LOLA
“They’re here!They’re fucking here!” Reese’s voice pierces through the fog.
I try to push myself off the floor, but my arms give out. I collapse back onto the wood. Blood is pooling beneath my temple. My vision swims, the room tilting on an axis that won’t stay still.
I have to fight. I have to hold on.
Beau is in front of me. Just a figure. “Plan B,” he says.
“There are four vehicles out there!” Reese’s voice is tearing apart. “We aren’t going to kill them all!”
Beau laughs. “No. Kill the leader, that burns the empire.” He crosses the room and grabs a shotgun from behind the couch. “I still got Lola, remember? We are the ones negotiating here. You should know that you’re a damn lawyer.”
He shoves Reese aside and strides toward the door. “You stay in here with her. I’ll deal with my family.” He pauses in the doorway. The shotgun rests against his shoulder. “They won’tkill me. Not when they want her back. Keep that gun pressed against her head and don’t fuckin’ move, Reese.”
The door slams shut behind him, and the barrel of Reese’s handgun presses against my temple. But only lightly. Because it’s shaking. His whole arm is trembling so badly that the metal vibrates against my skin in tiny pulses.
“Lola.” His voice comes from above me. “I—I fuck. I’m sorry.”
I drag my face off the floor. Every inch costs me another part of myself.
Reese is on his knees beside me. His finger isn’t even on the trigger.
“Fuck. You,” I cough out.
He flinches. “I didn’t know it would go this far,” he whispers. “I swear?—”
“What did you expect?” I don’t have the energy to talk.
He closes his eyes. “This was supposed to be about money,” he mutters. “The deal. Getting what Hunter owed me. It wasn’t supposed to be this.”
“When Hunter walks through that door, nothing you say is going to save you.”
His hand drops. The gun lands on the floor beside his knee. He presses both palms over his face and sobs.
I stare at the gun. Three inches from my hand. My fingers are numb. My body is screaming at me to give up. But I can’t.
One more chance.
I reach.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
HUNTER
Beau walksout the front door with a shotgun. A twelve-gauge pump-action resting against his shoulder like a lunatic.
Every weapon on the property swings toward him, but I know my brother better than to go for the attack. Especially when I can’t see Lola.
Beau stops on the porch. Scans the army in front of him. When his eyes land on me, he smiles. And it feels like the first real one from him since Dad died.
He brings the shotgun down from his shoulder and holds it across his body.
“What the fuck are you playing at, Beau?” I shout.
“Careful, brother,” he says. “Reese has a gun to your wife’s head. You shoot me, he pulls the trigger. You rush the house, and he pulls the trigger. You do anything other than stand right there and listen to what I have to say, your pretty little firefly dies.”
The world narrows to a point, but I keep my calm. Beau’s little show is about to come to an end.