by Maria Luis
The door squealed as a metal hinge whined in protest, then gave way.
Sometimes good people did bad things.
I didn’t give myself time to rethink my decision. Popping my purse open, I ignored the flames of guilt and shame in my belly, and then pulled out the Glock Pete had given to me years ago. It was bulky in my hand, so foreign, and with a squaring of my shoulders, I set the mouth of the gun to Lincoln’s mother’s head.
And then I waited for Ambideaux to come bursting inside.
32
Lincoln
The units weren’t at Ambideaux’s house when my SUV squealed to a stop in the middle of the street.
Which meant that either Delery hadn’t dispatched them or they simply hadn’t arrived yet. I was praying for the latter. Hoping for miracles I didn’t actually believe in.
The front lawn was packed to the brim with guests all decked out in cocktail attire. Suits for the men; dresses for the women. I shoved past them all, fully cognizant of the fact that this was the first time I’d ever entered the house while a party was taking place.
I’d always been relegated to security. Peering in through the windows.
Today, I didn’t stop to appreciate the beauty of the house or the guests.
Avery, where are you?
Bursting inside, I swiveled my head to scan the parlor. Clusters of people were tossing back cocktails and laughing.
“Can you believe it?” said one, her voice tinkling like chimes in the wind. “I mean, I know that I’m excited to see what the city will look like with Mr. Ambideaux in charge. He’s just so charming.”
“And hot,” teased another. “I wish he’d let his hair go gray. Total silver-fox status.”
Putting Ambideaux in office would be the equivalent of setting a city ablaze. Jack the Ripper would be a better alternative.
I powered through the groups, moving them aside, constantly scanning the rooms with the hope that I’d spot a familiar dark head. When I found her, I’d kiss her, owning her mouth with mine. And then I’d bend her over my knee and clap my hand down on her ass until she learned—for once—what it meant to fucking obey an order.
“Captain America?”
My heart leapt, and then resettled with disappointment when I realized it wasn’t Avery’s voice.
Fingers wrapped around my bicep, and I glanced down. It was her roommate.
“Katie,” she supplied without missing a beat. She dropped her hand, only to set it to her collarbone. “I’m so, so glad you’re here. We’ve been looking for you—”
“Avery’s here?”
“She’s been looking for you. So, yes, she’s here. We’re both here. Where have you been?”
All over this fucking city.
I shook my head, my palm glossing over my stubble. “Doesn’t matter. We need to get her and head out.” I peered over Katie’s head, searching the crowd. “Where is she?”
The light in Katie’s eyes dimmed. “I saw her thirty minutes ago. Maybe forty.” Swallowing, she bit down on her bottom lip. “I figured that she’d found you. I’ve been watching Ambideaux this whole time—making sure he stayed where I could see him.”
The way her brow puckered was not an encouraging sign.
“But?” I pushed, my patience already wearing thin.
“But he took a door I couldn’t enter through about fifteen minutes ago. I’ve been waiting, figuring he’d come back out.” Another swallow. “I was going to give it another five minutes before I went searching for her. I was hoping . . .”
There wasn’t any time to listen to her hopes, not right now.
“Wait outside,” I told her. “I had my lieutenant call units over here. They should be arriving.”
Katie’s head bobbed. “Sure, yeah. Okay, I can do that.” She stepped back, hands going to the skirt of her dress as she went to spin around—but she slammed to a sudden halt, and then peered back at me. “Cap, I’m just going to say this once. She loves you. She might not know how to say it, but I know she does. Keep her safe or I will personally shoot you.”
Despite the bad timing, my lips twitched. “10-4, Black Widow, 10-4.”
She preened at that.
And, as pathetic as it was, I preened a little myself.
Avery loves me.
Christ, I was a sap.
Until I found her, there wasn’t cause for celebration though. I eyed the stairwell. Palmed my one remaining Glock, and then ascended the stairs.
33
Avery
My hands shook around the gun.
They shook even more when the woman’s gaze jumped to my face. Those familiar blue eyes of hers were startling clear. No fear at the gun pressed to her temple. No quivering lips.
“Do it,” the woman rasped.
My stomach dropped. “What?”
When the door squealed again, the woman’s hands went in the air, trying to grasp my arm. “Do it,” she said again, desperation tingeing her voice, “do it. Please, please, please—”
The hinges gave up their fight.
I twisted at the waist, forcing impassivity to my face when all I felt was frantic energy pulsing through my body. “Mr. Ambideaux,” I drawled with false bravado, “how wonderful of you to join us.”
He stumbled, the momentum of throwing his body at the door making it hard for him to stop. Dark eyes volleyed from me to Lincoln’s mother.
“Victoria and I were just having a lovely conversation.” My index finger hovered over the trigger, and I immediately slipped it to the left. Just in case I got jumpy. Although, who was I kidding? I was beyond jumpy already.
My lungs seized the air, and I struggled to appear unaffected.
“Back away from her,” Ambideaux barked. “I’m telling you right now, Miss Peyton, if you pull that trigger, I will end you for good. Better yet, I’ll hand-deliver you to your stepfather.” Mouth tugging in that same awful smile, he added, “Is that how you want this to end? I would love nothing more.”
Beside me, Lincoln’s mother began a new, softly uttered chant: “Do it, do it do it do it.”
I had no idea if she referred to me still or if she was egging Ambideaux on. I re-grasped the gun, hating the sweat pooling in my palms. “I’ve got no interest in going to see the mayor.”
“Then put the gun down.”
I forced steel into my tone. “Screw you.”
Eyes narrowing into slits, he swept aside the fabric of his suit jacket to reveal a holstered gun at his hip. “Let me tell you what happens to people who cross me, Miss Peyton.” He palmed the gun, bringing it up to eye level before turning it to point at me. “I shoot them, but of course, nowhere where they’re particularly likely to die . . . not right away. I want them to suffer. I want them to bleed.”
His leather shoes slipped over the carpet silently as he approached.
“Only when they’re begging me for life do I move on to the next step.” The mouth of his pistol went to his cheek, where he drew a line down the length of his profile. Slow. Menacing. I immediately thought of Lincoln, and the J he’d been forced to carve into, just to show that he would never be owned by this man. “They’re all marked by me in some way. Tattoos on the living. Scars on the almost-dead. And then, of course, they’re then brought out west for the gators to feast on.”
The image made my stomach hurt.
My heart, too.
Voice releasing on a rasp, I said, “You’re insane.”
“No, Miss Peyton,” he said with an odd little grin on his face, “that is not at all what I am.”
“Do it,” whispered Lincoln’s mother again, “please, please, do it.”
Ambideaux’s gaze cut to her. “Victoria—”
“Samantha!” she shrieked, startling me. The gun jerked in my hand, accidentally shoving forward on her temple, and the damn woman didn’t even flinch. She tilted her head, giving the gun more space to play along her hairline. “I’m not Victoria. I’m not Victoria. I’m not—”
Confusion grip
ped me, and then a moment later, a gunshot erupted.
The window to my right shattered just as Ambideaux went down, his big body crumpling as something hit him from behind.
A familiar frame bulldozed Ambideaux over, rolling the older man onto his back while he straddled his midsection.
Lincoln.
Oh, God.
I didn’t dare make a sound, fear clogging my throat that I’d distract him and he’d end up with a bullet in his head instead of it sailing through a window.
Hands wrapped around my wrist. “Please,” the woman—Samantha?—whispered urgently, her eyes fixed on the gun. “Please kill me. I can’t”—a sob wracked her body—“I can’t do this anymore. He’ll never let me go. Please. Do it, do it, do it.”
My mouth went dry.
Lincoln had said his mother had never cared about him, but I couldn’t kill her. I can’t end someone’s life. The gun had just been a threat. A way to bend Ambideaux to my demands, letting me escape unscathed.
“Please.” She yanked on my hand.
Masculine grunting tore my attention from her to land on the men wrestling on the ground. Lincoln nailed Ambideaux in the face, a fist so powerful that it whipped the man’s head to the side and no doubt loosened his teeth on impact.
“I should have killed you,” Ambideaux growled loud enough for me to hear, his hands scrabbling for purchase around Lincoln’s throat, still wielding his gun as his arm slashed through the air. “I had so many damn opportunities over the years and I was too soft.”
Lincoln didn’t say a word. His face was a mask of concentration as he weaved out of the way of Ambideaux’s grasping hands. Leaning forward, Lincoln hooked his legs around the other man’s, and then rolled them over until Ambideaux was eating carpet and Lincoln was on his back.
His gun trained on the back of the man’s head.
34
Lincoln
I was aware of Avery’s beautiful hazel eyes on me.
Aware of the woman I’d always thought of as my mother making incoherent pleas that didn’t register beyond the thundering of my heart in my chest.
Adrenaline pulsing like I’d been injected with Epinephrine, I kept the muzzle steady on the back of my father’s head. My father. Bitterness joined the adrenaline, and I leveraged my pistol forward, digging the mouth into Jason’s skull.
I leaned down, the Glock brushing my unscarred cheek when I hissed, “Not exactly going down as you’d planned it, wouldn’t you say? Dad.”
His body twitched under mine, and I laughed.
Fuck, I laughed. Long and hard and so damn bitter. “I always wondered why you’d taken a liking to me in foster care. Me over anyone else. And here I’d been thinking that I was special.”
I heard Avery’s gasp, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted.
The sight of Ambideaux pointing a gun at her would forever be imprinted in my head. It’d twisted my vision, driven me to the brink of insanity, and now here I was, holding my old man up at gunpoint and not regretting a damn thing.
No one touched her. No one threatened her.
I would fucking send them to hell first.
“What?” My palm landed on the man’s head, and I roughly forced him to turn his face to the right, so that his left cheek was planted against the carpet. The gun, I dragged over the side of his profile exposed to me. His right side. “Too bad I’m all out of knives,” I drawled, voice low, “or else I’d carve your face the same way you did to mine. To your son.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I love your mother. Don’t do this in front of her, Lincoln. Don’t make her see—”
“She’s not my mother!” I bellowed, which prompted more incoherent mumbles from my mom—Samantha. Ambideaux’s mouth popped open, cheeks hollowing, as I pushed the gun deeper. “I learned a lot today, Jason, but mostly I learned that you are out of your mind.”
He wheezed, and I felt his legs thrash as he struggled to flip me over. “I made you,” he bit out harshly, “I made you who you are. A killer. A monster. Just like me.”
The words arrowed into my heart like pinpricks.
“It’s not true.”
I glanced up, past the brutal scene before me, to stare at Avery. Her arms were down by her sides. Her gaze transfixed on me.
She wet her lips. “It’s not true,” she said again, louder this time. “You know that it’s not true, Lincoln.”
“Do it,” chanted Samantha in the bed, her arms around her middle, “do it, do it.”
Beneath me, Ambideaux thrashed some more. “You will always be what I made of you. A killer, Lincoln.”
The endless noise was an assault on my ears, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Avery. I watched her move, the way her lips formed the words that I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my head.
Don’t, she mouthed, you are better than this. So much better.
It didn’t feel that way. It felt like I wanted to sink into my reality and pull the trigger, ending my father’s life. One less threat hanging over my head for years to come when I didn’t bend over backward to do his bidding.
I’m better than this.
I wasn’t, not really.
But I damn sure wanted to be—because of her, Avery.
Unwilling to loosen my grip and have the roles reversed, with Ambideaux riding cowboy on my back, I sent a quick glance over the room, trying to find something I could use as rope. “Ave,” I grunted, “get me—”
“Get out!”
I started at the shriek, my hands jerking from the unexpectedness of it.
“Get out! Get out! Get out!”
I looked to my right, dread lifting my chin slowly, and made eye contact with the mayor of New Orleans. His gaze was on Avery, transfixed in much the same way that guests do while watching a fascinating performance on stage.
The gun he held clasped between two hands was trained on her.
Fuck.
“Get out! Get out!”
Weeks ago, Avery had pulled the Death card for my future. It’d matched my fears for so long, but I refused to go down. I had a life to live. A woman to love.
My gun left Ambideaux’s temple and I rolled out of the way. Rose up onto one knee at the same moment Foley grimaced and turned to engage with me.
One . . .
Two . . .
Pft! Pft!
“Jesus Christ.”
Foley dropped to his knees, hand going to his stomach where I’d hit him. The stomach, with all of its organs and intestines, would lead to a slow, excruciating death—unless he received medical help soon.
Relief sank into my system.
It was short-lived.
Arms locked around my chest, driving me backward onto the floor. Jason. My back landed with a thud, my molars cracking together as Ambideaux straddled me. And, just as he had in my townhouse weeks ago, he shoved the mouth of the gun into my forehead so that all I saw was the barrel and all I heard was his harsh breathing and Samantha’s chants and Avery’s scream.
“I love her,” Jason whispered, his hair disheveled, his suit even more so. “I love her more than anything.”
Air expelled sharply from my nose as I fought to remain calm. “More so than Nat? Your wife?”
Mouth flatlining, he shook his head. “Nat had it good. I gave her the world. It’s because she’s a greedy bitch that she couldn’t handle you, that she couldn’t look at Victoria.” A grim mask settled over his face, and he leaned into my chest, giving me his full weight and making it hard to breathe. “No one crosses me, son. No one. It’s a point to prove, to keep the fear moving in my favor in this city.” His finger slid over the trigger, taking my long-dead heart right along with it. “I’m sorry that this has to happen. But you deserve it, just like they all did before you. You deserve—”
There was a low thud that echoed in my ears and robbed me of air, and then Ambideaux stared down at me, dazed, swaying, before collapsing on top of me.
Avery stood behind him, a gun gripped in her two
hands, a look of resigned horror on her face.
I’d once said that my heart was dead. I’d fully believed it. A person couldn’t do the things that I had done and still remain human inside—I’d been a monster, just like Ambideaux had raised me to be. But with my father’s slumped weight on top of me and Avery standing just a foot away, her eyes as round as saucers, I knew that wasn’t true.
If I’d been a monster, there wouldn’t be regret and grief seeping into my marrow.
Regret that Avery had had to take this step when she’d made the decision to abstain from taking another’s life.
Grief that Jason, the one man I’d leaned on while growing up, had, at some point, lost his mind so that his delusions became his reality . . . and threatened everyone else in his wake.
Avery’s tongue swiped along the cushion of her bottom lip. “He’s not dead, I don’t think. You were right—I don’t know how to shoot a gun. I didn’t want to risk killing you instead if I aimed wrong. I-I slammed the barrel on his head.”
Rolling Jason’s body off mine, I pressed a finger to his throat, just beneath the jut of his jaw. His pulse was light but it was there. A strange mixture of relief and disappointment slid through me, and I didn’t bother to sort it all out. Not right now.
My gaze went to Samantha, the woman Ambideaux had kept here in captivity. Her smashed legs. She hadn’t been intentionally cruel, I saw that now. Like me, she’d been in her own prison of Ambideaux’s making, unable to escape.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped when her blue eyes, so much like mine, swung my way. “I’m so sorry, Samantha.”
Her eyes went wide and her shoulders shook and a distraught cry pulled from her mouth. “Samantha,” she whispered, “I’ve always been Samantha.”
A hand landed on my back, comforting in its softness, in its slight pressure. For years, I’d been strong. Unshakable. The man who got things done and didn’t ask questions. My chest was littered with dates and numbers of those who I’d put in their graves way too soon.