I fought.
Against the hold. Trying to get to her.
Then Lex got down on the ground behind her, kneeling, grabbing for the waistband of her pants.
And the swirling in my stomach rose up my throat.
At the same moment, Alex's head rose to mine. For the barest of seconds, she was there. And then the mask came down and I knew she was gone. She was accepting her fate. She was going to be raped and killed by Lex Keith.
Just like her mother.
It was then, watching her shut down, watching Lex's sick face twist in desire as he pulled down her pants. It was then that I realized I still had a card to play.
It was something that came back to me the night before when I was laying in bed not sleeping and thinking over my conversations with Alex.
Like when she told me about her mom. Told me about what her mom went through at Lex's hands. For years. Before she got away. And when I thought about it hard enough, it made sense. There was even a similarity.
“You're gonna watch me fuck the woman you love as she screams for you to save her and you know damn well you can't,” Lex's eyes bore into mine as his hands went to the front of his pants.
My eyes begged her to snap out of it.
To tell him herself.
Why wouldn't she? It could save her. Was it worse, somehow, for her to admit it? Did she even admit it to herself? It wouldn't exactly be out of character for her to bury that and pretend it didn't exist.
But it did.
And if she wasn't going to use it, well, I sure as fuck was.
“Knew you were a sick fuck, Lex,” I said, feeling Greg's arm tighten around me, seeing Lex pause and look at me. “Didn't think you'd be as twisted as to rape your own fuckin' daughter.”
The look of shock over his face would have been priceless in any other situation. His eyes bugged. His shoulders slumped.
I was vaguely aware of Alex's eyes snapping to mine.
“What?” Lex growled.
“Yeah. You stupid shit. Got all these men, got all these hackers, looking all into your shit and somehow you missed that little gem.”
“No,” he said, moving away from Alex, zipping his pants.
“Yep. Know who her mom is? Think hard. Hell, just take a fuckin' look at her,” I spat. “I've seen a picture. She's the fuckin' spittin' image of her mother. Shouldn't be too hard for you to draw up the memory. Since you kept her in your house, beating and raping her for years before she finally got shot of you.”
Lex moved around toward Alex, grabbing her face. And I got to watch as his own face paled until he was practically see-through. Then he dropped her like she burned him, moving away.
“Allison,” he whispered, shaking his head.
I didn't know her name. Alex never said it. But Lex was clearly seeing a ghost from his past.
“Yeah. One of the many women you've broken in your time. She just so happened to be lucky enough to get some help along the way. Got a life. Raised her daughter. Killed herself though when Alex was sixteen. Know anything about that?” One look was all I needed to know he did. That he had, like Alex guessed, seen her that day. Leading her to kill herself to save them both. “Yeah. I bet you do. Killed herself that day, ya know. That's when your daughter decided to dedicate her life to taking you down.”
“Daughter...” he repeated, looking down at Alex who had pushed herself back onto her knees and pulled her pants back up.
“Yeah you...”
My voice trailed off. Or, rather, it was drowned out, by the sounds of gunfire. And then, incredibly, almost unbelievably, explosions. Enough that the ground shook. Enough that Greg got startled and I got my window. And I fucking took it.
I wasn't aware of Alex or Lex while my anger drained into bashing Greg's face fuckin' unrecognizable.
But then there was a scream and my head shot up to see Lex's hands covering his face, his groaning very much like that of a dying animal.
And there was Alex, hands shaking holding the pocketknife I had slipped her the day we went to Oscar Street. It was bloody. As were the hands Lex was holding to his face.
I flew across the room, taking Lex out with one punch, and grabbing Alex.
“We got to go... now!” I yelled over the sound of the world ending around us. “Doll,” I said, hands to her shoulders, shaking her hard once, until she looked at me and the mask fell. “We gotta go.”
“I stabbed him,” she said, looking down at his body.
“God damn right you did,” I agreed, pulling her toward the door, but not before I snagged a gun off Greg's prone body. “You finally got some vengeance. Now let's get the fuck outta dodge.”TwentyShooterBeing held captive wasn't as bad as it sounded. I mean, the no wifi, no TV, no booze, no sexy as fuck women around to chat up? Yeah, that part sucked. But just sitting around in a room twiddling my thumbs, listening to the dipshits guarding me spill all of Lex's secrets? Yeah, that was almost good enough for prime time entertainment. Partly because their vocabulary consisted of cusses and the word list a third grader would need to memorize to pass his state exams. And, seeing as I came from some backwards hick fucking town in the south with a sorry excuse for a school system, yeah, me saying their vocab was lacking was saying something.
But it was also partly entertaining because they were so busy shooting the shit that I could have gotten away at least a dozen times if I wanted to.
Not that I didn't want to.
I was just trying to play it smart.
I didn't know what kind of deal Breaker had going on.
Or his chick for that matter.
And, make no mistake, that was his chick.
I saw them the day after he took her and I could already see something there. They were both oblivious to it aside from maybe some sexual tension. But it was there.