Three to Fall (Saint View Slayers vs. Sinners #3)

2. Grayson

2

GRAYSON

I clenched my fingers, channeling all the pent-up rage inside me into choking the steering wheel. When what I really wanted was to wrap them around my brother’s neck and end his life the way he’d ended my wife’s.

Whip sat in the passenger seat as stonily quiet as I was, lost in his own thoughts. But X poked his head through the gap, bouncing impatiently in the back, too full of energy to sit still.

“Where do you think Trig’s been all these years?” X asked. “Somewhere awesome, for sure, right? Surfing in Australia? Trekking the Amazon jungles? Sailing the highest seas?”

Whip glanced back over his shoulder. “Yeah. And I flew to the moon on a rocket called The Delusional . Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

Torch and Ace both sniggered from their spots either side of X. If their laughter bothered him, he didn’t show it. Just prattled on a million miles an hour with his usual rambling bullshit.

Normally I had all the time in the world for it. It was how I’d gotten to know him. How I knew what made him tick.

Today, all I could think about was getting back to my place to see if Trigger was there.

He’d been the one to call the meeting of this little psychopath support group he and I had started years ago. Back before he’d betrayed me in the most heinous way possible.

Putting a noose around my wife’s neck and pulling it until she couldn’t breathe was one way to end a relationship with a bang.

My chest tightened. I remembered finding her body. The blue of her lips. The pale, waxy sheen of her skin, the usual pink in her cheeks absent. The lifeless way she’d lain on the floor, unable to be revived.

I’d spent years thinking about how I’d get my revenge on the man I’d once called brother. How I’d make him suffer the same way she had, cutting off his oxygen and watching him fight until he had nothing left. I just hadn’t known where he was to do it.

Now I did.

I put my foot down harder on the accelerator, knowing in my gut that he was waiting for me.

“Aw. Doc is so excited to see his brother. It’s going to be the reunion of the century!” X had no idea of what had gone down between me and Trigger. He smoothed his hands over his T-shirt and jeans. “Dammit, I look like a slob. A blood-speckled one at that. Should have worn an apron while we were torturing that guy, I guess. If I’d known Trig was back, I would have worn my prettiest dress underneath.”

Whip rolled his eyes. “Does your mouth ever stop?”

“Only when it’s on your mama’s pussy.”

Whip took out a gun so quick all I saw was a flash of black.

But X was just as psychotic. He might have had Whip’s gun pressed to his forehead, but X’s knife was barely an inch from Whip’s jugular.

Their reflexes had always impressed me. But when you had as many kills under your belt as the two of them did, I guess you got good at drawing a weapon in a timely manner.

I huffed out an impatient sigh. “Can you two murder each other some other time, please? Whip, your mother isn’t even alive. Why let him get to you like that?” I glanced at the older man, knowing I was more likely to get through to him than X, who was like a firecracker on speed at the best of times. He was way more unpredictable than Whip, who was deadly but generally not as impulsive.

Whip gave X a cold stare. “Don’t ever fucking talk about my family. Ever.”

X grinned, dropped his knife, and folded his hands behind his head, leaning back against the seat. “Fine. Want to talk about mine? I was born in Massachusetts to parents Belinda and Edward, at eleven past one in the morning. It was a Friday, dark and stormy…”

Whip turned back around and pinched the bridge of his nose, like X’s constant verbal diarrhea gave him a headache. “Drive faster, Doc. For the sake of my sanity, please fucking drive faster so I can get out of this car.”

I was already pushing the gas pedal to the limits, taking corners too fast, tires screeching while trying to maintain contact with the road. I didn’t need his encouragement. I had adrenaline flooding my system and nowhere else for it to go other than out through the vehicle.

Finally, the buildings outside changed from the shitty Saint View shacks, to nicer suburban homes, and then eventually to the mansions that were popular on the Providence side of the border. My apartment was the penthouse in an expensive building, one with private parking and security codes I did not have the patience or time for in that moment.

I jerked the car to a stop out front, one tire on the sidewalk, zero fucks given about the fine I would probably get.

I slammed the car door, practically running for the entrance to my building before Whip caught me, hauling me back with a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“Chill the fuck out. I know he’s your brother, but we have no idea what kind of state he’s in. And you’re clearly in a state yourself.”

I shrugged his grip off. “I’m fine.”

But he was right. I had all the medical training to know it. I sucked in a few deep breaths and tried to calm myself as we all piled into the elevator that was barely big enough for two people, let alone five big men.

“Okay, who touched my butt?” X asked.

I leaned across him and hit the button for the penthouse apartment and used every calming technique I’d learned in my years of med school. My fingers shook, and I pressed them into the sides of my thighs, fighting the adrenaline buildup inside me and forcing myself to think clearly.

The elevator binged when we arrived, and I paused at the door to my apartment.

It was already open.

For once in his life, X went quiet.

I kicked the door wider. Blinding midmorning light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows on the other side of the room but did nothing to conceal the broad-shouldered man standing there. Even with his back to me, I recognized my psychopathic brother. The thick thighs and biceps, his back corded with muscle, his clothes always a tiny bit too tight because he was such a big man.

I was no slouch in the size department. I was over six feet. I had the sort of muscle that regular gym workouts gave you. But I was nothing compared to Trig.

And I didn’t give a fuck.

All I saw was red.

Before I could even think about it, I was lunging for one of the kitchen knives.

And then toward the man who’d wrecked my life.

Trig had the same sort of reflexes the rest of the guys did. He turned around, a slow, dark smile spreading across his face.

I stopped dead, the blood draining from my face and the adrenaline replaced with a fear so bitterly cold it was ice in my veins.

No.

“I didn’t expect a warm welcome. But you aren’t even going to say hello to your pretty girlfriend?” Trigger twisted his fingers in the cord he had wrapped loosely around Kara’s neck. “Hey, little brother.”

The knife fell from my fingers. Clattered to the tiled floor with a clang.

Kara’s huge, terrified eyes focused on me, wet with unshed tears. Her fingers gripped the cord around her neck, still loose enough for her to breathe.

But the threat was clear.

“Let her go.” The fear built in my throat, forming a ball that tried to choke me.

“She looks like Annette.”

My wife.

I swallowed hard. “I know. But let her go.”

Kara blinked in surprise, but the only sound she made was the too-fast breaths she sucked in, like she was preempting the air she wouldn’t get if Trig pulled that cord more than an inch.

Trig brushed her hair off her face and tilted her head back to peer down at her. “That why you like her? ’Cause she reminds you of your bitch?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“But you do like her, right, Brother? She came here, all upset about something, saying there were bad people after her and searching for her knight in shining armor.” He grinned. “Which she found in me, of course. Because you weren’t here. Isn’t that right, Annette Number Two?”

I didn’t want to give him another weakness to use against me. But Kara’s eyes stared into mine, and I knew deep inside me, if Trig wanted to, he could kill her in an instant. All it would take was one snap of her neck and she’d be done.

If that happened, I didn’t want the last thing she heard to be a lie.

So I spoke the truth. “I think I’m in love with her.”

Kara’s bottom lip trembled.

I knew what it would look like to an outsider. I could feel the surprised gazes of the other guys. Though I’d never been stupid enough to tell a group of psychopaths about the woman I was falling for. Sharing my personal life with them had already ended badly once.

Plus, Kara and I had barely even kissed.

But the connection I felt to her wasn’t just physical. It was so much more than just wanting my lips on hers, or to take her out of those clothes and worship the curves beneath.

She was the first thing I thought about in the mornings. And the last thing before I went to bed. She was who I dreamed of when I slept.

I didn’t know why I felt the way I did. If I could have palmed it off as a crush, I would have. Except everything about her kept drawing me back in. Every time I saw her caring for a patient. Every time she laughed at one of my stupid jokes. I had no business falling for a woman who already had two men. It should have been simple to walk away from her.

And yet I hadn’t. Because I couldn’t.

I couldn’t explain why I loved her. Just that I did. I wouldn’t have voiced it this soon if Trig hadn’t forced the issue, but now I needed her to know.

I wanted so badly to reach out and touch her. To rip her away from Trig. To apologize for the danger I’d put her in by selfishly inserting myself into her life. “I’m in love with you.”

Her tears spilled over, falling down her rounded cheeks.

Trig shook his head at me, like I was completely and utterly pathetic. “You’ll never learn, will you? She’s Annette all over again. Got you so damn pussy-whipped you don’t see anything else.”

“Grayson,” she whispered, the terror in her voice so tangible I could barely stand it.

“Ah, fuck,” Whip spoke up from half a step behind me. “What are you doing, Trig? Let the woman go. This is cruel.”

Trig eyed the gun in Whip’s hand, his grip on Kara tightening enough that she winced. “Or what? You and the rest of your murder squad are going to hurt me? Shoot me in the leg maybe? Cut me up with that knife of yours?”

X cracked his knuckles. “If that’s what Doc wants, we will.”

But I knew Trig better than they did. And guns and knives weren’t the way to get him to do what we wanted. “He can’t feel pain.”

Trig sighed dramatically, shaking his head. “There you go again, just telling all my secrets. Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality? Or even just family loyalty?”

“Like, seriously?” Torch asked, the flick of his lighter the only sign he was agitated. “He can’t feel pain at all? I could set him on fire right now and—”

“Wouldn’t feel it.” Trig’s gaze dropped to Torch’s lighter. “Wouldn’t recommend trying it though.” He glanced down at Kara with anger in his gaze. “This one probably isn’t as lucky to be blessed with my condition, is she?”

He tightened the noose.

Kara gripped it fiercely. “No! Please! I have a daughter.”

Her voice, so laced with fear and panic, was a knife cutting right through me, slicing open every organ and leaving me to bleed. She still had room to breathe. But barely. One more tug and she’d be fighting for her life.

“You think I care about your daughter?” Trig seethed. “Another little bitch in the making, no doubt. One the world will be better off without. You’re all the same.”

I wouldn’t lose another person I loved at my brother’s hands. I refused to let it happen. But I also knew him. And that more than anything, his twisted mind loved a game of cat and mouse.

I undid my buckle on my belt. Withdrew it from the loops on the suit pants I’d worn to work that morning.

“Uh, odd time to be getting naked, Doc,” X whispered. “Guarantee mine is bigger anyway.”

Ignoring him, I put the belt around my neck. Slid the end through the buckle. And then turned to Whip. “Pull it.”

Whip blanched. “What?”

“You heard me. Pull the fucking belt.”

“Grayson, no!” Kara fought against Trig’s grip, trying to get to me with no success against the bruising grip he had on her arm.

Trigger’s eyes darkened, focused on mine. “Don’t be an idiot.”

X screwed up his face. “But, Doc, if Whip tightens that belt, you’ll…”

“Choke?” I asked him. “Suffocate painfully? Yeah, I will. But see, what Trigger here isn’t telling you is that while he doesn’t feel physical pain, he does feel emotional pain.”

Trigger’s mouth twisted into an irritated line. “You think pretty highly of yourself if you think you suffocating would cause me to feel anything remotely like pain.”

I nodded at Kara. “Let her go, and we won’t have to test the theory.”

Trigger’s upper lip curled. “I let her go and you and your boys kill me before I say what I came here to say.”

A murderous rage rose inside me, taking the place of everything else I was feeling. It twisted through my muscles, fighting to be released. I wanted to throw myself at him. Hurt him the way he was hurting her. Punish him for taking every single thing I’d ever cared about. “You think I care what you have to say, Trig?” I roared. “You self-centered, narcissistic psychopath! You think I give one tiny fuck about whatever pathetic excuse you have for the way you took the one good thing in my life? And now you’re doing it again. I’ve barely had a chance to know her, and now you’re taking her away.”

“Everything I do is for you.” Trigger glared at me. “You don’t see it, but it is.”

Oh, that was fucking rich. That might have been true when we were kids. He’d taken a vicious beating the day at the beach when our foster dad had tried to drown me. It was Trig, older and bigger than me, though still no match for a fully grown man, who’d thrown himself at my attacker, giving me enough time to get out of the water and away from his vicious temper. It had been Trigger who’d taken the beating when we’d gotten home, and who’d spent days in a cage afterward, learning his lesson for questioning our foster parents’ discipline.

But that boy who’d loved his brother wasn’t inside him anymore. He’d disappeared the day Trig had killed my wife. Clearly, nothing had changed. His blind hatred for women as blisteringly strong as it had been the day he’d killed Annette and her sister.

“Just let her go,” I begged him. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

Trig shook his head. “Don’t take orders from you, little brother.”

I pulled the belt tighter around my neck, feeling the burn of the leather when it closed around my throat. I shoved the end of it into Whip’s hand. “Do it.”

Trig chuckled darkly. “He ain’t gonna do it. You’re an innocent. Whip never could kill the good ones.”

Whip’s eyes narrowed at Trig’s arrogance, his voice deadly cold, no sign of any emotion. A peep into what he must be like when he buried the bodies of the men and women he killed. “You’ve been gone a long time, Trig. You don’t know half as much as you think you do.” He tightened his grip on the belt.

It flattened uncomfortably against my skin. Made swallowing difficult. Fear rose inside me, but I stared my brother down, refusing to budge when Kara was in exactly the same position.

He’d let her go. Or he could watch me die.

It was the only way I knew to hurt him the way he was hurting me.

Trig eyed Whip. “You were loyal to me once. I helped you.”

Whip shrugged. “You walked out and left us. Doc didn’t.”

“You ain’t gonna kill him.”

Trig’s taunt held the barest hint of worry. One you wouldn’t have noticed unless maybe you’d been his therapist for years.

Or if you were his brother.

I glared at him. “He will if I tell him to. You care so much about me? Prove it. Whip can let go of the belt as soon as you’ve let Kara go.”

Trig stared me down, his lips mashed into a hard line. “Whip is a fool who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

I took a deep breath and gave Whip the tiniest of nods.

He didn’t give me a chance to back out.

He yanked the belt hard. Cutting off my air.

Kara screamed. “No, please! Stop! Grayson!”

Trigger’s grip on her arm tightened as she fought against him, trying to get away. But there was no chance of her going anywhere. Trigger was huge. Easily one of the biggest men I knew, up there with Rebel’s partner, Fang, who had to be at least six foot five and two hundred and sixty pounds of solid muscle.

Trigger shifted his weight to one side and eyed Whip over my shoulder. “We really going to do this? I thought you and Gray were friends? You know he’s an innocent. What happened to your morals? You were always mister ‘no killing innocent people when there’s plenty of bad ones in the world.’”

Whip didn’t loosen his hold. If anything, he only planted his feet harder, using leverage to keep the belt from slipping. “We are friends. But it’s not me killing him, is it? I might be the one pulling it so he can’t breathe, but it’s you who’s killing him. Let the woman go, and I’ll let go too.”

The belt squeezed around my neck, so painfully uncomfortable I wanted to tear at it until my fingernails bled. But I didn’t flail. Didn’t fight against the hold Whip had on my throat, refusing to give in to the panic coursing through my body and the way instinct told me to do whatever it took to save my life. It took every self-calming technique I’d ever learned in med school to just stand there and let another man try to kill me. I stared my brother down in a deadly game of chicken that dragged out, every second a lifetime.

Kara’s frightened gaze bounced around the men standing like soldiers at my back. “Help him!” she screamed at them. “Why aren’t you doing anything? He’s dying!”

In the reflection of the window, my face paled until it was almost white, a bluish tinge spreading across my lips. Black danced at the corners of my vision, while my lungs screamed for air I couldn’t give them.

Kara’s panic turned to desperation. “He’s not dying for me!” She grabbed the cord around her neck and yanked it hard.

Tightening it. Drawing it closed around her throat until her eyes bulged.

I shook my head violently and tried to lunge for her, but my muscles all felt like they’d gone to sleep. Whip kept me up by my neck, my body weight only putting more pressure on my throat.

We were both going to fucking die. And my brother was just going to stand there and let it happen. A lifetime of memories flashed behind my eyes, so many of them featuring younger versions of me and Trig, back when he’d been known by his legal name, Kingsley.

I hadn’t called him that in a decade. My gaze met his.

Something flickered in his eyes. Something I recognized from every time he’d saved me as a kid.

Trigger sighed in defeat. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Fine. Take the girl. She’s not who I came here for anyway. I was just having some fun. You all need to lighten up.” He loosened the cord around Kara’s neck and shoved her away carelessly, pushing her toward me.

Whip let go of me at the same time, swapping his grip on the belt for the gun at his hip, raising it until it was pointed directly at Trigger’s forehead.

Kara and I sank to the floor, our nooses loose, both of us sucking in deep breaths to replace the ones we’d lost.

Kara recovered in seconds, but I didn’t. I’d been without oxygen so much longer than she had.

I coughed and spluttered, groaning in pain. I dragged the belt away from my throat, eyeing Trigger who seemed completely unbothered by my murder squad, as he’d called them, surrounding him, weapons drawn.

Kara ignored them, putting her fingertips to my neck, dancing over the damaged skin. “Oh my God. Grayson, your neck.”

I was sure it wasn’t pretty. But my lips tingled, blood rushing back into them, and my chest heaved painfully, finally filling with air again after being deprived for too long. My head ached like I’d been hit by a truck.

Kara rubbed at my arms. “Tell me what to do,” she begged. “What can I do? Should I call nine-one-one?”

“No!” all the guys shouted in unison.

She blinked up at them, like she’d forgotten they were even there.

She was so damn selfless, not even seeing the danger she was in because she was so focused on me.

Weakly, I drew her into my arms and tried to smile. “You could kiss me.”

She pressed her lips to mine without hesitation, half falling onto me in relief. The kiss wasn’t soft or gentle. It was hard and desperate, a needy grab of her hands into my shirt, holding me close, trembling in my arms. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

I kissed her back, ignoring the danger around us because just moments ago I’d been so sure I was never going to get to do this again. I kissed her until one thought surfaced through the fog the lack of oxygen had created in my brain. I was done wasting another second pretending this woman wasn’t important to me. When she so clearly was.

“Aw!” X shouted. “Gray has a girlfriend!”

I didn’t know if that’s what she was. But in that moment, I knew I wanted her to be.

Her gaze flickered over my face, and her eyes watered. “You just nearly died for me.”

“It would have been worth it.”

She melted, coming down off the adrenaline high into tiny trembles that showed how scared she’d really been.

I hated it. I pulled her close again and kissed the top of her head tenderly, murmuring reassurances into her hair that I was sorry and I’d never do it again.

Even though I would have died for her a hundred times over.

Because I was so stupidly in love with her.

Behind me, Trigger groaned. “Jesus Christ, I leave for a few years, and this is what you turn into? You were never this sappy with Annette.”

I blinked at the mention of how I’d been with my wife. Her name was like a bucket of cold water being thrown over me.

He was right. Annette might have looked like Kara, but she was different in every other way. She hadn’t been warm and sweet the way Kara was. Annette hadn’t liked public displays of affection, so we’d never kissed or hugged. Not even at home. I’d fallen for her because I was attracted to her and the sex had been good, but we’d never been affectionate with each other. We’d both been too busy for that. Me getting my degree and working long hours at the hospital. Her and her sister running their business and often away on trips.

I’d enjoyed her ambition, the money, and the curves of her body.

But she was nothing like Kara. She had none of Kara’s softness. Her sweetness. Annette had been selfish.

I had been, too, so it had worked.

But I wasn’t that man anymore. The work I’d done in Saint View, volunteering at that clinic every week and seeing how much people suffered, had put things into perspective for me.

If I was sappy now, it was a good thing. Not the insult my brother seemed to think it was.

But it didn’t mean I could just let him go. He might have given Kara back to me, but he’d still broken the one rule we’d set in place a lifetime ago, back in foster care when he’d killed his first victim and realized he liked it.

He and I had made a promise that day, and it was one each member of our group had sworn to as they’d come to us over the years. No one wanted a life in prison. Or an institution. So we’d vowed that if one of us got out of control, the others would put him in the ground.

Trig had killed innocent people. My wife. Her sister. Alice. All three of their deaths had been by strangulation, which had always been Trig’s weapon of choice. His name was written all over them.

He’d left me no choice.

“Whip, I need a gun.”

The words hurt to get out around my bruised throat. My voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper, but there was no staying silent. I’d been quiet for years, never getting my chance to look my wife’s killer in the eye and tell him exactly what he’d taken from me. I hadn’t even told the guys what he’d done. I’d kept every detail to myself, knowing that it needed to be me who ended him.

Trigger rolled his eyes when I got to my feet and Whip put his gun in my hand, silencer already fitted to the end, which was unexpected but probably shouldn’t have been, considering who Whip was.

A stone-cold killer. All the men in this room were. And I was just the idiot who’d wanted to help.

I’d always known it would come back to bite me. I raised the gun, pointing it at Trig.

He leaned on the window, looking about as bothered as if he had a fly buzzing around his head. “Well, this is dramatic. You even know where the trigger is on that thing, Gray?”

“Why Alice?” I knew Kara needed closure before this could end.

Trig tilted his head to one side. “Who?”

Kara’s voice trembled from behind me. She moved slightly to the side, so I wasn’t completely blocking her from Trig’s view. “My sister. She was killed in an alley outside a nightclub in the city.” She flicked the cord that hung round her throat like a necklace. “A cord just like this one wrapped around her neck and the life strangled out of her.”

Trig shrugged. “That wasn’t me. That cord is sold in every hardware store from here to Texas.”

“Bullshit!” I shouted, wincing again at the pain in my throat, but an anger so thick and strong spreading through me it couldn’t be ignored. “It was the exact same way you killed Annette and Portia. The way you kill all your victims.”

Trig folded his arms across his thick chest. “I take full responsibility for Annette and Portia. Those bitches deserved to die. And while I’m confessing my sins, there were another two, a set of twins I caught up with just recently once I got back here. Acquaintances of your wife. Left them in the woods for the animals because they didn’t deserve a burial.”

Whip swore under his breath. “One of them was a curvy brunette? Strangled in the woods?”

Trigger nodded. “Caught up with her sister a few days later.”

Whip mused over that. “Probably the woman I found.”

Her twin sister would have been the woman my contact at the morgue had texted me about.

Trigger cocked his head to one side. “But neither of them were named Alice. And I didn’t kill no woman in an alley. And outside a nightclub in the middle of the city? Ew. No. There are fucking rats there. You know how I feel about rats. I hate the city.”

I blinked, remembering the rats that had crawled over us during the nights our foster parents had kept us in cages in their filthy basement. How Trig had woken screaming one night after being tied up and left for the rats to bite at when he couldn’t shoo them away.

My fingers trembled remembering the horrific abuse that had turned him into the man he was.

And me into…this. A man forced to murder his own brother in cold blood.

If I could kill my foster parents all over again, I would. But Trig had already taken care of that.

“Gray,” he said softly, honestly. “I swear, I didn’t kill this Alice woman. Why would I lie about that when I just admitted to killing your wife?”

My fingers shook, and I squeezed the gun tighter.

Trig didn’t even blink. “Kill me if it’ll make you feel better. But we both know it won’t.”

I fucking hated he knew me as well as he did. “I made you a promise.”

Trig nodded slowly. “You promised you’d end me if I killed an innocent.”

“You agreed. No, not even agreed!” Anger rose inside me, boiled through my blood, and bunched my muscles painfully. I stepped forward, closing the distance between us. “You made me swear, Trig! You wanted this! And then you went and killed them without giving a shit about how I would feel, knowing I had to put a bullet through the brain of the one person who was always there for me.”

He nodded. “That’s still how I want it.”

“Then why?” My voice dropped to a low, miserable tone. “Why Annette? Were you just jealous I had someone else in my life?”

Trig shook his head. “I was happy for you.”

“And yet you took it away so fucking carelessly.”

Whip sighed, folding his arms across his chest. The other guys just watched on silently, X still for once in his life.

Trig’s eyes darkened. “You didn’t love her.”

“I did.” Except even as I said the words, I was no longer sure I believed them.

Kara’s fingers interlaced with my free hand, a silent support.

I glanced over at her, filling with a warmth I’d only ever felt when she was around.

I’d never felt like that with Annette. I’d wanted her body. Enjoyed verbal sparring with her. Drinking. Partying.

I’d never wanted to take care of her or protect her the way I did with Kara. Never wanted to spend all night holding her, reciting a list of everything I loved about her. Annette and I had gotten married because she’d said people expected it. Not because of some undying desire to be together forever.

If I put aside the anger over her death and really studied what we had, it wasn’t very much.

Not compared to the way I felt when Kara was around. An internal war raged inside me.

Trig narrowed his eyes. “Want to know how I know you didn’t love her? Because you didn’t even know her, Gray. You know what she and her bitch of a sister and their friends were doing when they said they were ‘working’? I know you don’t because I know your bleeding fucking heart and you would have never loved her if you’d truly known who she was.”

My head spun. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the lack of oxygen or the realization that maybe he was right, and I’d been holding on to anger for the past five years rather than love.

“They were trafficking women. Actually, I wouldn’t even call half of them women, because most of them were so young they should have been called girls.”

I recoiled sharply. “What? That’s bullshit. Annette would never.”

But pieces clicked together in my head. The way she never really talked about her day, always diverting the conversation to mine. The way she and her sister were regularly out of town on business trips. The way she spent all of her time at the ‘office,’ but I’d never even known where it was.

The way she told me their business was ‘importing and exporting goods.’ And I’d been too wrapped up in myself to question or even care what that meant. I’d just enjoyed the money and lifestyle it had given us.

A trickle of fear skated down my spine. “That’s not true.”

At least, I didn’t want it to be.

Trig pulled a thumb drive from his pocket. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I always trusted you, but I knew it never fully went both ways. So I brought receipts. All the proof you need to understand why I killed all four of them. None of them were innocents.” He swore low under his breath. “I fucking loved you. I would have never hurt your wife just for fun. Or because I was jealous. But good to know how fucking little you thought of me.”

He tossed the small electronic rectangle at me, and I caught it easily.

Thing was, I did believe him. I just didn’t want to. I so desperately wanted him to be a liar, even though I knew he wasn’t capable of it. At least not with me.

“Why disappear? You’ve been gone for so long.”

He pressed his mouth into a tight line. “I never meant to. Trust me, after I killed Annette and Portia, the only thing I had on my mind was getting to the twins they were working with and the rest of their crew. I only meant to stay away long enough for you to calm down and listen to me without shooting me on sight. Got picked up by the cops on a break-and-enter charge while I was down south. Spent the last five years doing time down there.”

I gaped at him and then glanced over at Whip and the others. “Did you know?”

They all shook their heads.

Whip ran his fingers through his hair. “He would have come up on the release lists we check if he’d been local. But if he’d been out of state…” He glanced over at Trig. “Seriously. Five years?”

To men like them, five years was a life sentence. It was worse than death. The beatings. The rape. The solitary confinement. They’d all done time in the past. They’d all agreed never to do it again.

Guilt swamped me. Poured down over my head like a bucket of cold water.

I’d unknowingly left my brother to rot in a prison cell for years. I hadn’t even considered he could have been caught. He’d always seemed untouchable.

I’d made assumptions because I’d had my head too far up my own ass to see what my wife had been doing right under my nose.

When I’d thought about how selfish I’d once been, I really hadn’t even touched the truth.

“For what it’s worth,” Trig said, voice softer than I’d probably ever heard it. “While I’m not sorry she’s dead, I am sorry her death caused you pain. I didn’t want that.”

I didn’t want my brother to have spent the last five years in a cell. When he’d spent half his childhood in a cage. My own PTSD flashbacks screamed through my head, and yet I’d been walking around, a free man for the past five years, while Trig…

I’d left him to suffer, the exact same way our foster parents had.

“I don’t think it’s you who needs to apologize,” I croaked out. I lifted my gaze until it met his. “I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t know.”

He shrugged. But then his gaze darkened, focusing on Kara. “I just don’t want you making the same mistake again.” He shook his head. “Should have just fucking killed her before you got home, but then that didn’t work out so well for me last time, did it? But now look at you, all over her like a fucking rash. You sure can pick ’em, Gray.”

I bristled, not liking the way he glared at her. “She’s nothing like Annette.”

“Her boyfriend works for Luca Guerra. Just like Annette did.”

X let out a low whistle. “Plot twist!”

I blinked and gazed down at Kara. “Is that true?”

Kara bit her lip. “Luca is Hayden’s business partner. He knows full well he made a deal with the devil and he’s not proud of it. But he’s not trafficking women.” She glared at Trigger. “And neither am I. You’ve clearly been watching us, so you’ll know that’s the truth. Am I right?”

Trigger lifted one shoulder. “Didn’t kill you, did I?”

Kara glared at him. “Do you want me to say thank you?”

A tiny smile pulled at the corner of my mouth at her getting fired up. It was so unlike her, but I kind of liked it.

Trigger glanced at me with a shrug. “I might like this one.”

I might as well.