Page 146 of Severed Rivalry
Survival is a beautiful, raw, brutal thing.
44
six plus
Cian
“Now what?” My brother stares at me as if my neck has sprouted eighteen mini-heads and all are talking to him.
That’s the question, isn’t it.
I shrug. “No clue.”
I’m standing in his townhome in Ken Caryl three days later. It took everything in me to leave my family to come, but I needed to be here.
Christian and Ayla are home planning a trip to Greece in the next week or so. But my brother and Ren Gallo, who’s proven to be the kind of man you want at your back, and I stand in his small gourmet kitchen staring at each other and the file of papers he has open on his kitchen island.
I have to stop looking at files on islands. It’s always shit. I smile at my own ridiculousness. Only I would think it’s the situation that’s the problem and not the data inside.
“Why are you smiling?” Ren asks.
“Nothing.” I sigh deep and long. “Options… We send the girls home after they understand the significance of what’s to come. We place them in foster care. Or one of us adopts five teenage girls.”
Ren shivers.
The scoff that comes from Liam would be comical if itweren’t real. “Or—” he offers, “And I like this one best, we use them to draw Jonas out.”
“You want to use them—” I pause, trying to get my anger in check. “As bait?” I know the look on my face is as shocked as Ren’s appears.
Liam shrugs.
“Six young girls. A full moon in twenty-four days. And hisproperty”—he uses air quotes on the word but uses it nonetheless—“right here. We could take him out without anyone ever knowing and reunite the girls with their mothers.”
Ren puts a hand up and interjects, “Fuck that. Those women didn’t seem to care their daughters were being mutilated and?—”
He never finishes his thought, because my anger is ready to burst. “What the fuck, Li?”
“Oh shit,” Ren mutters and takes two large steps back, his hands planted firmly on his hips.
Liam doesn’t look fazed.
So I ask again, lethally quiet this time, “Six? You want to use Renée as bait?”
“I want to ask her what she wants. She’s sharp. She gets a vote.”
“She’s fourteen.” I extend a hand like that fact should be obvious. “She’s barely celebrated her fourteenth birthday, and she’s been to the gates of hell and back. No. One hundred percent no.”
“She gets a vote.”
“She doesn’t get a vote on her hair color, Li.”
He lifts a shoulder. “She’s the problem. She’s the one that got away. She’shis.”
“She’smine.” It comes out on a roar.
Liam nods nonchalantly. “I know, brother. I’m not making light of anything. But if we can draw the fucker here…”
He doesn’t finish the thought, but Ren does, staring at the paperwork. “Then we have him on our turf, at our mercy, and can plan all contingencies.” To me, he adds, “These six got away. Next month, it’ll be someone else’s little girl. And the month after that and the month after that. If we don’t sever the headfrom the snake, the circumcision continues. Renée is saved. Everyone else is hurt. We’re the ones with the power to save them all. Sixplus.”
