Page 105 of Red Queen (Red Thorns Crew 3)

I shrugged. “You can rehash your regrets in prison. John? You ready to go? Because he isn’t worth our time anymore.”

Dad called out. “Wait!”

The desperation in his voice filled me with a satisfaction I’d never felt before. The only thing that came close was feeling Dani wrapped around me for the first time. Listening to my father’s voice crack. Seeing him handcuffed to that bed. Knowing damn good and well he was scared shitless of where he’d end up. Oh, it felt like victory. It tasted like success. And it sounded like the closing of a very, very dark chapter.

I looked at my brother. “Ready?”

He nodded. “Ready?”

Dad called out for us. “Wait, boys! Come on. I’m your fucking father, for crying out--don’t you step out that door. Don’t you--don’t you leave me like this. Max! John! Sons!”

We turned our backs to him and not once did we look back. I was proud of John, too. Because I just knew he’d give in to Dad’s pleas. We walked down the hallway as Dad’s voice followed us, echoing off the corners of the deserted place. With our heads held high and our shoulders rolled back, I finally felt free from that man’s shackles. I felt no remorse. No guilt. No sadness, and no grief. Our father had dug this hole for himself. He could climb out of it himself.

“I hope he likes the surprise I left behind for him,” John said.

I jammed my hand into the elevator button. “What?”

Dad’s voice echoed down the hallway. “Why the fuck is there piss everywhere!?”

John snickered. “Let’s go. Come on, come on, come on.”

My eyes widened. “You didn’t.”

John giggled like a little girl. “I know it’s petty, but damn if it isn’t hilarious.”

As the two of us stumbled into the elevator, we roared with laughter at the thought of our father helplessly peeing on the floor. Getting it all over his stuff.

“Do I even want to know what else you did?” I asked.

John grinned. “Let’s just say Dad has a colostomy bag, too.”

My jaw dropped open. “You didn’t.”

“What the fuck!?”

Dad’s voice filled the hallway just as the elevator doors closed, and I bent over with laughter. John slapped me on the back as I wheezed, imagining my father covered in his own piss and shit. Served him fucking right after the hell he put us through.

I finally rose up. “God, you’re fucking brilliant, you know that?”

John forced his laughter to stop. “I just--I had to, you know? It might be childish, but I can literally remember pissing myself as a kid whenever that man yelled at me.”

“About time he got a taste of his own medicine?”

“Fuck yeah. But did you say everything you wanted to? You didn't speak much in there.”

I nodded. “When I walked in, I realized that there wasn’t much I wanted to say, just things I wanted to show him.”

“Like?”

The elevator doors opened on the main floor. “Like the fact that I really don’t care what happens to him now.”

“Well, you certainly got that point across.”

“Good.”

John started out of the elevator. “So how are you feeling about this dinner with Dani’s parents?”

I walked alongside him. “Eh, it’ll go how it’ll go. But I want to be there to support her, because I know how hard it is to go against an overbearing father.”

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