Page 36 of Savior

“What does Saint want with a couple of old fucks?” I bit out, my body still buzzing from the shock.

“Saint?” Cobra ran the handle of the prod under his chin. “Who said Saint had anything to do with this? You’re the one with the vendetta against them, are you not? Don’t they owe you some money?”

I used my fingers to try to loosen the bindings around my wrist. If I managed to break free, I could distract Cobra long enough for them to escape. Maybe they could get a message to Celia.

“Forgave the debt. Look at ‘em. What threat do they pose to me? I can always make more money—”

Cobra caught Richard by the hair and jerked his head back. The old man’s eyes widened in fear. “You could make the money back, but it’d take a while. I mean, they’d been stealing from your kids for years, right?”

“You got a point to your ramblin’?”

He nodded. “Since when has the leader of Silent Phoenix ever let anyone off without paying?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I panted, trying to adjust the positioning of my arm. “I ain’t the leader of shit right now.”

“Maybe not, but that didn’t stop you from going after your enemies. One.” He dropped the prod and pulled his gun from the holster.

“By.” With a grin, he pulled back the hammer and pressed the barrel against Richard’s skull as Norma began to scream again, begging me to stop him.

“Cobra, we both know you ain’t ever been Saint’s bitch. Don’t do his dirty work for him.” My voice was steady and even as if his actions were of no consequence to me.

“One.” He pulled the trigger, sending a spray of blood onto the opposite wall. Richard’s body slumped forward, no longer recognizable from the neck up as anything other than a mass of tissue and brain matter.

Norma’s screams turned to hyperventilating until her eyes rolled back in her head, her brain protecting her the only way it knew how.

Cobra straightened and placed his gun back into the holster on his dress pants with a sigh. “Tsk, tsk. Why’d you do it, Grey—going after your wife’s elderly parents like that? It’s unimaginable.”

“You wanted to prove somethin’, you’ve done it. Now, let her go.” I ground my teeth and flexed the fingers on my left hand, testing the strength of the restraint.

He continued talking as if I hadn’t said a word. “Even after they worked so hard to pay back every cent, you showed them no mercy.”

“What are you talking about? They never paid me back. I forgave the debt. What part of that ain’t stuck yet?”

“They texted Celia to tell her they had the money. I wonder what she thought when she got to the house and saw the cash but no sign of her parents. Well,” he paused. “I take that back. She would’ve seen the blood. How long do you think it’ll be before she realizes it was you?”

I shook my head. “If that was Saint’s big plan, tell him he failed. Celia ain’t gonna fall for it—”

“Won’t she? You promised to never leave her again, yet all the evidence points to you having done just that. How many lives will it take before she sees you for what you’ve always been? A monster. You turned your back on her and your kids. Do you know what that did to your son?”

My blood ran cold, and I stopped fighting against the restraint. “Mikey? What the fuck did you do to him?”

“He OD’ed, Grey. All we did was give him a nudge in the right direction. Took away his job and any chance of him patching into the club. The rest was all him. Trust me,” he added with a somber look. “That was never our plan. We were convinced he’d turn on you, but all he did was destroy himself.”

I saw him face down on his bedroom floor, surrounded by empty bottles of tequila and his own puke. The same fear I’d felt that night as I pounded my fist against his chest coursed through my veins again.

The sheer panic as I’d breathed for him and done sternum rubs came back full force.

Only this time, I hadn’t been there to save him.

“Is he?” Bile rose up in my throat at the image of him being all alone, thinking that I’d abandoned him. What had been running through his mind?

Cobra quickly shook his head. “The doctor your daughter married was able to save him. His wife left, though. I guess she didn’t want to raise a baby with a junkie. Makes sense, you know?”

“Lauren’s knocked up?” The words seemed to lodge in my throat. It was the same feeling I’d had when Celia told me that Dakota was pregnant.

Every joyous moment in my life had always been overshadowed by the knowledge that it could all be ripped away from me in an instant.

Now, more than ever, I saw the danger.

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