Broken Wings (Dark Legacy #1)

I’d been wondering what Catherine was going to use to control me once I turned twenty-one and controlled my seat in the company. This was what it was. I knew it deep in my gut.

“Don’t you even want to know what the test is?” Evan asked, tilting his head while giving me an odd stare. “I mean, you should be curious, right?”

That was his nature, the curious jokester. Always dissecting me with his stare.

Jasper reached out a hand to me. “I thought you wanted this, Riles? To be part of us.”

Biting my lip, my teeth cut into the soft pad. “How can I trust you now? I thought I was being kidnapped. I prayed and said my fucking goodbyes.” My voice rose at the end, and I sucked in some deep breaths to get myself under control. “I don’t know what to think.”

My Langham stepped forward. “You have no choice. Catherine will not release her family from Delta.”

I finally met my birth mother’s gaze. “You can’t make me.”

She grinned, and it was filled with the sort of joy that had to mean bad things for me. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”

She stepped back and ripped away a black curtain. I hadn’t noticed it at first because the room was so dimly lit, but on the other side a man was tied to a chair. Everyone moved out of the way so I could see him better, and I recognized him straight away.

“What the hell?” I whispered, revulsion crawling up the back of my throat. “He tried to kidnap me, why is he here?” I’d thought he would be in police custody or something by now.

Catherine moved forward and dropped a gun into my hand. On instinct, my fingers curled around the heavy piece. It wasn’t my gun from Beck; this one was just a standard black, with a few shiny accent pieces.

“Kill him,” Catherine ordered. “Kill him and we will record it as security against you ever betraying Delta. This ensures loyalty. If you betray us, that footage is released to the world, and you will spend the rest of your life in jail. The worst jail we can find. A much harsher punishment than simply killing you.”

My fingers trembled, and for a brief moment, I wondered if I could shoot her. Catherine. The bitch who brought me into this world.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” I choked out. “I mean, you guys are so rich, you could destroy me if I said anything anyway. You don’t need evidence.”

Jasper placed a hand on my shoulder, but I shook him off. “This is how it’s always been.” he said sadly. “All of us have tapes. All of us had to do something which would end us if it was released. It’s the bond we share, the reason we don’t betray one another.”

And yet in my mind, they had already betrayed me.

I looked between Dylan and Beck. “This was why I got the gun training. Not so I could defend myself, or feel safer, but so I wouldn’t miss when I had to murder a man.”

Beck scoffed. “This piece of shit is not a man. If he wasn’t required for your loyalty task for Delta, then I would have killed him myself.”

Dylan made a sound of agreement. “Don’t forget that he tried to kidnap you. You don’t want to know what they do to young, gorgeous girls that fall into their hands.”

“It’s for the best,” Evan added, also reaching out to me.

I avoided him as well. I didn’t want anyone in this room touching me.

“I don’t care what he did, or what he would have done had he succeeded in taking me. All I know is that I cannot shoot a person tied to a chair. Maybe if he was actively trying to hurt me, I’d give it a literal shot, but … this is wrong.”

Not to mention letting these fuckers have that sort of leverage over me. Like … no way. I mean, how did the vault even work? Who got to access it? There must be an independent party who oversaw it … what if they decided one day to expose us all. This was a stupid, outdated thing which clearly came from the nineteenth century.

“You have no choice,” one of the parents said. I didn’t really care which one at this point.

“Not gonna happen.”

Catherine made that same happy sound, and my blood turned cold. She waved her hand at Beck. “Time to bring out the incentive.”

The look Beck leveled on me then was even scarier than Catherine’s happy sound. “What did you do?” I whispered, already sniffling as tears burned my eyes.

I’d been insane to think I ever had a choice here.

His expression softened just for the briefest second before the mask was back in place. “You have to play the game, Butterfly,” he said softly, repeating the words he’d told me long ago when speaking about Oscar. No one gets out of the game alive.

He turned and about ten seconds later, reemerged from a small side room. Another tall man was at his side, and a sob choked from me at the state Dante was in. He was barely conscious, stumbling along. His hands were bound tightly behind his back, his face a swollen mass of bruises and cuts.

“Dante,” I sobbed, my fingers opening and closing over the gun as I fought the instinct to run to him. “What the fuck did you do to him?”

I directed that to no one in particular, but Beck answered. “He fights dirty. We had no choice.”

Beck did this. My heart shattered then, and I crumpled forward, holding my chest as tears streaked silently along my cheeks.

Someone touched me but I violently shook them off. No one was my friend here. I’d given my trust to the heirs, and they had betrayed me. I’d given my heart to Beck, and he had smashed it into a million fucking pieces.

“Time is up, I have a meeting to get to,” Mr. Langham said. “Shoot the Huntley operative, or we will shoot your friend. Easy?”

Beck pulled out a gun then from the back of his jeans, and he kicked Dante in the back of the legs, knocking him to his knees. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; the only part of Beck I recognized right then was his eyes. They were no longer dark, but a beautiful silver. Like when he’d been holding me last night.

He flicked the safety off the gun, and I cried out. “No, wait. I’ll do it.”

Dante managed to get one eye open enough to see me. “Riles, baby ... girl, don’t … do it.”

He shook his head, telling me that his life wasn’t worth destroying mine. That’s where he was so wrong. Putting on my best pissed off face, I looked around the room at my betrayers. “Promise me that if I do this, you will let Dante go. Alive. And never touch him again.”

Their word wasn’t worth shit, but I had to make it very clear that this was what I wanted and I would not shoot Huntley’s guy without it. “I want you all to fucking promise me!” I shouted.

One by one, each of them repeated the words back, assuring me that from now on, if Dante stayed out of their business, they would not pursue him. Even Catherine, though she did so reluctantly.

With trembling hands I pushed through the guys and stood before the Huntley man, who remained tied to the chair.

I wished so hard that his eyes weren’t open then, watching me closely. There was no fear on his face, but I could sense it there all the same. A desperation. Human instinct to want to save your own life.

“I’m sorry,” I told him seriously. “I don’t know if you have a family … friends who will miss you. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but Dante…” I inclined my head to my best friend. “He’s my family. My everything. I have to save his life.”

He started to struggle then, for the first time since he’d been revealed to me. I lifted the gun, and there was a whirring noise and a click, which I could only assume was a video camera kicking in so that this was recorded for “the vault.”

I released the safety, my hands shaking too badly for a clean shot. I didn’t want to drag it out, though, make this guy suffer, so I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. In and out. Centering myself.

The room was deathly silent, and I almost wished that someone would make some noise, because the voices in my head were screaming at me. Don’t do it. I couldn’t do this. But I knew Beck would shoot Dante. What I didn’t know is if he’d be sad about doing it, but it was clear that he had no choice. He was controlled. We all were.

My eyes snapped open and without another thought, I pulled the trigger.