Fate Actually (Moonstone Cove #2) - Elizabeth Hunter Page 0,89

talk to her, and she was so… smug. So confident that she’d be able to get everything for herself. She must have told Fairfield we were planning to cut him out. I guess she thought it would give her leverage? I don’t know. But she told him our plan. She told him everything.”

“So you beat her?” Henry said. “She nearly died, Ruben.”

“I struck back at a snake!” Ruben waved the gun in Henry’s face. “She wasn’t a woman, she was a snake.”

A heavy, terrible feeling swelled in Toni when she saw the gun inches from Henry’s face, and something in her chest shuddered and clenched hard. She needed to get out of the cave. Something in her was breaking along with the last of Ruben’s self-control.

“Let me go,” she choked out. “Ruben, you need to let me go.”

“The air.” Henry put an arm around Toni’s shoulders. “She’s pregnant, okay? Take her phone if you want, but let her go. By the time she walks out—”

“Pregnant?” Ruben laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. Just what this town needs. Another Dusi spawn. Probably another lying woman.” He shook his head and backed toward another pillar. “I’d be doing Moonstone Cove a favor if I got rid of a few pests, but I’m not like that.”

A few pests?

Was he talking about her and the baby? About Toni, Katherine, and Megan?

Rage built in her, and the quickly mounting waves grew bigger and bigger until Toni felt like the whole of her body and mind was centered on Ruben Montenegro.

She clenched her fist and felt like her skin would burst. “Ruben, you better let me out.”

“Or what?” He laughed a little as he reached down for another stick of dynamite and a roll of duct tape hanging on his belt. “I’m not going to do that.”

Toni felt the emotional signatures of everyone around her. Henry, strong and resolved. Nico, growing steadily more furious. Baxter and Katherine somehow melded together, both calculating and detached. Both splitting their attention between the terrified children they guarded and the violent man with the gun.

And Megan.

Megan was… not afraid. Not even a little bit.

Feeling Megan’s calm centered Toni. What do you have up your sleeve, Atlanta?

Megan stepped toward Ruben, holding up her hands.

He saw her approaching. “Listen, princess, I’m going to need you to step back.”

“I just want to tell you I understand. I understand all of it. How it feels when someone takes all your work, all your devotion and energy and love. And then just… spits on it, you know? Just treats all that devotion like it’s nothing.”

Ruben pointed the gun directly at Megan and yelled, “Do I look like I need a fucking therapist?”

Toni kept her eyes on Ruben. She pictured reaching out. She pictured taking his hand and making him sleepy. She pictured making him cry. She pictured making his head explode between her clenched hands.

Megan didn’t stop inching toward Ruben. “I know how that feels, Ruben.” Her voice was low and soothing. “I know what it feels like to be unappreciated. Taken for granted.”

She was standing a few feet away.

Ruben said, “If you understand, then you know that you need to back the hell up.”

Megan smiled sweetly. “I also know what it’s like when the people you love more than life itself are threatened by a disturbed asshole who cares more about some fucking useless holes in the ground than the safety of three children.” She lifted her hands, and Toni saw dust rise when a slew of loose bricks hurtled through the air and took aim at Ruben Montenegro.

The bricks hit Ruben directly in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

Megan lunged for the gun and screamed, “Katherine, run!”

As if on cue, all the lights they’d been holding were doused in darkness, and Katherine, Baxter, and the three teenagers were swallowed in shadows.

Toni jumped on Ruben, who was lying dazed at the base of a dynamite-clad pillar. She didn’t think. She didn’t hesitate. She put both her hands on his neck and sucked every bit of anger out of him, just like she had with Henry. Only Ruben was a lot angrier and a lot more disturbed.

His eyes crossed and he jerked on the floor, turning on his side as his body shuddered and heaved like he was trying to throw up.

And Toni? She stood up straight and started kicking the shit out of him.

“You think you can threaten us?” She kicked the back of his legs. “You think it’s okay to beat up my sister-in-law?”