I do as I’m told, silently wishing the boys would hurry the fuck up. I could speed up the process by calling out for them, but that’s just asking for a slit throat.
“Why?” I ask as she presses a button on the key fob and the trunk of the car glides open.
London just laughs. “Why else?” she tells me, indicating for me to get in. “It’s the same reason every other bastard in this godforsaken town wants you dead. Money, power, and Dynasty. They were all supposed to be mine until you came along and ruined it.”
I let out a breath, filled with disbelief. How could she be so shallow? All this time I’ve been mourning and grieving for my mother who I never got a real chance to meet, and then this is what I get? Who the fuck did I piss off in the underworld?
Though, one question still bugs me—why the hell do I find her voice so familiar? There’s no way I would remember it from being a newborn baby.
“Don’t. Fucking. Move,” Carver’s smooth, deep tone echoes through the massive garage as I hear the soft movements of the guys stepping in around him.
My mother laughs, turning and bringing me with her to find all four of the guys standing in the garage, watching with wide eyes as they take in the knife at my throat, but not only that, realizing that the woman who was supposed to be dead eighteen years ago is standing before them, alive and well … though ‘well’ probably isn’t the word I’d use for it. She’s definitely sick in the head.
“Take one more step,” London purrs. “And you’ll never see your little pet again.”
Carver calls her bluff, slowly pulling out a gun and holding it up, aimed straight between my eyes. “Drop your knife and I might just let you live.”
London laughs. “Drop your gun, and I might not slit your girlfriend’s throat.”
Silence fills the garage and after a long, drawn-out minute, London starts to get nervous. “Put your gun down,” she yells at him as the boys slowly begin to creep closer. My eyes flash around, meeting Cruz wide stare and then Kings. They both looking fucking sick, while Grayson just looks pissed.
Catching their movements, London starts pulling me toward the driver’s door of the car and I close my eyes as she shuffles around, the knife pressing too hard against my throat and making me want to hurl.
She gets the door open, realizing just how far the boys will go to keep me alive, even if it means risking me in the process. She thought her plans were seamless. She thought they would just give up and let her drag me away with a knife at my throat.
Yeah fucking right.
She thought wrong.
“You have two fucking seconds,” Carver tells her, his voice low and thick with a dark, menacing promise that on any other day would have a chill sweeping down my spine. “Let her go, or I will shoot.”
“Back off,” she yells, keeping her body hidden behind me.
“One,” Carver says, his voice cutting through the garage like the deep rumbling thunder coming from outside.
“Two.”
London pushes me hard, throwing me forward, directly in line with Carver just as he pulls his trigger, sending a bullet spiraling toward me. A loud scream pierces through the garage but the deafening BANG from his gun completely drowns it out.
The car door is slammed just as an agonizing burn shoots through my body, feeling like I’ve just been stabbed by a sharp branding iron.
I suck in a gasp, hearing three more shots ring out, but I fall to the ground, my eyes wide as I meet Carver’s horrified stare.
Tires squeal on the polished concrete floor and the car behind me flies out through the closed garage door, tearing it right off its hinges and getting away as my hand falls to my stomach, instantly drenching in blood.
He shot me.
The blood pours out of me in waves and just as I look across at King, Cruz, and Grayson, and find them racing toward me, my head starts to spin and I fall to the ground, feeling the life quickly draining out of me.
Darkness swallows me and as I hear a loud, panicked “WINTER” tearing through my father’s garage, my world fades to nothing.
Don’t worry, Daddy. I’m finally coming home to you.