

He shrugs, the snake tattoos on his shoulders shifting with the movement. “I don’t care.”

There’s no point saying we could get ourselves killed doing this. Going after all the most powerful names in the country? It’s a death sentence.

But we spent 10 years aching for revenge, and we’re not giving up now.

Dylan pulls the mask down again, before throwing on his leather jacket and gloves to cover the rusty stain of blood on his skin. He straps up his helmet, and with a nod, guns his engine and takes off into the night.

I watch the moon hanging over the forest for a minute, before stowing the knife and the gun in the trunk, and heading back along the bumpy dirt road out of the forest. The summer night passes by my windows, the trees illuminated in the headlights.

I’m going to kill my own mother.

But first, I need to look her in the eye and hear her tell me she helped these men rape my step-sister. I need to hear those words from her mouth. I need to hear her admit to hurting the woman I love.

The night whips past me, the forest giving way to street lights, and a paved road.

I’m going to kill my own mother. And I feel nothing but unadulterated rage.

CHAPTER 22

DYLAN

The house isdark as I roll my bike down the drive to the garage. Stella’s car is in the drive, but she must be asleep. Thank god. I don’t want her to see me like this, bloody and frenzied, the feeling of Levi’s hands and cock still blazing through my body.

What kind of person gets turned on by death?

I catch my reflection in a dark window, and I know exactly what kind of person does. That sick fucker looking back at me right now.

The garage door closes with a soft thud, and I pull off my helmet and gloves, before flipping on the light switch.

“Rough night?”

The sweet voice sends a chill down my spine, and I turn to meet Stella’s critical gaze. A tumbler of whiskey and ice dangles from her perfectly manicured hand, her hair pulled up on top of her head. She rises to her feet, her body encased in a floaty white slip dress.

She’s an angel, the sun to my night.

She crosses the garage to stand in front of me, her eyes wandering over the mask still pulled down over my face. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to explain to her what just happened.

She tilts her head, raising an eyebrow as she takes another sip of whiskey. Her eyes drop to my hands, then she lifts her fingers to my jacket, pulling the zip down to expose my blood-splattered chest.

“You know, if you want to lie to me, you need to make sure Zee isn’t going to blow your cover instantly.” She runs a finger down my chest, over my tattoos, over the blood staining my skin. “They were very confused to hear that they’d insisted on dinner tonight when it had, in fact, been the two of you insisting they take me out.” Her mouth quirks, and she sips her whiskey, the ice clinking against the crystal. “Needed me out of the way, huh?”

“Stella, I can explain.”

“Was it Iverson?” Her voice doesn’t waver as she asks, her eyes still fixed on my chest.

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