Page 60 of Vow of Vengeance
"What Idid." Wes corrects. "I'm no longer affiliated with my father."
That's a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Wes' father is without a doubt the vilest man I've ever met. I'm considering asking him about their meet-cute but think better of it. It wasn’t lost on me, the day I went to help find Rhea, when I saw the other girl… the one whose face has haunted me. Claire Boudreaux, the results had come back. Except, it wasn’t her. Remington had confirmed as much when he said his wife was safe at home, and that’s when I’d realized Claire had a very identical looking sister.
Seeing her outside my door today, with Wes no less, was a shock. I’m dying to hear the story of how he sold a woman into sex trafficking and then ended up marrying her sister, but now isn’t the time for that.
Violet is beautiful, but her scars tell me a story that isn't mine to know.
After my mother died and all that was left was rage, I had someone dig into Wes' father, the organization he was running in the shadows. I wasn't prepared for the information I gleaned there, and a lot of it I've tried to force out of my head in every possible way. But some things were too cruel to pretend I didn't know of, too horrible to pretend they weren't real.
The truth is, I’m not even sure it matters. I can forgive Wes for almost anything if he helps me avenge my girl. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I don’t really care. Because I chooseSoren above everything else. I choose my wife. The mother of my child. My fucking purpose.
"And to answer your question, she knows. We've worked through our bullshit."
I'm not sure how they'd manage to do that, but I guess it's not for me to understand. I’m sure some people wouldn’t be capable of understanding how Soren and I worked through our bullshit, either. And I couldn’t care less about a single one of them.
"This guy we're gonna merk..." Wes says, glancing at me. "He deserves it, right?"
I clench my jaw at the reminder of what Khan did, the thought of him looking at Soren every day since and pretending like he's never done anything wrong where she's concerned. Does he get off on the fact that she has no idea? She still trusts him, believes in him, loves him.
Rage floods my veins.
"He deserves worse than whatever we're going to do." I promise him.
That seems to be a good enough answer for Wes, because he nods and launches into his explanation for how this is going to go down.
Nothing elaborate, no ridiculous ruse. Just us in a couple of balaclavas, brute force, a couple of knives and gloves, and a silencer for the gun.
I don't intend to torture the sick fuck, but I also don't plan to let him die peacefully.
He won't slip quietly into eternal sleep.
No, he'll be ripped from this world screaming against the duct tape I'm going to wrap around his whole fucking face.
What I appreciate about Wes is that he doesn't know who our target is. All he knows is that I'm telling him I want Khan gone, and that's enough. He's not making me go to elaborate lengthsto scope out his place, to establish an alibi and make exhaustive plans to do this.
Maybe it would be better if we had, but honestly, the closer we get to his home, the less I care if we do get caught. I'm alight with anger I've had to keep on a leash from the moment I found out, anger I had to contain because I can't let Soren see it unless I want to explain it to her. And I'm sure as fuck not going to do that. I don't care if it's wrong or unethical. There's zero chance that it will do anything to help her move forward with her life, which means as far as she's concerned, it's irrelevant.
But not to me.
I'm ready to throw the car door open and storm the porch as soon as Wes gets the car in park, but I restrain myself just long enough to assure myself he doesn't have a doorbell camera. The neighbors might, which is why we put the balaclavas over our faces.
But I told Wes I want him to know it was me who kills him, and I mean it. It's why I lower my hood when we get to the porch.
I ignore the bell in favor of beating on the front door, because fuck it feels good to get out some of the rage that’s been quietly building by the minute. It’s just enough so that when I see him, I won't put the knife in my hand to his throat and decapitate him right off the bat.
"You're gonna catch the attention of the neighbors." Wes warns calmly, like he could care less if I do or not.
"Toofuckingbad." I snap, earning a chuckle from my accomplice.
It takes a few minutes, but I hear him yell, hear him muttering a string of irritated profanity, and then hear the lock scrape as he pulls it back. I brace myself, readying for the moment he opens the door.
I don’t even give him a chance to ask what we want before I slam into the door with all of my strength. It flies back and so does he.
I get a quick grip on the back of his neck and raise the knife to his throat, yanking his head back so that I can see the knife glisten under the light.
"What the fuck?" He asks, his voice shrill as he raises his hands like he's showing me he won't fight me.
Wes shuts the door behind us, and it takes everything in me not to drag the blade across his windpipe. The only thing that stops me is that I want him to know. I want him to know thatI know, to die with the knowledge that he's being ripped from the earth for being a fucking rapist. That he’s going to die because of what he did to the woman I love.
