Page 66 of Broken Promises
He fell forward, holding the back of his skull as Lucian looked up at me. “Is he the one who took you?” he asked, nodding to Waylon.
“He’s also the one who helped me,” I returned, stepping closer to Lucian. Lowering my voice, I explained, “I think he’s a pawn in all this, and from my best guess, I’d say they bullied and dragged him into helping them. Don’t . . . would you let me talk to him before you do anything?”
Lucian looked at Waylon and back to me before giving the man behind him some kind of hand signal. The man dressed all in black yanked Waylon from his chair and escorted him fromthe room without a second glance from Kelly or Sergey. Their apathy for him was palpable, and Lucian glanced at me as he lifted his eyebrow, seeing what I saw.Indifference.
“We need to find out what they had planned, in case there are other girls in danger,” Devlin said to Lucian as Rhys, James, and Hawk watched on.
Kelly and Sergey were staring at each other, and she was trying to get him to listen to her while he was pouting like a baby. Nothing they said to each other would change the outcome of today, and I had no delusions about their fate. My mother, who’d abandoned me at six years old for, as it seems, my half-brother, and her chosen son were going to die today.
How painful it was going to be would be up to them, and their desire to tell the truth, I assumed from the anger on Devlin, Lucian, and Stella’s face.
“I’m about to ramp this up, so now’s the time to leave if you can’t handle what I’ve got to do,” Lucian said to Stella and me, and I looked up at him.
“She’s the reason I have trust issues, and she’s the reason I jump when someone stands behind me. She’s the reason my Granny had to struggle in her later years, and most importantly, she’s nothing to me. Do what you have to, but I’m not leaving if there is another girl in trouble,” I explained.
“Are you sure?” Devlin asked, and I saw genuine concern on his face. “I won’t show her mercy, and you’ll have to live with that.”
“I don’t care what you do to her. She’s not my family and neither is he. You are, and I choose to stand with you,” I admitted, feeling a small hand touch the side of my arm.
I looked to see Stella smiling at me. “You are so my sister. Let’s step over here and let them work.”
Allowing Stella to guide me toward Rhys, James, and Hawk, I slipped my hand into Rhys’s and pushed close to him. He liftedmy hand to his lips and kissed the back as he turned to face me. “I need to . . .” he started to say before glancing over his shoulder and back to me.
I pressed my hand to his lips, stopping him from speaking. “I want you to make them both pay for what they’ve done. If it wasn’t for them and their fucked-up plans, Rylee, Claire, Pearl, and I—and whoever else they dragged into their madness—would be okay. I won’t think any less of you for what you need to do but promise me one thing.”
“Anything,” he replied as I removed my fingers from his lips.
“Make sure it hurts.” He offered me a wicked smile, and I pressed up to place a soft kiss on his lips and whisper, “Killing him would make her insane, and she won’t be able to stop talking.” Shrugging, I added, “Just sayin’.”
“Fuck, I love you,” Rhys said and kissed me before turning around and walking away.
“Let’s take a seat,” Hawk suggested, and he, Stella, and I all moved to the opposite end of the long table and took seats to watch the madness unfold before us.
James looked on from the doorway before nodding to Devlin and leaving the room. I turned back to the situation taking place at the other end of the table, and as I observed Rhys, I saw something in his posture shift. He was stalking behind Sergey as Kelly tried to reason with Lucian.
“You don’t have to hurt us. We’ll stop, and you’ll never have to worry about us again.”
“No, Mother,” Sergey squealed, and I watched Rhys tilt his head forward as an almost evil smile pushed up on his cheeks.
Stella leaned over and whispered, “Don’t think differently of him after this. He’s the best man I know, but I think like all of us, he has his own demons.”
I nodded my understanding as Sergey droned on. “It’s my time, and you can’t take it away from me. My father promised me and there’s no going back on his word.”
He slammed his hands onto the table, and faster than I realized someone could move, Rhys pulled a massive knife from his hip with one hand and held Sergey’s wrist to the table with the other. In one rapidly fluid motion, he skewered Sergey’s hand with the knife straight to the table. Sergey screamed a blood-curdling scream, and Kelly began crying and struggling, trying to get out of her chair.
“Stop, please, don’t hurt him,” Kelly pleaded, and Rhys looked across at her as Devlin and Lucian stood at the head of the table with their arms crossed over their chests, watching in amusement. “It’s all my fault. He’s innocent,” she pleaded.
“Your fucking daughter was innocent, yet you fed her to a bunch of vultures, all for your own personal gain, so don’t speak to me about it not being his fault. He’s just as guilty as you are,” Rhys yelled. Tears rolled down her face as Sergey swayed in his chair with his hand impaled into the hard wooden table.
“She doesn’t matter. Sergey said if I gave him a daughter, he would let me have a son to rule. I lived up to my part.” She leaned over and cried before continuing. “And my damn mother wouldn’t give her back.” She sobbed and added, “It’s all her fault.”
I looked at Devlin and Lucian before I felt Stella’s hand on my jumping knee. It was a nervous habit, and the minute my mother said I didn’t matter and I was meant to be a pawn in this whole thing, something inside me started to hum. I couldn’t describe it, but deep in my gut, a vibration was spreading outward.
Standing from the chair, I moved but didn’t realize I was walking until I was standing next to Rhys and behind a sniveling Sergey. Rhys looked down at me, and almost like he could seeinside me, he slipped the gun from his holster and handed it to me.
Devlin and Lucian stood to the side, and Rhys stayed right next to me as I looked across the table at Kelly Johnson, the woman who gave birth to me but was never a mother. The woman who allowed me and other women to be raped, just so she could have power and money that wasn’t hers to have. And worst of all, the woman who picked someone, anyone, over her child.
“Who’s his mother?” I asked, and she lifted her red, puffy eyes to me.
