“What the fuck? Tempe?” Ransom shoves Magnolia to the ground as we stop in front of him.
“Rafe? What are you doing? Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like. Please.”
Temperance’s begging slices at my heart, and I hate this for her. I hate it even worse than I hated pulling the trigger in the airport in front of her.
“Tempe, what the hell are you doing here?” Ransom’s face is creased with confusion, at least until he meets my gaze. “I know there’s no fucking way Saxon would bring you here with him.” He shakes his head. “What the fuck, man? Thought you’d do a better job of protecting her.”
“Let your sister leave. Right the fuck now.” There’s no mistaking my statements for anything but what they are—nonnegotiable.
Ransom tilts his head, a new light entering his eyes. “Now why would I do that? As long as she’s here, I’ve got you by the balls. I never figured when I hooked you two up, she’d fall so fucking hard for you. But you, Saxon. I knew you’d never be able to resist her. Loner with no one who has ever given a shit about you. And then Temperance comes along, and you take the bait like a catfish to chicken liver.”
“What?” Temperance whispers. “Youset us up? You sent the note?”
Ransom nods and jerks his chin at Magnolia, where she’s staring up at him from the ground like he’s sprouted horns and cloven hooves. She might not be far off.
“Stole Mags’s stationery from the club. Wasn’t no hard thing. I wondered if I wrote too sloppy and you’d recognize it as mine. But you didn’t even question it. Just trotted right off and fell into line.”
This motherfucker.
“You sent me to a sex club? Because you wanted to set me up with a hit man? What the hell, Rafe? And then you come warn me about going back?”
I can hear the tears she’s fighting off, and now I wish I’d taken the shot when I had the chance. No one, not even Rafe Ransom, makes Temperance cry.
“You think I don’t know you? If I warned you off, you’d be twice as likely to go back. Stubborn as fuck, that’s what you’ve always been.”
“Why? Why all of these crazy schemes?”
“Money,” Giles says from behind us. “He could never get enough. Always needed more to make sure he’d never be that broke kid in the swamp again.”
“We didn’t need more money, asshole!” Magnolia scoots back in the gravel, and Giles lunges for her.
Ransom pulls his gun and I reach for mine, thinking he’s going to pull the trigger on Magnolia, but he puts a bullet in Giles’s head instead.
What. The. Fuck?
“Never liked that pretentious douchebag,” Ransom says absently, staring down at Giles’s body.
When Ransom looks back up at Temperance and me, he’s looking down the barrel of my gun.
52
Temperance
“Now I keep the money and the girls. Sell them to a higher bidder,” Ransom says with a smile.
“That’s what you did with your last shipment. Isn’t it, Ransom?” Kane’s question clicks into my brain, and all of a sudden it makes sense.
“Oh my God. Tell me he’s wrong. Tell me that’s not what happened.”
“Tell your boyfriend to drop the fucking gun unless you want me to unload the rest of these rounds into his chest in front of you.”
“Temperance, back away,” Kane orders.
My brother apparently still knows one aspect of my personality better than Kane, because instead of stepping aside, I lunge in front of Kane, blocking any potential shot Rafe could take.
“Temperance, you better—”
“You made me watch youdie,and it was all because you wanted to make more money?” My voice grows shrill and cracks. “How many lives have you ruined, Rafe? How could you do this? My brother couldn’t do this!”