Page 15 of Sick Like Me

Pain explodes in the back of my head and I’m wrenched back, my feet slipping on the tiles as I’m yanked by my hair back into my father’s chest.

“Get your hands off my fucking wife!” Cal shouts, lunging forward, but pulling back so sharply, he almost slips.

“Nah, ah, ah,” Colin Stone hums, tutting at my husband, and yanking my hair tighter, my skin pulling so taut on my face that my eyes water, but I kick my legs, claw his skin, and then cool metal digs into my temple, and I instantly stop struggling. “You break intomyhouse, touchmydaughter, and suddenly think I’ll take orders from you?” I can’t see my father but I can imagine his expression, an eyebrow raised, a cocky smirk on his thin lips, a pudgy cheek dimpled. “Seems you don’t realise just how in over your head you are,boy.”

“She is not yours, not anymore, old man, let her go, and give her to me,” my husband sounds terrifying as he makes the demand, cold and calm and powerful.

A shiver rips its way up my spine so violently it makes my breath catch.

“Didn’t you hear me, you Carnellcunt,get thefuckout of my house!” my father bellows, jamming the gun harder into my skull, making me whimper, my toes barely grazing the floor where he yanks me up higher by my hair.

“Oh,” Cal chuckles, tucking his hands casually into his pockets, “I heard you.”

His rich eyes flick over Colin’s shoulder before settling on mine, and then my knees are hitting the floor, the gun is going off, forcing a terrified scream to tear from my throat. Cal’s hands are on my waist, his fingers digging into my ribs, hauling me towards him away from the open door my father was standing in at my back.

Cal drags me back towards the metal table I was lying on, both of us on the floor to witness my father drop to his knees, the gun clattering to the floor as his fingers just sort of give up gripping it.

Blood blooms in the centre of his forehead suddenly, it appears like a fast dribble at first, this deep, rich red trickling down the length of his nose. And then it starts to run in rivulets down his face, over his open eyes, parted lips. He gasps, this sharp, ugly, wheezing sound, and falls forward, face first, his arms not going out to attempt to save himself. His face smashes into the tiles at my feet, blood pooling in a puddle around him as I stare at the perfect, round hole in the crown of his skull.

Zoe stands in the open doorway, her chest heaving, eyes downcast on our dead father. There’s a silver gun in her hand, one I’ve seen her use many times before, something she never leaves the house without.

“You can be free now,” she says quietly, calmly, even as her entire body trembles, she speaks softly, like she always does. “Wecan be free now.”

Epilogue

Caelus

One Year Later

Watching my wife hold our daughter makes my heart ache in ways I never knew it could. The sun is shining on them where they sit on a red picnic blanket in the overgrown grass of my family’s home, both heads of white-blonde hair glistening in the sunlight.

We moved out of here a few months ago, buying our own house just four houses down, it has a big garden and a little fish pond, flowerbeds in the front. Ozzie likes to be outside, to breathe in fresh air, come rain or shine, she’s out there, staring up at the sky, or shoving her hands into the earth, weeding and watering and planting new life. She says it’s because she’s free now, and only when she was set free could she enjoy it, the world.

“Never thought you’d be the first one marriedanda father, little brother,” my older brother Novian laughs, tracing a finger around the rim of his whiskey glass.

“Mm, well,Inever thought you’d still be voluntarily playing bodyguard to a girl almost twenty years younger than yourself,” I shrug, his fist collides with my shoulder, a smirk on my mouth as I lift my glass and take a sip.

“Shut the fuck up, you know it’s only because Emilius demands it,” Novian grumbles, knocking back his two fingers of whiskey and banging the glass down to refill it.

“I’m not complaining. Besides, it makes Ostara feel better, knowing her little sister is safe from their family.” Tension forms in my forehead, my brows creasing with it.

The girls’ older sisters have taken over the Stone family and whether by some sort of twisted sense of duty or actual want for revenge, they’re doing everything they can to take down the girl who killed their father.

Even if she happens to be their little sister.

“Em thinks she saved his leg,” Novian mutters, swallowing hard as my eyes come to his.

Emilius has had problems walking since the explosion, since it broke his femur in three places and shattered his tibia.

“Perhaps she did,” I reply, looking down into my glass.

“Perhaps he just wants a reason to keep her here,” Novian whispers.

Head snapping up, I blink hard, staring at him, wondering what he means by that. But before I can ask, Zoe is striding through the back door, her bodyguard close at her back. The big fucker stops at the edge of the decking, watching her as she bounces her way past us without a greeting and makes her way down the wooden steps, jumping the last two and skipping through the grass towards her sister.

“Well, she is a good killer,” I say absently, watching my wife smile.

Fuck, all this time and that’s all it takes, one smile from her, even if it’s not for me, and my dick gets hard.

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