Page 6 of Vengeful Valentine

Trauma. Years of living in the same Hell together.

Ace’s critical dark brown eyes lit up in amusement as he found the screens. “They made it.” He crossed his arms across his chest. He was no longer the gangly teen he had been years ago. He was stockier now, sturdier, more self-assured.

Hawk resented him for it. Resented both Silas and Ace for being better than they had left him. All Hawk had to show for their time apart was a scar and a mottled ear.

Silas’s gruff voice reverberated around the shack. “None of you better chicken shit out of this. We can have our fun with her, but in the end, she needs to die. She needs to pay for the time taken from Ace. For breaking up our family. She is the reason everything bad ever happened to us.”

When Ace had shown up on his doorstep with this psychoticplana few weeks ago, Hawk almost slammed the door in his face. Immediately Ace confessed his anger, how he wanted the brothers to reunite, how the only way they could was if they rid themselves of what had torn them apart. How Silas had already agreed.

Even still, Hawk wasn’t sure if he believed Ace, but that didn’t matter. He would be going off-script.

Hawk didn’t speak. He simply stood from his chair, offering Ace a curt nod before leaving.

The outside was a stark difference to the gloomy, sterile shack. Snow stuck everywhere to the ground around him, the sun’s rays reflecting off of it, trees lined every piece of his peripheral. Birds chirped in the distance, but it was…it was odd to hear the sounds of nature in only one ear. As if it were cloudy, as if it weren’t him hearing it at all, but a figment of who he was.

Some days Hawk questioned if he was still alive at all.

Maybe the gun hadn’t missed, maybe he was buried six-feet-under, and this was all a pipe dream that was made up from the DMT surging through his brain in his final moments.

He heaved a shuddering sigh, containing as much of his sadness and grief as he could manage.

Four years ago, he was a teenager escaping from what he thought was the worst thing he would ever go through.

But then he had opened his heart, allowed a certain girl to crawl her way inside.

Fallen infuckinglove with her.

Only for her to cast him aside so she could run off to her fancy school. But not before causing a tidal wave of events that led to Ace’s arrest.

Led to Silas leaving town.

Led to Hawk being entirely and undeniably alone.

But now she was back.

He moved his head in the direction of her cabin. She was only a few hundred yards away. He couldn’t see it through the woods, but he instinctuallyrecognizedshe was there.

Even if he hadn’t seen her on camera, he would haveknownshe was.

They were connected.

A phantom limb that would awake him in the dead of night. His heart beating, his arms outstretched only to find she wasn’t there. That nobody was. That he was all alone.

A cycle of pain that repeated itself day in and day out.

When she called to book the cabin, he wasnearly hopeful. Maybe if she had shown up alone, he wouldn’t follow through on this. He would have offered her a chance to explain herself. Allowed her back into his life. She washisafter all.

Maybe, but maybe not.

He would never know, because shedidcome with amanto the cabin. That was the final straw.

His last remaining piece of hope melting into the abysmal misery that encapsulated his heart.

Everything had been a lie, just as Silas said.

He was forced to agree with his brothers.

Soon, she would be dead.

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