Total pages in book: 170
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
“Braelynn, no!”
DECLAN
THREE WEEKS PRIOR
Everything feels colder the moment the doors close at the far end of the hall. They shut with a gentle thud and lock with a soft click, ending my sight of her limp body being carried away. The next steps are simple enough. It’s been done a hundred times or more. It’s what has to happen. She’ll be tortured until the information we seek is provided and verified. And then she’ll be dealt with and disposed of. I swallow thickly at the thought.
Her screaming my name in fear is engraved on my heart. Even now in the silence I can still hear it. Dread flows like a fog through me. There have been countless times when I’ve watched men and women alike struggle against their inevitable fate for daring to go against my brothers and me.
Braelynn, though … the betrayal runs deep in my veins and chills me to my core.
I can’t fucking believe she did it.
“Don’t leave her side.” I’m only aware I’ve murmured the command when Nate looks back at me with a questioning look in his eye.
“Boss?” he asks for clarification.
Turning away from the hall they dragged her down, I straighten my shoulders and make damn sure he hears me. “I want to hear her confess.”
At the last word, something breaks inside of me. Some childlike hope that Braelynn truly wanted me is irrevocably damaged. She didn’t have to love me. She didn’t have to care for me in any way. I know that’s an impossible task given the man I am. But I thought she craved my touch for the sake of it. I would have happily swallowed a lie if it meant never being confronted with this. She could have wanted me solely for what I can give her—the protection I could have offered her, my wealth—and I would have gladly made a deal with the devil to keep her.
I thought there was something special between us that others could never feel or imagine. A connection that even as a child I knew existed for us and us alone. I’m a fucking fool.
“I want her to tell me, face-to-face before she dies, that she leaked information. That she was working with the feds or, at the very least, Scarlet. I want her to admit she used me. I want to hear it for my fucking self. You won’t let her come close to breaking without me there. Is that understood?”
“Boss, I don’t—”
“Did you not fucking hear me?” The scream rips up my throat, a heat and adrenaline fueled by anger causing Nate to take a step back instinctively.
The brick walls of the narrow hall make my voice ricochet as I suddenly feel light-headed.
“I hear you, Boss. I’ll stay by her side and I’ll make certain you are the last one to speak to her.”
“If she’s not fucking alive, I will kill you myself, Nate.” The venom in my words is palpable.
“Yes, Boss.”
“I mean it. You stay by her, you watch them.”
“Watch them?”
“Make sure they don’t take it too far.” Even the thought of them hurting her makes me sick. It has to be done. I know it, and yet, every part of me screams not to allow it.
Blood drains from his face. “Is that too fucking difficult? Do I need to do it myself?” I question, my voice hard and my knuckles white from the skin stretched tight as I ball my hands into fists.
“No, Boss. I’ll take care of it,” he says, the words rushing out of him like he can’t say them fast enough.
“She betrayed me in a way no one ever has,” I confess to him against my best judgment. Conflicting emotions swarm through me as I accept the reality. “I will be the last person she sees before she dies. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” he answers weakly and then nods. His gaze drops and the nervousness falls from him in waves.
“You should go, then; don’t want to keep them waiting.”
I stand perfectly still, unable to move until the doors shut behind me. I’ve never felt so alone and so devoid of emotion.
The need for revenge, the desire to fight, the anger at being betrayed … it’s all lacking. There’s a hollowness in my chest and in the quiet, it feels like an agony I’ve never known. The back of my eyes itch and as tears brim, I punch the brick wall, over and over. Refusing to believe that she got to me. Refusing to believe I will cry for her. A woman who used me and betrayed me and my family.
What’s worse is that they know. I can’t hide her from them. They know what she’s done. They know what she did to me.
Every muscle in my body screams as my fists slam against the bricks. Getting it all out of me until my bones crunch leaves me how I should be, empty once again.