Highest Bidder Collection - Lauren Landish Page 0,257

I’m sure this time he means it. I take a step back, wrapping my arms around myself and trying to hold myself together.

He gives me a kiss on the cheek that makes me close my eyes, the hot tears rolling down my cheeks. “I gave myself to you,” I speak just above a murmur.

He pauses at the door, his hand on the doorknob, and turns to look at me. My skin pricks under his gaze as the tears roll down my face.

I try to say more. I try to explain what I’m feeling. But all I can think about is the first night he took me. I brush away the bastard tears.

Through my hazy vision, I see Joseph staring back at me. He looks like he wants to tell me something. For the first time since he’s walked in the room, I see something in his eyes. That same look I saw when he comforted me over Zach’s death.

Tell me, I urge him silently.Tell me that you love me.

I want him to say it. Because I know I love him.

Say it! My mind screams.

And it looks like he’s about to do it.

I part my lips expectantly, ready to say it back.

But then he turns away and walks out, not saying a word as he shuts the door behind him.

It’s not till he’s gone that I realize I never told him either. I whisper in the empty room. “I love you Joseph. You better come back to me.”

Chapter 28

Joseph

I stalk through the dark hallways of the home I grew up in. If one could call it home. The memories that haunt my dreams flash before my eyes as my quiet footsteps creek the hardwood floors beneath my boots.

I expected to be nervous. I anticipated my heart beating radically with a cold sweat swarming over my body. Instead there’s nothing. I hold the hand gun in my gloved hand, the silencer pointing down to the floor. As I step closer and closer to the room my brother stays in.

The Levi household is practically a mansion. A lonely one, full of empty rooms. The screams when I grew up used to fill the halls, I’ll never forget that. I know every inch of this place

I also know the escape route and where it leads. I learned it when I was young, it was something that we all needed to know. My father taught me the layout for my own safety. It’s probably the one good thing he ever did for me. And now I’m using it against him.

I used the escape route to come into the kitchen, completely undetected. There are no alarms from there up to here, there’s nothing standing in my way of creeping into their bedrooms and killing them in their sleep.

A small part of me wishes I would only kill my brother. My father never came after me. It’s all my brother.

At the thought of leaving my father alive, my heart finally races and adrenaline courses through my blood. That’s not something I can do. He will come for me. He may not know it was me, but he would come for me anyway. He would come to force me to take over the business. He’s getting old, and there needs to be a Levi to carry on the name. But when the night is through, there will be none left.

I’ll make sure of that.

I adjust my grip as I approach my brother’s door, my heart pounding in my ears. All I need to do is shoot him in his sleep. He’s an easy target, a simple kill. He deserves a much worse death. I’d like to wake him; I’d like to beat him into a bloody pulp with my bare hands.

Killing him this way isn’t justice, but I can’t afford risks.

Not when I have Lilly waiting for me.

I imagined his door will be locked, and testing the doorknob proves that much true. It doesn’t take me long to pick it though. He was in the habit of locking his door when we grew up. He was also in the habit of stealing from me. And of hurting women in the middle of the night. The memories flash before my eyes as the lock clicks, and the doorknob turns.

The memories make me sick. Not just because of what I’ve witnessed, that because of what I allowed to happen. I didn’t have to, I could have fought. I would have lost, but I could have at least tried.

I open the