Page 111 of With a Vengeance

“He was killed in prison.”

“Yes,” Wentworth says. “At my instruction. The family of the man who did it was rewarded handsomely.”

Anna recoils further as more boiling tears emerge. Her father never got a chance to defend himself. It didn’t matter that no one might have believed him but her and Aunt Retta. He still would have had the opportunity to lay out his case, prove his innocence, be set free. If that had happened, perhaps her mother’s grief could have been contained. At least enough to preserve her sanity, to give her the will to keep living.

If all of that had happened, Anna might still have her parents.But Kenneth Wentworth took them, too, and now she can only keep backing away, putting as much distance between them as possible. Anna’s certain that if the gap closes by an inch, the urge to rip him apart with her bare hands will be too strong to resist.

But after two more backward steps, Anna collides with someone standing behind her.

Reggie.

She forgot he was there, listening, a witness to Kenneth Wentworth’s confession. Making no move to harm her, he says, “Still think they all deserve to live?”

Anna can no longer answer that. She honestly doesn’t know.

“This whole time, you’ve been spouting all these noble declarations about justice and honor and not sinking to their level,” Reggie says. “But I know you, Anna Matheson. Deep down, you’re just like me. You want something more satisfying than justice. You want revenge.”

Yes, Anna wants revenge. She’s always wanted it. But more than that, she wants her old life back. Twelve years ago, the existence she’d imagined for herself was snatched from her. She was like a derailed train, thrown off the tracks, broken apart.

Killing Kenneth Wentworth, she realizes, would be a way of putting herself back together and following the course she’d always planned. It won’t be completely the same. Her family is still gone, and nothing will change that. Anna will always carry their absence with her.

“Think about what they did,” Reggie says, still behind her, his voice a hiss slithering into her ear. “To your family. To you. Think about Seamus. And his brother. And all those other innocent men who died. I guarantee, if they were in your position right now, none of them would hesitate. Not for a second. Not even Seamus. But you’re the one who’s suffered the most. Out of everyone, you deserve this.”

He reaches around, offering the gun. Anna accepts it with hands so numb she can barely feel it.

“You want to kill him, don’t you?” Reggie says. “You’ve wanted to kill all of them all night. And you have every right to feel that way.”

Anna takes a faltering half step toward Kenneth Wentworth, who eyes the gun now in her hands. He looks scared, and it thrills her. At last, a feeling of triumph.

“Please don’t shoot,” he says. “Please, Anna.”

She aims the gun squarely at his heaving chest. Her index finger trembles against the trigger.

“Admit what you did,” she says. “Admit that you destroyed my family.”

Wentworth’s mouth drops open, but no words come out. In that fraught silence, Anna steps closer, her aim never wavering.

“Admit it!”

“I did it,” Wentworth says.

Anna takes another step. Point-blank range.

“Did what?” she says.

“Destroyed your family.” Wentworth gulps after he says it, as if he’s trying to take the words back. But then, he pushes out more. “I destroyed so many families. And I forced others to do it, too.”

“How does that make you feel?” Reggie asks Anna.

She releases a long, drawn-out sigh. “Angry.”

“And aren’t you tired of holding in all that anger?”

“Yes,” she says. “So tired.”

She’s spent the past year of her life in a state of perpetual rage. Before that were years of sorrow preceded by grief. Raw and cutting. The kind of grief she can’t ever forget, because it won’t let her. It left scars on her soul.

“I just want it to end,” she says as tears continue to burn her eyes.

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