Page 37 of The Last Time You Break Me

He looked put together but rough.

That was his style.

Mine was just fucking rough and right now, rough was all I wanted to be.

“You could have killed me!” I groused low and slow as it came out through clenched teeth. Controlled. Because I was about to go nuclear, and killing my girl’s father would be a sure way to get her to remove my heart and eat it.

“If it was for her, would it have mattered?” he questioned and the answer fell with ease.

“Not in the slightest,” I admitted, then I sighed as I needed more than anything to be only fighting one battle at a time. “Look, I never asked for this, Dom. But I won’t give it up either. I only feel alive when I’m around her. The darkness of my sins shines like the night sky, lit by the moon illuminating the abyss and I no longer feel so violated by them. We have lived a long life, brother. Don’t I deserve a little bit of peace?” I asked, bone weary and tired to my core. I never wanted to lose the only family I had ever known, but to live in misery was to live as a dead man walking. I no longer wanted to live for those around me but for myself, just fucking once.

“You deserve the world, Reg. You always have. My daughter just isn’t it. I won’t approve of this union. She deserves a man who would sacrifice it all for her. Who would fight against the odds so she has that one, single, glorified moment where she feels like she has been chosen above the world and not just settled on. Mia always used to tell me that was the greatest feeling of all. Feeling like she was worthy because I gave the world up just to hold her in my arms. I chose her over everything. You never chose Lara. You walked away. For four fucking years, you turned your back on the very woman you claim to love. I always thought you a man of your word, I guess I was wrong.”

Something dark inside of me reared its ugly head at that statement. Mainly because he was right. But I couldn’t live in the past, nobody ever aged in history and it was my intention to grow older or in my case older with the certifiably insane woman that I adored. I was about to say something else, I was about to try and find some other tactic to get through to the asshole I had grown up with but nothing felt right. As much as I loved and adored Dom, it wasn’t him I needed to prove my love to. I held the bridge of my nose as I fought for some sense of calm. Head thrown back, I let out a heavy sigh to the ceiling and shook my head. As I looked back at Dom, it was to see his stance unwavered. The bullet hole still sat in the wall spoke a testament of how he was feeling right now.

Just as I made the decision to let the dust settle and figure out a way to get through to Lara, Dom’s phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket with an undefined huff of frustration, “Speak,” he commanded before the color drained from his face. His eyes were hollowed and his cheekbones grew dominant as the life was literally sucked away with whatever words were spoken on the other side of the line.

“Dom?” I stepped forward, my heavy hand landed on his shoulder as I squeezed and willed some color back into his hard features. “Dom, man. What happened?”

The boys sensed the same thing I did and shouted up the staircase for Lara. When there was no answer, Dallas sprinted up to her room but returned empty-handed and with a frown on his confused face.

“She would have gone to The Gates. She always goes there when she needs to blow off some steam,” I uttered, not taking my eyes off Dom’s.

“How do you know that?” Dylan asked as he ran his fingers through his dirty blond hair.

“Because I know her.”

“Get her back here now, Techi,” Dom demanded before he hung up the phone and held it with such a vicious grip that I thought I heard it crack the edges.

“Dad?” Dalton called as he stepped to our side. “What’s the matter?”

“He has a son,” Were the words that whispered past numb lips that trembled. I had never seen him this shaken up before. When we got Mia sent back to us the way we did, the first thing he did was go insane. The world flashed red as he gave in to his vengeance and then he broke. It was night after night, locked away within the dungeon under our very feet, crying into my shoulder that brought him back as a father and boss. He needed to let it out and I allowed him to.

“Frazier. He had a son. A son with some whore, but a son nonetheless. That is who Lara saw,” he informed us and the puzzle pieces finally clicked into place.

“And what? He found out who his daddy really was, got pissed and built a rival empire just to get revenge?” It seemed like an unlikely event, but then I thought about it, and honestly, it made perfect sense. It was the least anyone who stood in the foyer would do if faced with the same situation. I ran a frustrated hand over my stubbled cheek as I enjoyed the friction that chafed against my palm and grunted in annoyance.

“At least we know now. We can stop him,” I stated with conviction. The growl in my voice was a wicked and brutal sound that traveled around the extensive-sized space with an ominous air.

Dom looked back at me, so many emotions thick in his gaze but he remained as stoic as ever. He shut it down, everything that would hinder the hunt was lost to the darkness he and his daughter shared so beautifully. I looked back at the boys, each one, in some way, had their grief written across the hard planes of their face and I decided I’d let them have it. They needed it.

They needed to feel the pain, if only for a moment.

Too much of that numb feeling we conditioned ourselves to live with, the more it would knock us on our asses the moment the tiniest bit of emotion crept back in to say hello.

The best way to build a tolerance to something your body detests is to allow it to feel it in small doses.

“I know it feels like we lost her all over again, but we haven’t. This pain isn’t new. It is something we have lived with since the day that it happened, we had just become accustomed to how much it hurt without having to explain it with our words. We’re being forced to explain it now. But that’s okay. Because we always communicate best when we’re covered in blood and the cries of our victims drown out the emotion falling from our lips or leaking down our cheeks.” I stared at each one in turn as I spoke with such conviction, I knew they had to feel it themselves. “Who’s ready for war?”

“We end this. Once and for all,” Dom sneered, the venom thick and it brought a smirk to my face.

“Damn right.”

His phone rang again and he reached for it with an angry hand, “What?” He fell quiet as he listened. “What the fuck do you mean you can’t find her? Where the fuck is my daughter!” he boomed as the chandelier above us swayed with the heated gush of air that expelled from his lungs. “Her phone? Where?”

I yanked the phone from his hand without a second thought as I placed it to my ear and I paced back and forth. “Start talking,” I growled with an evil that layered the tone in my voice.

Evil is what I would become if anybody had laid a hand on her.

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