Faith whimpered. “I told you, I don’t know anythin’. I swear. I’d tell you if I did. Please . . . let us go. I won’t say anythin’.”
Malicious laughter rolled from him. “You’re just as greedy as that little fucker was, aren’t you? This big ol’ house, all for yourself. Isn’t that right?”
“No,” she wheezed. “Please . . . I beg you . . . you can have anything. Just let my baby go.”
He reached out and touched Bailey’s hair, his voice turning menacingly soft. “She’s always been the answer, hasn’t she, Faith? Do I need to take it out on her to get the answer out of you?”
A sob wrenched from Faith’s throat, and there was nothing I could do.
My body vibrated with the need to destroy. To take out any threat.
Gun aimed at his back, I stepped out of the shadows. “I’d think twice about that.”
Forty-Five
Faith
Oh, God, Jace was here.
He was here.
Maybe he’d heard me screaming, after all.
Because there he was, coming around an armoire that sat to the side of the stairs, gun in his hand and vengeance in his eyes.
Felix whirled around, his own gun lifting. “I was wondering when you’d show your dumb ass back here. Was hoping we’d be long gone by then. I guess plans have to change sometimes, don’t they?”
I still couldn’t process that it was Felix. That the man had somehow inserted himself in our lives and I hadn’t suspected anything was wrong.
Courtney hadn’t known.
Oh goodness, Courtney.
My best friend.
I had no idea if she was fine. If she was home sleeping and had no clue or if this vile man had hurt her, too.
Jace laughed. Laughed a sound unlike any I’d ever heard him make before.
Cruel and every bit as savage as the man who’d held my daughter and me hostage for the last two hours. “Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes plans change. Because the last thing I expected to have to do tonight is take you out. Yet, here I am.”
Felix’s nostrils flared, and he took a step in Jace’s direction. It was as if they both were magnets. Drawn to the flames that were gonna burn all of us alive.
Because I could feel it.
Something cruel and depraved pulsing through the air. Sucking out the oxygen. Leaving the gut feeling that none of us were gonna walk away from this unscathed.
I wanted to beg Jace to go. The only thing I wanted was for him to take Bailey with him.
Protect her and provide for her.
Because Joseph’s debt had come due, and I wasn’t going to let Bailey be the cost.
I’d pay it. I’d pay it if it meant my baby would be okay.
“Jace,” I whispered.
For the barest moment, those copper eyes flashed to me.
But in that glance, I heard a million pleas.
Don’t move.
Don’t say anything.
Let me pay.
Let me pay.
It is my fault.
I owe you this.
And I wanted to take back every single thing I’d accused him of earlier.
Tell him I understood.
That whatever Joseph had done, he’d done himself. He’d brought all this on us. Put us in danger.
Felix erased another inch of space between them. And I saw it, Jace easing back, almost imperceptibly, but I knew.
I knew he was luring the man away.
Protecting us the way he’d always promised he would.
“Joseph has something that is mine,” Felix said. “I’m not leaving here without it. I want that log.”
A log.
That was what he’d been looking for all this time? Breaking into my house and terrorizing us for some stupid log I hadn’t even known existed?
Felix had been enraged when he hadn’t found it in the safe. He’d been sure I’d been hiding it all along . . . that I’d already removed it and had hidden it somewhere else in the house.
He’d been ranting, spouting a bunch of names that I wanted to purge from my mind.
Names of people I had thought had been Joseph’s friends who were nothing but a disgusting family tree of organized crime.
Felix thought I was still trying to protect Joseph.
Never.
Hate glinted in Jace’s eyes. “Putting a bullet through his head wasn’t enough?”
“He was responsible for my uncle being killed. He stole from our family. He knew the rules. He broke them. His grace period had run out.”
“Then what do Faith and Bailey have to do with it?”
Felix shrugged. “Collateral damage, I suppose. I was sure she knew where it was, that she was protecting that traitor, but I’m beginning to think she was telling the truth. It’s too late now, though, isn’t it?”
He said all of this as if none of our lives mattered.
All of us expendable. Greed the greatest game.
Sickness clawed at my insides, and sitting there, I wanted to weep.
Weep at the cruelness of it all.
“She doesn’t know anything. Just . . . put down the gun, let them go, and you and I will find that log.”