like a house sprinkled with gasoline. My blood began to boil. Then, my arms and legs were on fire, then my hair and my face, and then all of me was freaking. On. Fire.
“Stop!” I ordered, forcing her to turn. My hands fisted at my sides, and I was visibly shaking. “You are never to contact me again. And don’t worry about the Briskens because I won’t be under their employment after today. So, you and me? We’re done. You hear me?”
Her face was hard, like stone, a statue, unmoving. “I was desperate this time.” She said it as though I should understand, as though I should forgive her for everything she’d put Mary, the Briskens, and me through.
I threw up both hands. “You’re desperate all the time. You live in despair and desperation. That’s your middle name.” I took a step forward, meeting green eyes so similar to mine. “You want to live that life? You go ahead. But I’ve lived my whole life trying to not turn out like you. And I was doing fine until you came along.”
“Becky!” The voice wasn’t my mother’s. It was male and enraged, just like I felt at the moment.
My eyes shot to my left, and I squinted to see someone approaching closer.
No. No. No.
“Stay right there,” Kate shouted. “Don’t you dare come closer.” She had her gun out.
The scene played out in slow motion. The flicker of the lights from the lamppost highlighted the dimly lit parking lot, accenting his approaching figure.
My mother erased the gap between us, standing directly beside me.
She had both hands on the gun.
It was cocked, ready, loaded.
And directly pointed at Charles.
Might as well have been straight at my heart. Because he was my heart. Those girls and Charles owned my heart.
Watching my mother point that gun at him, at my heart, I knew I was done. I wasn’t playing nice anymore. I went apeshit crazy.
Charles
Shit.
This had to be the stupidest move I’d made to date. Coming here and not telling anyone.
I hadn’t known what to expect or what I’d find. The cops were out, looking for Becky, and my brothers were home with the kids. But when I received notification that there was a big withdrawal from the bank, I drove to that location. Then, I had my credit card company notify me when there was another transaction.
It was farfetched that I would find her. I mean, by the time I got to the bank, they were gone. But I was on high alert and jetting to the pawn shop when I got another notice.
And then I had seen Becky and couldn’t stay quiet. Now, her mother was pointing a gun at me. My pulse pounded hard in my ears, and I raised both hands up. Adrenaline pumped through my veins as I approached. I wasn’t being held back, not anymore.
“Stop.” The woman shook the gun in my direction, her eyes wild and dangerous.
“Kate. Just put the gun down,” Becky said, her face a state of hysteria.
I gulped, wanting to hold her, wanting to take her home. I’d give this woman whatever she wanted just to have Becky right beside me.
“What do you need? What is it you want?” I tipped my chin in Kate’s direction. “More money?” Because that was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Not when Kate could obliterate my world with a shot of her gun.
“It’s yours,” I said, my voice firm and confident, bred and learned from years of negotiation from being Brisken Printing Corporation’s CEO.
She smiled then, her eyes crinkling at the sides. Besides the color of her eyes, there was no resemblance between Becky and her mother.
“Well, since you offered and all.”
“No!” Becky snapped, forcing Kate to tighten the hold on her weapon. “You’re going to leave. That’s what you’re going to do.”
“But”—she shrugged, unaffected—“since your boyfriend here is offering to give me a little cushion, then it would be rude not to take him up on his offer, no?”
“No!” Becky repeated, advancing toward Kate. “You are not involving them anymore. I refuse to let you take more from them. You’ve already taken too much.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rose because Becky was undeterred by the gun that Kate held in her hands. Reading her, how she was positioned in front of Kate and the look in her eye, I knew she had one goal in mind—to protect me.
And that scared me shitless.
“Becky, stop!” Before I knew what I was doing, I erased the gap