Page 93 of Pray for the Damned

It’s a damn good thing too because if I had to watch the guards leer at her for another second, I would have started tearing eyeballs out.

Hell, it’s still on the cards.

“What the fuck are you doing, Kade?” One of the assholes who touched my girl growls. I never cared to learn any of their names and I’m glad for it now that they’ll be dying any minute now.

“Something I should have done a long time ago.” I press the barrel of my handgun to the back of my father’s head. “Step away from her.”

“You too?” he growls. “I thought you were stronger than to get swept up in some pussy.”

“Step. Away. From. Her.”

He hesitates for another second, his eyes scanning the room for an escape route, but there isn’t one. He didn’t bring nearly enough men to the warehouse with him, but he probably didn’tthink he’d need them to deal with one of his sons and a woman he stripped and bound.

I walk him further away from her. As much as I hate that he hurt her, part of me is glad she won’t have to watch me like this. I never want my girl to realize just how much of a monster I am.

“On your knees,” I command.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

I slam my foot into the back of his knee, and he topples over with a grunt of pain, but it has the desired effect when he scrambles up to his knees.

I step in front of him, my gun trained on the center of his forehead. I’m vaguely aware of Elias and Wyatt rounding up the guards while Emmett looks after our girl, but right now I need to be in the zone. I want to enjoy this.

“I think I’m going to kill the man that caused my brother and me endless pain,” I tell him. “I think I’m about to end the life of the man who thought he could take my woman and get away with it. And I think I’m going to enjoy every fucking second of it.”

I smack the butt of the gun into the side of his head, my body vibrating with rage.

“Think about what you’re doing, son,” Dad pleads. “Without me, this business is nothing. You’re nothing.”

I chuckle as I crouch down in front of him, allowing the gun to drop for a moment. Blood drips from his hairline down his cheek, but he doesn’t seem as worried about that as he is about his most brutal son turning against him. “The business you worked so hard for is about to cease to exist,” I tell him with glee. “It turned you into a monster, and neither Emmett nor I want to become you, so I’m going to burn it all to the ground. Part of me wants to keep you alive long enough for you to watch me destroy your legacy, but I can’t have you breathing the same air as Waverly, so sadly you’ll have to watch from hell.”

“Don’t do this, son. I gave you everything. Everything you ever asked for, I provided. That has to be worth something!”

A laugh escapes my throat, and I meet Emmett’s eyes across the room. “The fact you think that just proves how fucking deluded you are. You never gave us a damn thing we wanted. Do you think we wanted to fight each other? Do you think I wanted to make my twin, the literal other half of me, bleed? Do you think either of us wanted to learn to kill someone before we even knew our ABCs?”

Every word is filled with more rage than the last, my hand trembling as I poise my finger on the trigger.

I have one of the best shots in the country, but right now I’m too fucking angry to steady myself. Years of abuse. Years of hatred. Years of no autonomy over our own lives. Years I missed with my brother.

I fucking hate the man in front of me. The kind of hatred that simmers deep in your gut until you can barely breathe past the mass. The kind that can eat you alive if you let it.

But I refuse to let him have another moment of our time.

He dies today, before he can take anything else from us.

I take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger.

“See you in hell, Dad.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

EMMETT

Waverly’s body feels tiny in my arms. Has she always felt this small when I’ve held her?

I carefully tug the blanket around her, tucking it between us to protect her from the leering eyes of the men in the room as Wyatt and Elias gather them in the corner of the warehouse.

I’m vaguely aware of Kade speaking to our father, but I’m too focused on the unconscious woman in my arms.

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