Remembering my mission.
Why I’d come here in the beginning.
I was doing this for them. Because I owed them their safety. The ability to move on.
And that was exactly what I was going to give them.
Forty-Two
Jace
Twenty-Nine Years Old
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jace’s hands fisted on top of his desk as he shot to standing from his plush leather chair.
Unable to believe what he was seeing.
Who he was seeing.
Shock blistered through his senses, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the man who’d just walked through his office door.
Hot hatred spiked at the center of him.
He’d have thought that, after all this time, it would have abated.
Dimmed to a slight disdain.
But it was this ugly mass at the center of him that had only rotted and festered and grown.
Like a cancer that fed off the whole parts of him until there was nothing left but decay.
Joseph took a step forward.
Anxious and antsy.
Itchy.
A bead of sweat gathered at his temple and slipped down the side of his face.
“Jace,” he said, his name both contempt and an appeal from his tongue.
“What do you want, cousin?” It was nothing but a sneer. “I thought I told you I didn’t ever want to see you again?”
There was a threat behind it.
Because Jace was done. He had no sympathy left. Nothing left to give.
Joseph had already stolen it all.
Glancing away, Joseph roughed a hand over his face. “I need your help.”
Unbelievable.
“I told you the last time that it was the last time. You were supposed to get your shit straight and never show your face here again. That was the deal, remember?”
It was the damn deal, yet there he stood, sniffing up the money tree like the sleazy, cheating bastard he was.
So goddamned squeaky clean on the outside while the inside was foul and dirty.
“Things changed, Jace.”
“How’s that?”
He didn’t answer, just shifted uneasily on his feet.
“You gamble it away?” Jace demanded. He could feel another piece of himself breaking free and slipping down into that vortex.
Deeper and darker and bleaker.
Joseph swallowed thickly. No words were needed for the admission.
Motherfucker.
How could he do this to them?
Jace wanted to end him.
Or maybe run to Faith and tell her everything.
Convince her to walk away from her husband. Wrap her up and drag her to safety.
Seeing the fury in Jace’s expression, Joseph chuckled through scornful laughter, like he had the right to be angry with Jace.
“Let’s not pretend like what you did was for me when we both know you did it for her. It’s your fault I’m in this mess.”
“My fault? You’re the one who came here begging for help. You’re the one who was all over that deal the second I offered it.”
“Because it’s the only thing she ever wanted.” Bitterness filled Joseph’s gaze when he looked over at him. “But you already knew that, right? Which was why you gave it to me.”
Jace’s hands tightened almost painfully as he pressed them to the wood and tried to remain rooted when the only thing he wanted to do was fly over his desk and throw a fist or two.
Mouth watering with how sweet that kind of vengeance might taste.
Joseph laughed as his eyes moved over Jace’s face. Like he was amassing the proof and quickly coming to a guilty verdict. “You still love her, don’t you?”
Jace’s teeth ground, restraint crumbling. “I’m warning you, Joseph—”
His scoff was straight disrespect, his own hatred bleeding through. “How does it feel to want what’s mine?”
Jace was around the desk and across the floor before either of them could make sense of it. Joseph’s back was slammed against the wall, Jace’s forearm pinning him at the throat.
The piece of shit squirmed, trying to break free.
He’d once been as close as a brother.
Once.
“And why’s that, Joseph? Why do you have what I want?” Jace spat in his face.
You thief. You fucking thief.
He grunted his response, the answer always clear.
But Jace had walked away like a fool.
That day he’d gone back to Broadshire Rim, he should have flown out of Ian’s car like he’d wanted to do and told Faith everything.
Made her see.
Instead of going after the one thing that would ever truly make him happy, he’d turned his back and embarked on a mission to prove every motherfucker out there wrong.
He never should have had his brother dump him in an unfamiliar city where he’d thought his only option was completely starting over.
If he could do it all over, he would.
But he couldn’t.
And he could no longer be any part of that world without losing his mind.
He had to move on.
Forget it all.
“Get the fuck out and don’t ever come back,” Jace gritted close to his face, pushing him harder against the wall. “Do you understand me? I don’t care what you got yourself into. I don’t care what you owe. I don’t care what you have coming to you. Do you get what I’m saying to you?”