Rage blistered and blew. I didn’t know how he couldn’t feel the storm whip through the room, the lashes that struck in the stagnant air.
Thunder.
Swore, I felt a bolt of lightning strike through the center of me.
A stake to my body.
“Where the fuck is it, you stupid bitch?” Felix ranted, angling down toward her where she did her best to hide in plain sight, her hand over the back of Bailey’s head like she could protect her from the words he spat.
“I told you . . . I . . . I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I don’t know anything about Joseph’s business.”
Roaring, Felix whirled to the side and kicked a huge cardboard box. Glass shattered when it crashed onto the ground, contents spilling out.
Bailey screamed, and her mother held her tighter.
While I almost came right out of my skin.
No one would hurt them.
No one.
Not ever.
I’d die before I let that happen.
Felix was back in Faith’s face. “Give up the bullshit innocent act. I know you know. I gave you plenty of chances to come clean. Warning after warning. I didn’t want it to come to this, but I’m out of time. Just the same as you. Now tell me where that piece of shit hid it before I beat it out of you.”
Anger surged. So intense I almost went running across the room.
But I held back, eyes scanning, trying to figure out the best way to lure the asshole away.
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.”
“Right . . . I’m just going to let them walk out of here. She knows everything, and even if she doesn’t, I can’t take that chance.”
“You don’t let them go, and you’re going to be the one who isn’t walking out of here.”
Felix sneered, a hateful twist of his lips. “Awful sure of yourself, don’t you think? Should have taken you out the second you rolled up here like a knight in shining armor sent to save the day. There’s no saving, Jace.”
Jace?
Jace just cracked a smile that was all taunt.
He was windin’ Felix up.
Stoking his anger.
Aiming it at himself.
“You’re right. It’s over. Over for you.”
Needles and knives. I could feel Jace driving them into Felix’s flesh. The way rage rippled through Felix, his pinpoint focus narrowing in on Jace.
But Jace’s . . . Jace’s might have been more intense. His drive greater than anything I’d ever witnessed or seen.
Fear tumbled through the center of me.
A different kind.
It was the terror of losing him all over again.
It rang with finality.
I could see it written all over him.
What he was willing to give. What he was gettin’ ready to do.
“That’s where you’re wrong. Steven is dead. I find that log? End this threat to our family? I take his place. Taking out that traitor Joseph was only a bonus. Now . . . back the fuck up. Me and your girlfriend here are going to find that log. She cooperates, and maybe, I’ll let the little girl go.”
Oh God, that was the only thing I wanted. For Bailey to be safe.
Desperately, I looked around as if it might conjure that log he was so desperate for.