Vicious Minds: Part 3 (Children of Vice 6)

I wanted to scream.

Everything, everything I’d worked so hard for, dedicated my life to…he was deciding for me when to stop.

He had tripped me at the finish line.

Everyone was saying I’d betray him, and he had betrayed me.

I should have never fallen in love with him.

Never!

ETHAN

“Take us back down. Then one of you come out,” I ordered before dropping my phone.

She was asleep in my arms, her cheeks had tears on them for the first time. She didn’t cry in front of me—until that moment. I stabbed her in the back.

I’d set Gigi’s voice on a recording and waited for the moment Calliope told me about the entrance before pressing play. I knew that even on the plane, in the middle of the take-off, she’d still be worried and go check. She wouldn’t think twice about my going with her either. I didn’t want to take her down like this in front of my parents. So, it was the only way.

Traitor. Betrayer. That was what she had called me. That was what I was to her now. I didn’t know how long it would take her to forgive me. But I’d work on that the moment I came back. For now, the most important thing was making sure we all lived to get to that point.

I hugged her, waiting in silence as the jet made its way back down to the airfield. I was trying not to think. I was trying to tell myself I’d done the right thing. And yet, the words traitor and betrayer did not sit well with me. But if she knew all of the truth, she’d use harsher words.

Sighing, I lifted her off me after the jet had landed.

Pressing the button for the door, I came back out with her cradled in my arms. My mother and father slowly got out of their chairs, glancing at me, both confused and stunned.

Did they think I killed her?

It honestly might have looked that way to them. But I didn’t focus on them. I looked to Dino as he came out of the cockpit.

“Open the door and get Gigi. They are staying home,” I ordered, waiting for him to do what I said.

It took a few seconds for him to understand but got the doors open only for me to see snow coming down and the black Range Rover waiting at the bottom of the steps, where both Wyatt and Killian stood in the cold. They, too, had the same reactions on their face at seeing her in my arms. But I didn’t bother explaining. Instead, I stepped down the stairs slowly and moved to the back of the car. Wyatt opened it for me to put her in and lay her chair back slightly.

Dino was already behind me with Gigi, so I put he

r beside her mother as well, brushing the hair from her little face. Before backing out of the car, I looked to my brother and then Killian, both of them had a few cuts and healing bruises on them still. I stepped forward.

“If anything happens to either of them, I will skin you both.”

“And if you die on this little mission?” Killian asked me, bored.

“Don’t worry about fighting each other to become the next Ceann Na Conairte. She’ll kill you both before that happens. Because neither of you was ever meant to be in my spot,” I replied and turned to head back up the stairs.

I didn’t look back.

And I wouldn’t look back.

I wouldn’t even feel guilt, not until I finished this and returned home to them both. I wasn’t going to fucking die.

Because I was the Ceann Na Conairte, and no one was going to take my fucking birthright from me.

Not my father.

Not my brother.

Not my uncles or cousins.