“I’m guessing you’re here for Kara, so why don’t you just leave my other friend with me?” Drake asks in too calm of a way.
My eyelids slowly lift again, as someone snorts.
The four guys are in Death Dealer cuts, stoically eyeing us, sans for the one Drake is talking to. That guy puts his gun away, shrugging.
“Sorry. We’re all taking a walk across the street right now. It’s best if no one tries to be a hero,” he tells Drake.
“We should have gone shopping,” Drake says as he gives us both a pointed look.
As one goon opens the door for us, I swallow the bile back, and ignore the sick knot twisting in my stomach.
Gunshots startle me before I even make it all the way outside. Those came from inside the warehouse where Rush is…
I stumble, eyes widening as my heartbeat all but stalls.
Someone shoves me from behind, saying something, but my heartbeat is all that’s in my ears as that knot expands with the next two bouts of gunfire.
The door opens just as we cross the street, and one of Pop’s flunkies starts glaring at me. The only thing my eyes are searching for when I cross the threshold with zero resistance is Rush.
And I stumble over my own two feet when I finally spot him face down with a puddle of blood around him.
That’s when my knees give out and my heartbeat goes still.
“What do you know, Dash was right. That really is Kara. Now that I see her up close, I can tell,” someone says.
“I told you to clear him out of here,” a familiar voice drawls, even as I continue to stare straight ahead at Rush’s lifeless body. “I didn’t come here for her, but I’d like to enjoy her being lucid and not catatonic as I cut her spoiled tongue out.”
I’m dizzy. Sick. So sick.
Rush’s body is motionless, and the blood continues to spread from him. His back isn’t rising and falling to signal his chest is doing the same.
No breaths.
No movement.
No.
No.
No.
“No!” I shout as a slightly aged version of my father steps into my line of view, crouching beside the lifeless body.
His eyes level mine with a cool, sinister look, but I’m barely keeping my knees locked enough to hold me up.
“Welcome home, dear. I finally got rid of that boy who caused you so many problems. Show daddy some gratitude,” the twisted son of a bitch says as his grin only grows.
My knees slam the concrete when standing finally becomes too difficult, and the edges of my vision dim before it all goes black.
Chapter 32
KARA
“I want to spend my life with you, because I’m tired of wasting the chance to live on simply existing,” I whisper across Rush’s lips as I come down on top of him, ready to blow his mind with all my best moves from the top.
He rarely gives me the top.
He drags me down by the back of my neck, hungrily kissing me as I slide down on him, moaning at how good it continues to feel to have him inside me.
“I don’t want to leave this bedroom. Let’s just start our lives and leave Halo tomorrow,” I add.
His hand stabs into my hair, and the kiss gets more bruising.
“Tomorrow,” he echoes, brushing his lips over mine.
It’s almost the only thing he’s said since I walked my drunk ass into this room and demanded to be violated.
“Tomorrow,” I say again.
“If you say it when you’re sober, I’ll take you away tomorrow,” Rush promises in a soft, barely spoken whisper. “Or I may just fucking taking tomorrow simply because it’s all I fucking want,” he adds, biting my lip as he gives me a violent thrust from the bottom.
My breath hisses through my lips, and I kiss him harder, savoring every second in this bubble.
Tomorrow.
Vacantly, I stare ahead, hearing the laughter around me. Seeing the many faces. There’s a chorus of screams as Herrin punches Drex four times in the face with brass knuckles.
My hands bound tightly behind me, all I can do is watch.
I’m too detached from the scene, because my eyes keep moving back to the puddle of blood in the center of the floor. Hot tears roll down my cheeks, and my lip trembles as I’m forced to look back over at my brother, just as his head slings to the right, blood spraying from his mouth.
He collapses to the ground, and Eve cries out, begging for mercy from the devil who has none.
“Oh, sweet little vixen, I’m just getting started. Later, when I’ve humbled his worthless ass, I’ll let him watch me fuck you,” Herrin assures her, that familiar look in his eyes.
Pop always did get high on the power. Right now, he has it in spades.
Snake is missing.
Dash is…why is Dash the one holding Eve back? When did he get out of the hospital?