Page 67 of Broken Promises
“Fuck you. I told you, I’m his mother,” Kelly remarked with venom in her tone, and I knew if I kept pushing, I’d get the answer I needed.
I was just going to have to tap into the hum that was telling me to let it all go and destroy them. Raising the gun from behind the chair, I pressed it into the top of Sergey’s head, and he bent forward until his face was pressed onto the table next to his impaled hand.
“You have one chance to answer my question or I’m going to kill this little fucker you love so much.” Her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head as I pressed harder and demanded answers. “Who is his mother, Kelly? Where did you take him from?”
“Mommy,” Sergey squeaked out. As I looked down at him, he cried, “Mommy, please help me.”
“Don’t hurt him, Hannah. I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry for everything. Now, will you let him go?” Kelly cried out to me and added absently through her distraught tears, “He’s everything to me, and I can’t live without him.”
My gaze turned to Rhys, and the disgust that was written across his face was as clear as the implications of their interactions with each other.
I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know how twisted in the head she really was. Looking across at her, I asked, “Do you have sex with him?”
Sergey started crying harder, and Kelly looked at me with hatred in her eyes as she finally admitted. “It’s not like we’re related. His mother was a problem, and Sergey was pulling away from me for another woman, so I got rid of her and took him for my own.”
“And that gave you the right to do that to him? He thought you were his mother, and you made it seem okay.” I shockingly added, “There is something seriously wrong with you.”
“The only thing wrong with me is letting you live. I should’ve killed you that night when you were being moved to the mansion for your offering. You’ve never been anything but trouble, and now, look where you’ve landed me. I wish you were never born, you stupid bitch.”
I should have expected her hateful words, but they slashed through me just the same. My grip began to loosen on the gun, and Rhys stepped beside me, taking it from my hand. He looked at me, locking eyes with love shining back, as he pressed the gun to the back of Sergey’s head and fired without breaking our gaze.
At that moment, I knew what true love was.
Chapter 29
Rhys
When I pulled the trigger, I expected Hannah to pull away from me in disgust, but as Kelly screamed, cried, and tried to scratch her way across the table to his body, Hannah smiled up at me as her eyes softened. I hadn’t intended to kill him, but I was tired of listening to that conniving cunt across the table saying hurtful things to Hannah.
If killing her precious whatever he was would either get her to talk or allow me to finally shut her up for good, then it was more than worth it.
“Why?” Kelly yelled out as she reached across the table, attempting to touch him, only to be held back by Lucian’s man. “He didn’t deserve to die.” Her words came out sputtered and broken from her tears, and her pain was clear.
Good. I hoped it hurt like fuck to see his brains splattered across the table as his blood drained from the hole in his head. She was a horrible person who hurt so many with her evil intentions, and causing her even a fraction of the hurt she’d caused was worth it.
James walked in and looked at Sergey’s bloody body across the table. He shrugged as he approached Lucian and Devlin. Looking down at Hannah, I said softly, “Go back with Stella, baby. You don’t have to worry about her anymore.”
She pressed up and brought her hand to my cheek as she kissed me, and when she pulled back, she brought her glassy blue eyes to mine. “Thank you.”
Without giving Sergey’s body or her nearly hysterical mother a second look, Hannah turned and walked to the end of the table. Stella said something to her and then to Hawk, who nodded before standing. Stella joined them, and he lifted his chin, letting me know Hannah was safe with him as he escorted them from the room. Just before she walked out in front of Hawk, Hannah looked back at me and mouthed, ‘I love you’.
The door closed behind him, and I stepped over to the private conversation going on as Kelly continued to whimper and cry over Sergey. As I approached, I knew something big was happening when I was met with three smiles.
“What did you find?” I asked James, who had a laptop and three journals in his hands.
“It seems Sergey was working from a separate set of books than the Syndicate, and even the feds, had access to. Starting with this house. After it was raided and Stella was rescued, Sergey bought it under a false identity and had it transferred to Kelly’s name. And from there, he started shuffling money around and making secret deals. There’s at least eight more ledgers, and it’ll take weeks to go through it all,” James explained.
Lucian shook his head and said, “I knew that fucker was making deals away from the families, but I had no idea he was actively building a new empire. Now, I’m wondering if he got caught on purpose.” Devlin gave him a quizzical look, and Lucian explained, “After testifying, he was getting a new identity and a fresh life. If he’d already acquired the resources for his new life and had them squirreled away with this crazy bitch, he would be able to start the empire he always wanted without having to answer to anyone but himself.”
“I found something else,” James said and raised his eyebrows with a smile.
“What?” I asked and looked back at a heavily guarded Kelly, who appeared to be sleeping until you’d see her body jerk and realized she was silently crying.
Her tears pissed me off because they weren’t for her actual daughter but for a boy she’d corrupted and raised to be her power puppet. When Sergey died, she stepped in and took over, planning all this madness that resulted in countless people’s lives being disrupted or destroyed.
James opened the laptop and a file appeared. He explained as Devlin, Lucian, and I began to read. “She kept a list of every potential family Sergey wanted to bring into his new empire. More than half are crossed out, so I can only assume they either didn’t want a part of this or, for some reason, chose not to participate. Then, there are the ones we dealt with last year, and they’ve have been marked as dead.”
I couldn’t believe some of the names I was looking at, but she was a thorough notetaker, outlining who she spoke with, when and where they spoke, their decisions, and who they wanted to nominate for membership. The remaining list wasn’t very long, and I picked up on one name, about halfway down, and pointed to show Lucian.
