Enzo has ripped the last living person from my life. He shot and killed him in cold blood. It didn’t matter to him that I loved him—nothing mattered anymore.
He deposits me on the SUV’s cold leather seat and shuts the door, not saying a single word. I should open the door, I should run, kick, and fight him, but I know it would be useless. He would just hunt me down and haul me back here, and right now, I’m just too damn tired to fight.
As I sink further into the seat, my mind spirals further into the abyss. How could he do something so cruel? How could he kill someone and feel no remorse? John was my father—none of his wrongdoings changed that fact. None of it did. Now my dad is dead, and I have no one left. Nothing. I’m all alone in this world now—just like Lorenzo King.
“You’ll move on,” he whispers to no one. It has to be no one because I wasn’t listening to a fucking word he said. Once I get my strength back, I’ll leave the first chance I get. I will run. I will escape his hold. There is no doubt in my mind that Enzo is a living, breathing monster—far worse than the ones you heard about in fairytales.
“Maybe you don’t want to believe your dad was capable of such venomous acts, or you simply don’t want to face the music—either way, you had to know it would come down to this.” Enzo’s voice meets my ear, but it doesn’t sound like him. There is no emotion. He sounds like a robot spewing out information someone programmed him to say. Like a navigation system giving direction to a fucking coffee shop.
“I hate you,” I spit the words at him, hoping they hit him with the intensity of my fist.
“Get in fucking line.”
“He was everything to me. He was my father. My fucking father. You killed the last living member of my family—for revenge? Do you feel better? Does hurting me make your heart red again?” I scream the words across the center console, tears streaming down my face so heavily I can’t see anything. There is a fist-sized hole punched through my chest by the very man I love.
Ignoring my comment, he turns the car on, throws it into reverse, and pulls out of my driveway. We haven’t even talked about what happened to him, to me. Hours ago, I would’ve been glad to know he was alive and wanted to save me, but now—now I want to be the one to put the bullet in his head and bury him six feet under.
Eventually, the car settles into silence, but I refuse to allow that to remain. I refuse to make this easy for him, to be anything but angry and sad. I’m hurt, breaking apart on the inside, and it’s his fault. All his fucking fault.
Wiping away the tears, so I can see the face of the monster, I stare into a pair of warm honey-colored eyes. “When I look at you, I see a small boy out on a mission to bring the world to its knees. To take anyone and everything out—anything undeserving of your attention. But maybe, just fucking maybe, it’s you who’s undeserving of the rest of us. Maybe it’s you who needs to take a look around and realize the world owes you nothing. And killing people like my father gets you nothing. It doesn’t make you feel better. It causes you to lose someone who actually cared for you. Probably the only person in the world stupid enough to fall for you—me.”
I watch as his knuckles grip the steering wheel with strength I’ve never seen before. Is he going to kill me next? Would it even matter? I’m not sure I would care at this point. Maybe I’ll welcome death, it’s not like I have anything else to live for.
“This is the life I’m living, Amara. This is what happens when someone betrays someone. You knew I was on the hunt for someone. You knew if I found him, I would kill him. It just happened to be bad luck that it turned out to be your father.”
My eyes feel as if they are about to roll out of my head as I listen to him. He isn’t even sorry.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Do you?” he screams back, his face growing red with anger.
“Just let me go. Stop the car and let me out.”
“Fuck, Amara,”