Page 27 of Vengeful Valentine

He stared down at her.

She didn’t look good exactly. She was still beautiful, but there was evidence that the last few years had not been kind to her.

It pleased him that she hadn’t had it easy.

He pulled the gun from his waistband and dropped it onto the bed in front of her.

Hawk squatted down before her, gesturing to it. “I’m not here to forgive you. I just want to play a game. Have you ever put a gun to your head before, Ashmine?”

He moved his long black hair aside to show his ear better. It wasn’t too obvious, but he could tell the moment she saw the damage.

Her face whitened. The first reaction he had seen from her since they had arrived.

“Because I have.”

Chapter 13

Ace

“What do you think Hawk has planned?” The more time that passed, the more Ace’s anxiety grew. He tried to distract himself, glancing around the area they stood in.

It was pitch black minus the lights that shone through the lodge’s windows.

This building and all the land around it was technically Ashmine’s, but she had given Ace the money to purchase it. He had done so a few months back, trying his best to cover his ownership.

Her steady flow of money was the only consolation for being forced to go to that corrupt university.

Ace thought her life would have improved due to her familial relationship with the Headmaster, but that hadn’t been the case at all. It became a different type of abuse that Ashmine had endured the last few years…and Ace guessed he didn’t even know the half of it.

Silas remained silent, his attention focused on the cabin’s door.

Ace rolled his shoulders before clenching and unclenching his fists.

It was freezing outside, but he paid it no mind, his thoughts focused on something else entirely.

He trusted Ashmine to take care of herself, but she hadn’t been around Hawk inyears. When Ace found Hawk after he got out of jail, he wasn’t the same man Ace remembered.

There was an emptiness, aglassiness, to him. As if he were no longer fully present. Hawk had always been quiet, but now he was practically silent altogether.

“What happened to Hawk while I was gone? You never told me,” Ace griped, kicking his foot into the back of Silas’s knee.

It finally gained his brother’s attention.

“I wouldn’t know. I left a day after you were convicted.”

“You left him alone?” Ace muted his shout as best he could.

Rage and dread stemmed in his body and spread quickly, enveloping him entirely.

“You abandoned Hawk? You left him alone? Don’t you remember the last time he believed we left him?”

It was before Ashmine had joined them, Ace and Silas had gone to the forest to play without Hawk. When they came back, Hawk’s wrists were a bloody mess. He said it was an accident, but Ace knew what self-infliction looked like.

Silas heaved a sigh. “He’s a fully grown adult man, he knows I didn’t abandon him.”

“Oh, is that fucking right? Did you two stay in touch? Did he talk to you every day?” Ace’s vision blurred as his hysteria intensified.

“Well, no, but…” Silas’s tone turned unsure. “He couldn’t have, I mean. I told him I just needed out of this town. Needed a break from all the reminders of you andher. This is her fucking fault after all.”

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