Ethan continued. “That, however, would mean I’d have to start from scratch, since your husband felt compelled to do everything in his power to ensure my colleagues were incarcerated.”
“You were working with them,” I hissed out. “All of them?”
“Not Qadir and Nik,” he said. “I recognized from the beginning they’d be impossible to sway, like Dane. But that was okay. I didn’t need them. I had the other five—it’s a majority rules society, so I never even had to cast a swing vote, never had to risk the smallest hint of where my allegiance lies.”
“You just reaped all the benefit,” Dane said in disgust.
“I understand you’re upset,” Ethan told him. “I wasn’t exactly thrilled to have to go behind your back, Dane, but once you got your feet under you at Harvard I could see I wasn’t going to win you over to my plight any more than I did your father.”
“So you killed my parents.”
“Yes.”
“And you think you’re going to kill my son?”
“That depends on you and your wife.”
I swallowed down a lump of emotion—and horror.
I knew how all of this had started.
I knew how it would end.
“You want 10,000 Lux,” I said.
“Sign it over and your son lives. So do the two of you.”
My blood turned to ice. “And Kyle and Rosa?” I didn’t even want to think of Amano at the moment. For all I knew, he was lying lifeless on my kitchen floor, and that possibility nearly crippled me.
“No.” Ethan gave a slight shake of his head in answer to my question. “Witnesses. You know I can’t leave loose ends like that.”
“You son of a bitch,” Kyle spat.
“Sorry, kid. I like you and all—you’ve demonstrated a lot of potential. Unfortunately, you aligned yourself with the wrong side of the faction.”
“There’s no way I’ll let you get away with this,” Dane said.
“There’s no way you’re going to beat me this time, Dane. It’s all very simple. Don’t complicate it. You, your pretty wife, and your baby live. I get the Lux. It’s really that easy.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Kyle said.
Ethan gave him a sinister smile. “What’s that?”
“It’s not so much what, but … who.”
Ethan’s brow dipped.
Kyle grinned. “Amano.”
My gaze flashed toward the direction of the kitchen. Amano was in the corridor, bleeding from the shoulder and leg. My stomach wrenched.
His first shot was to the head of the soldier at Ethan’s side while Kyle simultaneously tackled Rosa—with the baby in her arms—as Ethan took his own shot at them.
I cried out.
Kyle’s quick reaction saved all three of them, though Amsel wailed in distress.
Ethan jerked out of the way as Dane took aim, and Ethan caught the bullet in his arm. Blood splattered everywhere and continued to as one of Ethan’s other guys shot at Amano, who dove behind a massive credenza. Kyle shot the other soldier flanking Ethan. Dane took out the final one.