Page 86 of Hers To Keep

Will he dare to shoot me?

“I honestly thought you’d be more creative, Wes,” Ace mutters, from beside me, a snide chuckle coming from deep within him. Wesley’s angry scowl turns to Ace. “A murder-suicide is what you’re planning, right? I loved her so much she wanted nothing to do with me, so I sacrificed us both. If I can’t have her, no one can.”

A wide grin appears in place of his murderous scowl, tainting his more than rugged façade. “Must admit it isn’t my best, but on such short notice we make do with what we have, son.”

I’m about to barter a deal when suddenly we’re interrupted by yet another malevolent force. “Well, would you look at that, the whole gang's here. You make this too damn easy.” My body tenses as I hear him, immediately recognizing the voice that’s haunted me for weeks on end. Because this day couldn’t get fucking worse.

Marchesi is unstable, that much I already knew, but as I turn and watch him, walking toward us, holding a gun pointed directly at us with a crazed look in his eyes, I know he’s gone over the edge. Lilith and Wesley move to stand behind us, Ace still tied up by my side, while all of us look directly toward the man appearing before us.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Wesley shouts, as he turns to face Marchesi pointing the gun at him now. Marchesi’s dressed in a dark blue suit minus the jacket, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his shirt collar folding down as the top three buttons of his shirt are unbuttoned.

“Wesley, Lilith, how nice to see you again,” he says, and I turn and find a look of confusion in my mother’s eyes, which surely is the same one in Wesley’s as they watch Marchesi, or as they know him, Macallan, stalk toward them.

The room feels incredibly small—the walls caving in as my vision blurs. Beside me I feel Ace’s hand fall upon my thigh, released from the restraints. My body calms as he looks down at me, assuring me we’re going to be okay.

“What brings you here, Macallan? Don’t tell me this is about how I had to exile you for breaking one of The Gallows’ rules,” Wesley says, referring to what he did to me that night at The Gallows.

“Oh, my dear Wesley, you’re more stupid than I thought,” Marchesi says sardonically, his brown hair falling in perfectly waves, his deep hazel eyes bare of the glasses he usually wears, and his slight stubble now a full-grown beard.

Suddenly, I see the realization of who he is washes over my mother’s eyes as she watches him approach us. “Franco,” she whispers, a look of fear in her eyes as she recognizes her stepbrother after all these years.Who would have known it would be my mother who’d figure it out first?I’m kind of proud we had the upper hand on this one and knew something they didn’t for once.

“Franco?” Wesley asks, confused, angrily staring back and forth between my mother and Marchesi, ignoring the fact that Ace and I are still sitting here before them. “Who the fuck is Franco?”

“Franco Marchesi, son of the infamous Gabriel Marchesi, my stepbrother, and Gianna’s psychotic older brother. Sent away at only thirteen years old because his father was afraid his son was a murderous psychopath,” my mother explains, as she walks away, toward the far end of the room beside the bar.

“Well il mio padre had one thing right, my dear Lilith,” Marchesi says with a mocking smirk. He walks closer to us, Wesley growing more impatient by the minute while his gun remains pointed at Marchesi.

“Franco Marchesi? What the fuck are you talking about, Lilith?” Wesley shouts, now frantic as he again points the gun back and forth between them. The confusion in his gaze mixed with the anger of once again hearing that name turns his aqua blue eyes adark shade of blue resembling the midnight sky before a destructive storm.

“She means that I, Franco Marchesi, crept my way into your gilded kingdom, Wesley, and infiltrated this deranged empire you so tirelessly aim to protect from outside prying eyes. I guess you’re not as airtight as you believed you were.” Marchesi stalks across the room to grab the drink my mother holds out to him, looking more relaxed than I would have expected coming face to face with his sister’s murderers.

“But how, why?” Wesley stutters, taken aback by Marchesi’s statement. Whether it’s shock, anger, or fear, for the first time Wesley is fucking speechless, and it is a sight to see. The man in the three-piece suit of control is spinning out of it faster than he can handle.

“Yes, the thing is we all know the why,” Marchesi mutters as moves back over to where Wesley stands, the two wicked men now face to face. Wesley falters back, keeping his gun raised still pointed at Marchesi’s head.

Recognition flashes before Wesley’s eyes as he blankly stares at Marchesi who’s nodding his head in my direction. “It’s you, the one who’s been blackmailing me. This whole time it’s been you and you’ve been right…”

“Right under your nose.” A small chuckle escapes from Marchesi at the bewildered grimace obscuring Wesley’s usual snide smirk. My how the tables have turned.

“But why, what did I ever do to you back then?” Wesley asks, not yet understanding the gravity of the situation at hand. “I never even spoke to you. I was a child, and when you came here, I treated you as a friend, you were no one and I brought you into my world?— “

“Only to exile me yet again,” Marchesi says, interrupting him, clicking the safety off the guy he has pointed at Wesley like they’re in some old wild west duel. “I know what you did to my poor baby sister. You used her as part of your ploy, and she took her lifebecause of it. She was weak, and you exploited her fragility. You took advantage of her.”

Wesley shakes his head maddeningly. “No, I loved Gianna. I never wanted her to do what she did. She was supposed to leave Maxwell, and I’d be there to patch up her broken heart.”

Anger clouds Marchesi’s eyes as Wesley speaks, trying to justify his actions. A rare glimpse of guilt appears as he speaks of Gianna, but not enough to make me feel sorry for him. I’ll never be able to feel anything but intense hatred for him.

“But that’s not what you wanted is it, Lilith,” Marchesi sneers, shocking us as he turns and slowly stalks back over to my mother, keeping the gun pointed at Wesley the entire time. “You couldn’t stand the fact that after all you did, Maxwell still wanted nothing to do with you. You couldn’t let Wesley have his happily ever after, when you were going to be left alone with a child you didn’t even want.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lilith says, quickly pushing past him trying to stalk out of the room, but Marchesi is quicker and grabs her arm before she can go, shoving her back against the bar.

“Lilith left an extra dose of The Devil’s Kiss, an altered one, with Gianna that night along with a letter she wrote supposedly from Maxwell. In this letter he told her he’d be leaving her to run off with Lilith, the one he’s always loved in secret. He said that everything between him and Gianna wasn’t real, just a game he played when he got tired of Lilith’s rejection.” My mother’s face pales as Marchesi continues to tell his story, Wesley listening intently while Ace and I sit stunned like pawns watching from the sidelines, while these devils play their games. “Gianna injected herself with this dose and then went to the tub and slit her wrists for good measure. She felt humiliated and betrayed, and her feeble mind couldn’t withstand such shame and heartbreak. I found my baby sister that day. I’d just come back to town ready to rejoin the society that cast me out and I found her, the note, and the syringe.”

The raging expression on Wesley’s face when he hears Marchesi’s confession, is the angriest I’ve ever seen him. The full force of his fury directed at my mother for a plan of her own I’m almost positive he knew nothing about. The bitch double crossed him—can’t say he didn’t deserve it, but Gianna didn’t.

Ace turns to me whispering quietly so only I can hear. “You okay, Scar?” he asks, and I nod unable to form a coherent sentence, or any word at all, while watching it all unfold before us.

“You fucking bitch,” Wesley shouts, pointing the gun at my mother. “Lilith, tell me this fucker is lying. Tell me you weren’t so fucking stupid as to betray me.”

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