My body jerks as my brother shoots Noah. I cry out, I kick backwards, I scream… I do everything I can to get away…. I get nowhere. It’s no use, I’m not strong enough to fight against the hold Wolf has on me. I can’t get loose. Right now, if he wasn’t holding me, I’d fall to the ground.

My beautiful Noah.

Even with everything between us, even with all the pain… he is a part of me and right now it feels like I’m dying. I watch his head go down, his body lifeless.

“Call the cleaners,” King says and you don’t grow up in the family and not know what that means.

“No! You can’t leave him like this! You can’t!” I scream, although I know it’s useless, of course King can leave him… he just killed him.

I hear this low, sad, mournful sound that seems to echo in the air. It takes me a minute to realize the sound is coming from me.

“Why? Why are you doing this?” I whisper, my voice tortured. “Is it because I slept with him?” I ask, my voice coming out little more than a whimper.

Over the years, I’ve become King’s favorite pet. He loved finding new ways to torture me. We were once so close, but his time alone with my father twisted him somehow and the hate my father always had for me somehow bled into him. My beloved brother is gone and in his place is a monster. A monster who just killed the man I loved… the father of my child.

King walks over to me, his face tight. He’s not happy. In fact, he’s livid. I prepare, because I know when King is mad he lashes out.

I know that better than anyone.

He grabs me by the hair on my head, jerking hard and forcing my head back to look at him.

“I didn’t lead you here to spread your legs for him, Rory. That was never planned. I guess I forgot what a little whore Tony said you were,” he spews the words at me, but I don’t close my eyes—I don’t even blink. I take the words, because I know if I don’t he’ll hit me… or do worse.

“Then why?”

“So you could get close to my son,” he snarls. “You’re going to be the key to getting my child to obey me.”

Obey. Not warm up, not love, not anything fatherly at all… just obey.

I decide right there that whatever it takes I will make sure King never gets his hands on an innocent child. I knew it before, but after this… my brother is even more vile than I imagined.

“Why get me all the way to Whitefish for that? I don’t know your son! I don’t know him and if I did I’d tell him to run!” I cry. I shouldn’t have said that. I let my misery well up and that wasn’t smart. King’s radiating anger even more intense than before.

“You really are fucking stupid. I have to wonder how we have the same genes in our blood. Our mother’s side of the family obviously weakened you. Listen closely, Rory and I’ll spell it out for you. I put you in place because the child’s crack-whore mother has cost me a fortune. I can’t stomach her, but I’ve kept her alive because I thought she might be the only way I’d have to my child. You friending my son, becoming a person he trusts, works so much better. You’ll teach him to trust me—”

“I won’t do it,” I argue, and then I gasp in pain as he twists my hair tighter.

“You will, because if you don’t, I’ll punish you by making you watch as I teach my boy a lesson. You remember those lessons, don’t you, Rory?”

He asks and I do. I truly do. I wouldn’t wish them on anyone.

“And then, if you still won’t do as I ask, you will die and I’ll find another option. I have too much invested at this point to fail.”

“But I don’t even know—”

He slaps me hard, so hard I see stars.

Looking back, I probably should have put the pieces together sooner. But, I was in shock from watching Noah die, I was in pain and that pain was almost choking me. Plus, I was swamped with fear about what was going to happen next and how to protect the life growing inside of me. I truly didn’t understand…not until King’s next words.

“God, I can’t handle how pathetic you are. You really don’t get it yet. Why would I kill your lover unless he was standing in the way of something I wanted?”

“Something you wanted?” I murmur, confused. Then an awful, horrible thought comes through the confusion in my brain. The pieces click into place and I remember how Noah spoke about Ryan’s mother, I piece together the complicated puzzle and I cry from the horror the thought brings me.

“I see you finally understand. Fucking stupid,” King says with a sigh. He roughly pushes my head away from him, letting go of my hair.

“Load up. Diesel told Ryan to head toward Rory’s. Wolf ,you and Davis take to the hills and track him. I’ll drag my useless sister back to her place and wait. The rest of you get the cleaners out here before the cops ascend on this place like damn vultures,” King orders, walking off. Another man drags me behind King, with just his hand on my bound hands. My back is to his back, I can’t see where I’m going and I’m not doing a great job of getting my feet to work. The pavement scratches into my skin, peeling back the hide. That pain is nothing to what is in my heart. I pray Ryan gets away. I pray he remains free of King’s clutches.

I don’t know what I’ll do if they find him.