How?
“You told me they were dead,” I growl, incensed she’d try to deceive me.
“I never said anything like that. You convinced yourself they were,” she quips.
I roar out loud again and punch the ground beside her with both fists. “You fucking lied to me!” She doesn’t even flinch while I hover close to her face.
“What else did you expect?” she murmurs, pushing away the tears glimmering in the moonlight. “You think I’d just tell you she survived so you can go and kill her again?”
“She deserves death,” I say, staring her down, but she won’t look away.
“So do you,” she retorts, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt to hear from her mouth.
“You still want to kill me, even when your sister is alive?” I growl.
Her face darkens. “To protect her!”
I’ve never seen this tenacity in her before, and it takes my breath away for a moment.
When I left that note for her, I thought she’d come to get revenge, and here she is, trying to stop me from having my own.
What a fool I was.
I pick up the knife and get up from the ground, leaving her there as I march back to the cabin.
“Where are you going?” she asks. “I thought you were going to—”
“Kill you?” I glance at her over my shoulder. “Do you think I could?”
She shudders in place. “Then what are you going to do?”
“Prepare.”
“For what?” she yells as she crawls up from the ground.
“To finish what I started.”
Jasmine
* * *
I don’t think twice as I run up to him and grab his hand right before he pushes down the door handle of the cabin.
“Please …” I mutter.
Liam pauses and looks at me over his shoulder, nostrils flaring.
“Don’t.”
I don’t know what else to say. What else to do to make him stop this quest for revenge.
I’ve tried. God, I’ve tried so many times to stop him, kill him, to win this fight with guns and knives and sheer force of will. I even tried with my body. But he is stronger, faster, more determined than I could ever be.
There’s only one thing I have left to offer.
The look in his eyes is murderous. Like a beast unchained. Violent. And I know it’s because I lied to him. Because I tried to protect my sister over myself.
But there is still a way.