starts. I need to get my head on straight and listening to this love fest is making me nauseous and uneasy. I keep eyes on V and listen for footsteps around us. I may have let them cuff me for Lainey’s safety, but I sure as shit am not going to die for it. Not after this.
Lainey ignores me completely. “You have never considered what I wanted, Dax. Therein lies the problem. I tried to tell you so many times and you talked your way around it, trying to convince me otherwise. Going as far as you did to keep me isn’t love. It’s obsession,” Lainey says. She stands, walks backward toward Vadim and holds out her hand. Vadim laughs. It’s a maniacal sound that reverberates in the large vacant house. “And now you both must atone.” My fucking stomach lurches. Atone?
“Got everything off your chest, honey?” V asks Lainey. She nods, swallows, and grabs my gun that he’s dangling off his finger in the air in front of her face. Fuck. What the hell is happening right now? “Go ahead and take care of business so we can get on with our night. We need to celebrate your freedom and your return to me,” he says, pulling her close under his filthy arm. His mere presence makes me murderous, reminding me of all the things I work hard to forget. The dripping returns, as do the memories of days filled with blackness and pain, hunger and boredom so severe that it handicaps the mind. The years of life he stole from me in the name of revenge are worth more than my own revenge plot against him. Death is easy. Living like he forced me to is agony in comparison.
Lainey weighs the gun in her right hand, balancing it on her palm. She flips it over and checks out the other side, and then makes sure it’s loaded and ready to fire. I shake my head. Dax tenses and starts trying to pull away from me. Yep, this is the woman you don’t know. She’s a real stunner. Literally. I wish I could see his face, to try to gauge his reaction to this. It’s not every day that you find out your fiancée is skilled in espionage and has the means to murder you. It should be a book or something. Lainey would make for one hell of a character. Her huge, blue eyes find mine and hold steady. I stare back, willing her to hear my thoughts. She turns away.
“Which one will you choose, Elena?” V asks. She narrows her eyes at Dax and bites down on her perfect, pillowy bottom lip. These could possibly be my last moments on earth and I’m getting a boner from her fucking mouth. A mouth attached to a woman who has the means and the desire to kill me. My vision takes on a surreal quality, almost like a dream.
She aims the gun at us, huddled on the ground. Dax has stopped scooting and has started pleading with her. It’s interspersed with swearing at her, because after being a lying bitch she owes him more than this. He makes solid points. She owes me even more. She knows it.
Her hand shakes as her gaze flits back and forth between our faces. What must we look like? A couple of huge, burly men reduced to a pitiful heap. And all for love. Fucking love. Cities fall because of it and lives are deconstructed in the name of it. If I outlive this night, I’ll swear it off for the rest of time.
V chides. “You know the deal, Elena. You have to kill one. That’s what I want to earn your trust back. So pick. It should be easy. The man who holds your heart or the one who repaired it after it shattered. It’s a dilemma for sure, but one man has clearly already paid his dues.” V aims his gun at me and Lainey aims my own goddamned gun at Dax. In a twist so fucked up that not even I saw it coming, I understand that nothing matters anymore. Not revenge, or what I’ve been through, what Lainey’s been through, not what Dax has dealt with. None of it matters because this is the fucking end.
V groans when Dax begins threatening. I don’t hear specific words, just the tone of his hysterical voice and the word ‘fuck’ laced throughout. “You know why nice guys finish last? They’re never the