Page 69 of Vicarious

Phae zooms off and doesn’t bother to stop at stop signs or red lights. I don’t stop either, collateral damage and the attention we’re drawing that I’m going to have to clean up be damned. Attention that, knowing Phae, is exactly what she wants. The more attention on this, the less ways for me to salvage this even if I catch her and she knows it.

“Open the top,” Dele says, not taking her eyes off Phae speeding away from us as she ties up her hair and pulls on a pair of goggles.

While I do, Dele takes off her seatbelt, takes her guns off her hips, and carefully balances to stand out the top of the car.

When she doesn’t immediately shoot, I demand, “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

“Waiting for her to get us onto a free stretch of the freeway so I won’t accidently hit or kill someone else,” Dele shouts down at me without moving her outstretched arms or disturbing the focus she has on Phae’s car.

“I hate that you care about other people so fucking much.”

“One of us has to.”

Late in the evening on a weeknight with my men posing as traffic directors, cops, and other authority to detour other traffic, it doesn’t take long before we reach a long stretch of freeway where the only cars are us, some of mine and Isabella’s men speeding behind us, and Phae driving as fast as she can away.

Dele starts shooting the minute everything is clear. Her arms and her aim never falter. Even with the recoil from shooting a gun in each hand. Even while I’m speeding at damn near two hundred miles an hour. Even with Phae swerving back and forth out the way when she realizes she’s being shot at. Dele is tenacious and focused.

It’s only a matter of time before Dele’s bullets reach a mark. Whether her intent was to kill Phae or just stop her car matters little to me. As long as she stops Phae.

Dele does stop Phae when two bullets strike and pierce Phae’s back two tires causing the remaining rims of the car to screech loudly and spark before Phae can slow down. And when she does slow down, the car spins out of control before its momentum is slowed by the grassy sides of the freeway. The car stops completely a few feet into the woods.

I stop my car with a loud screech in the emergency lane just outside where Phae has landed. The men helping us chase her form a perimeter with their cars and get out with their guns pointed towards Phae and use their car doors as cover.

By the time I walk to Phae, she’s managed to open the door is trying to crawl out the front seat. If the car was anything close to the quality of the plastic pieces of shit available to the public, she’d likely be dead from the impact already. As it is, she’s just dazed, and her head is going to be hurting for a few days.

“No,” she says when she sees me. She shakes her head and says, “No, no, no.”

She falls out from her seat onto the ground. I simply squat down to look at her. She’s not getting away again any time soon.

“Really, Phae,” I say to her. “Did you really think you’d be able to run away from me forever?”

Phae coughs, giving up crawling as she rolls over onto her back.

“Fuck you, Adrian fucking Blake. Or do you prefer Viper?”

This woman used to be my wife. Not just legally or in name. She was my wife in my heart. I should feel something for her pain. At having her disdain and fury and betrayal directed at me. I thought I would feel something, even with everything clear and out in the open between Dele and I. The same something that made me tell Phae I wasn’t going to kill her back at my estate when I told her everything.

But now I feel nothing. Nothing except the excited thrill I always feel at the obvious terror of my prey when I’ve cornered them. When they know they’re at the mercy and grace of Viper, and there’s nothing to be done to change that.

I smirk. “So now you get it.”

I snatch her up to her feet by her arm, ignoring her wince of pain. Then I throw her at Dele’s feet and point my gun at her.

“So this is how it ends?” Phae asks while glaring up at both me and Dele.

“I should have done it as soon as we found you,” I say.

Phae’s eyes narrow. I start to pull the trigger. Dele’s hand over mine stays my judgment.

31

Dele

I never thought I’d see the day where Viper treated Phae so callously. Where he’d drag her out of a crashed car, throw her onto the ground, and prepare to kill her like he would any other mark.

Part of me is elated to know that Viper was serious when he said he loved me and that I was never second and always first and that he’s more than happy to prove it. But I can’t let him kill Phae. Because Viper may not care that she’s the mother of his children. But I do care that she’s the mother ofmine.

Viper was right when he said if he’d killed Phae all those years ago, I wouldn’t have them. For that, I’m going to owe Phae forever. I’m also not going to be the one that has to tell my children one day that I stood by and watched their father kill their birth mother no matter how justified it might have been. That’s not how I repay people who have sacrificed as much as and given me as much as Phae has. That’s not how I plan to let Viper repay people either.

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