Page 43 of The Last Time You Break Me

Everything about that moment felt unbearably right. It was like I was coming home from war, returning to the one place that held my solace.

I already felt it, the danger.

I’d become a dangerous man for this woman and even her father wouldn’t be safe.

I stood as I picked up the discarded chain from the ground. “We need to leave. I have to have a word with my best-fucking-friend.”

I tore down the drive and had hardly pulled to a stop before I ensured Lara was stable, jumped off and prowled toward the front doors. I kicked them open as I charged into the foyer, “Dom!” I bellowed and my voice carried around the entire house. “I’m going to fucking kill you!” The boys barreled in from the lounge, disheveled and rugged in a complete mess that stank of distress and fear. “So he told you then? I guess that is the only goddamn reason you’re not out there tearing the damn streets apart trying to find your precious sister!” I couldn’t hide the venomous sneer in my tone, nor did I want to. These boys were old enough to know better. To know right from wrong, just like Lara. She would never have stood by if this had happened to one of them. That fact only infuriated me more.

“Reg,” Dylan sighed with sorrow.

“Don’t! Don’t you fucking dare! Look, look at her fucking face. Did you care when he had her tied up and was fucking cutting her?” The edges of my vision were dark, splotched in red and there was only one person I wanted to take my wrath out on.

The door creaked open a little more behind me as Lara walked in with a stoic expression as she took in the sight of her brothers. She scoffed as she folded her arms across her chest. “Figures.”

“We’re sorry, Lar. Once we found out, he wouldn’t let us leave,” Dalton mumbled with regret thick in his voice.

“Whatever,” she responded, but I could see the disappointment and sadness in the eyes she tried to make so fierce.

“Dom!” I roared with a new found anger at the sight of her underlying vulnerability.

“I take it they are all dead?” he answered in a casual tone that acted like a grater to every single one of my senses as steam practically blew from my ears.

I spun on him as he walked so carefree into the foyer and leaned against the table by the front door. I lunged at him, fist swung high as I brought it down in a swift right hook that sent his head spinning. “What the fuck is wrong with you!” I shouted, my body trembled as my anger rose as my blood boiled with a frenzy to kill.

He was still my best friend. The father of my girl. I couldn’t kill him but fuck me if I didn’t want to.

He swung back and missed. I’ve fought side by side with this man for forty-five years. I knew his every move. But I couldn’t deny that I also wanted to feel the burn. A fight was no good unless you could feel the rush. He swung again and I placed my jaw in front of it. He connected with my face and sent a wild ache sprawling throughout my jawline and cheek. I grunted, then smirked like a shark as I threw a brutal punch to his core. He doubled over, breath broken and sharp as he tried to regain stability after having the wind knocked out of him.

Lara rushed forward and placed her hand on my shoulder, my arm coiled back ready for another hit. I stopped and peered down at her. She didn’t need words, just those beautiful fucking emeralds. I stepped back and sneered, disdain trained on the back slumped against the wall.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” she stated as she pulled back her right arm, fist clenched, and just as the room felt she was going to land a punch of her own, she swiftly brought her knee up andplanted one vicious strike to his groin. The color drained from his face as his lips tinted blue. His eyes widened and pain unlike anything I had ever seen flickered in his gaze.

Ouch.

Then she stepped back and stood at my side as I leaned against the bottom of the staircase and fought for a calm that wasn’t coming. “She is your fucking daughter, Dom. Haven’t you put her through enough?” I asked as the tension drained out of me. It was a genuine question. One I needed a goddamn answer to.

“Everything I have done for her, for my boys, is all because I love them. You know that.” He wheezed as he straightened himself with great difficulty.

“I thought I did. Until you had your princess kidnapped and tortured to prove a fucking point. All because you were too fucking stubborn to accept me at my word, that I love her. That I’d fucking die for her.”

“Babe, I know that you’re pissed… but that was just foreplay.” She smirked and I growled, my jaw hard as I ground my teeth. The sound was disgusting and evident in the room. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Not funny and something you shouldn’t have fucking had to handle!”

“Wasn’t supposed to be funny. But for your information, Reginald Ramero, I amalwaysfunny.” She shrugged before she turned back to her father. “Why? He is your best friend. I’m your daughter. Was it so hard to just be happy for us?” she asked with something withdrawn in her tone. The darkness was keeping her safe right now, but it would soon fade and I wondered what would be left. If she’d allow me to see any more of her vulnerability.

“Why?” I bellowed outrageously.

“Dad,” Dallas warned him to answer.

“You’re old enough to be her dad!” Dom roared, shaking the rafters as his heavy hands slammed down on the tabletop in the foyer, upheaving all the letters which sat there as he sent them on a downfall to the ground.

“I’m not her dad, Dom,” I replied with a sigh as I shook my head and straightened myself to my full height. I stared back at him, a taunt in my dark and kill-laden gaze. “But I’m most definitely her daddy.” I took a menacing step forward and that vicious stone-set face of his shattered and a huge humor-filled laugh echoed from his chest. It stopped me in my tracks and I turned to look back at an equally confused Lara.

“Watch it, asshole. That is still my daughter.” He held his belly as he stumbled forward and brushed away the invisible lint from his suit jacket. “And I’d still shoot you,” he added seriously. “It may not be a method either of you approve of, but it was a test. My test. I have always approved of you with my daughter, Reg. I’m a father. My greatest wish for any of my children is untold happiness. No matter who gives it to them. And you, my friend, are my brother. I knew this wasn’t a game to you, but I had to be sure. I had to be certain you really would tear it all apart for her,” he explained with triumph like it was so fucking normal.

We called Lara a psychopath, I began to think the apple didn’t fall too far from the crazy tree.

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