I’m shaking my head in denial and send a pleading glance to Gabe who frowns at me. His brows are pinched together and I see the flash of sadness in his eyes. He may be a monster now but he was Dad’s best friend. Surely knowing that my father is dead wounds him too.
Jesus, my dad is dead. I can’t even fathom the word.
Dead.
The same dad who protected me and loved me.
A man who wasn’t all brute and gruffness, but also had a sweet, teddy bear side.
A man who somehow was desperate enough to sell his own daughter to save his wife.
If only he’d have asked me. I would have gone willingly. I am certain of this. If it meant saving, Mom, I’d have done it in a heartbeat.
Gabe lets out a huff of frustrated breath and glares at Brandon. “Me,” he waves to his battered body, “dig up his body like this? Hell no. I kind of figured you lost it and finally let him have it. Hell, I don’t even know if you shot him or stabbed him or what the fuck you did. But you have already proved yourself to be a damn lunatic. When I went into their backyard and saw the picnic table had been moved to the corner of the yard, I knew. You covered your tracks well but you were hiding something. That something was his body. How did he die anyway? You beat her old man into a bloody fucking pulp? Did you slit his throat?”
“He had it coming to him!” Brandon screams. “He deserved to pay for what he allowed to happen to her!”
Understanding begins to crush in on me.
Brandon killed my dad.
He really did it.
Gabe flashes me a regretful look before plastering on an angry scowl for Brandon. “This would have all worked out just fine if you would have just backed off, * boy. Now you went and fucked it all up for Baylee and I. You broke her heart when you killed her dad. And now I’m going to break you.”
I hold my hands up in the air a moment to stall him. My mind is fracturing quickly and I need all the answers I can get before I lose myself altogether. This breakdown has been a long time coming. I’m teetering on the very edge, about to plummet into my own mental hell. “How did you find us?”
Gabe takes my hand and squeezes it in an affectionate way. Hurt, fucking hurt, flashes in his eyes when I jerk it away. I’m disgusted with him—with both of them. With a small sigh, he continues. “All it took was me doing a quick internet search to learn freak boy, who’d pickled your brain into thinking you loved him, was surprisingly alive. And I know you sweet girl, once you figured out he wasn’t dead, you were still hypnotized enough to go right back to him. But when I got there to retrieve you, lo and behold, he was kidnapping you. Doing all my dirty work for me.” He shakes his head and smirks at Brandon. “I have to say, * boy, you have some balls on you. Guess they finally dropped when you turned eighteen.”
I’m no longer listening to them. I slam my eyes closed and try to drown them out. But I can’t. The darkness swarms in and suffocates me with the truth. Truth that he’s really dead. This is too much. Brandon is not a murderer. He wouldn’t murder my father.
Please be a lie.
Please.
But it’s not a lie. It’s truth and he’s a murderer. The boy I loved as a teenage girl grew into something sick and fucking twisted. He sought revenge when it wasn’t his to seek. Brandon Thompson stomped all over his own innocence when he stamped out my father’s life.
“Fuck you,” Brandon snaps, jerking me from my overwhelming grief. I pop my eyes open and swipe away the tears I hadn’t noticed were falling down my face.
Gabe’s glare becomes furious as he steps toward Brandon. “Shut up! I’ll put a bullet through your skull before you can take your next breath,” he roars. “I’m not done with story time. Tell Baylee how you lived in her house for months jacking off to pictures of her while you waited for me to find her, you sick fuck. Tell her. When I called Tony after I sold Baylee to give him the money and to update him, you were there playing fucking house in her house. And did Tony ever emerge from that house? No. Because you killed him. You were just waiting there so when the time came, you could swoop in and save the fucking day. Ride off into the sunset with my girl knowing you murdered her goddamned father.”
I shudder and reach for my panties. There’s no way I can sit here and listen to another second of this. I have to get the hell out of here and back to War. If I can manage to slip off the bed and make a run for the doo—
“Leave them off,” Gabe barks, waving his gun at me and motioning to my panties in my fist. “I’m not done looking at you, sweetheart.” He winks at me and flashes me a heated grin.