Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 54645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54645 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
“Did I?”
The look in his eyes, it’s both pride and lust. “You did perfectly. But now it’s time to let Daddy do his job. Because there is no universe in which someone threatens you and lives, we clear?”
My belly tightens and my heart pounds. “I know,” I whisper through a sob. “I’ve always known.”
CHAPTER 22
Trent
Wearing civvies and carrying my McMillan Tac-50 rifle in my backpack, I have Edward drop me off in front of a nine-story bank building downtown.
I give the security guard a nod, like I know him, and head for the elevators. Nobody gives me a second fucking look. All the time, I’m scoping out my surroundings. Assessing threats. Doing my fucking job. But this time, doing it for the one I love.
The only woman that will ever matter to me in the world. The one who gives me purpose. Peace. Meaning itself.
She didn’t fucking like it, me coming down here, doing this. But she knew it was necessary. For her. For me. For us. And though she cried her eyes out, she didn’t fight me.
Not that I’d have changed my fucking mind even if she had.
Because nobody hurts my family and survives. Nobody threatens her and lives to tell about it.
Nobody.
The elevator opens on the top floor and I step out, with a brand new phone I bought on the way over here in hand, looking just like another fucking financial planner in a sea of guys dressed like me. But when they all head to their nine-to-fives after lunch, I head for the staircase that goes up to the roof.
I scan the stairway for security cameras but see none. God bless this fucking country. So fucking innocent still. So fucking naïve.
I check the door for any alarm, but there isn’t any. So fucking far, so fucking good.
On the roof now, flat and coated with gravel-covered tar. My dress shoes crunch underfoot. That sound is as powerful as a fucking IED explosion. Just like that, I’m back in the white-hot sun, making heat snakes everywhere. I don’t mind this flashback. Not a fucking bit. Because then, just like now, it was my job to rid the word of evil.
And I’m fucking good at my job.
I pick a spot pointing west, toward where Luke pinpointed Rominovski’s main office. On my stomach now, I unpack my McMillan, doing what I’ve done a thousand times.
I position my bag underneath my chest and adjust the scope. In the sight, the target area comes into focus, exactly .59 miles away from me now, due east. It’s a long shot, but doable. Totally fucking doable. For her? Anything.
On the far end of the parking lot are three big piles of gravel. A dump truck rumbles into the lot, sending up dust, screwing with my line of sight. Rominovski’s business front is hauling and materials; as shady as they fucking come.
The dust settles and right between the crosshairs, I see it. That black fucking Mercedes, double-parked on the far end of the lot.
My body knows what to do automatically now. So I slow my breathing. Calm my nerves. Focus my vision.
And wait.
It’s sundown and the sun is at my back now. I haven’t moved in hours, but I’m still just as laser focused as when I got here. Even more now, because now it’s closing time. And Rominovski’s time is officially up.
A secretary leaves, then a couple of guys in hard hats, then some fucking slick-ass guy who looks like he was born to cook the books.
And then, it’s only the black Mercedes left in the lot.
Tick-tock. Tick-fucking-tock.
The door swings open and out he comes. Shiny gray shirt, sweat stains under his armpits. In the scope, I watch him pull a gold lighter from his pocket.
I shift my finger from the trigger, straightening it out, keeping it loose, and then carefully put it back in place.
Between the crosshairs I watch his fucking face. The man who killed my parents.
The man who made my sister live in fear.
He lights his cigarette, and takes a long unhurried drag. Then raises his face to the sky to exhale. Long, and slow, and unworried.
“You motherfucker,” I whisper. And then I tighten my trigger finger.
For Kat.
Boom.
CHAPTER 23
Trent
I took a fucking life and now the only thing I want to do is make a new one. With her.
I come back on foot, going slow, making sure I’m in the clear. I get home long after dark, after I know she’ll be asleep. I purposefully stayed away for a few hours, letting my system quiet down, making sure as fuck that nobody knew where that bullet came from.
But nobody did a thing. And I take pride in that, as I open the front door, knowing Rominovski’s dead on the ground, like the piece of shit that he was.
I lock the door behind me, lock up my rifle in the gun closet, and then quietly make my way upstairs to Kat.