“I have someone who’s excited to meet you,” Johnny mocked once he’d forced me back through the bedroom and out into the hall, dragging me when I let my body become a dead weight.
“I can assure you he won’t be meeting me,” I hissed, jamming my elbow into his stomach.
He only laughed.
It didn’t matter that I’d been aching to find Dare earlier. I knew Johnny and I doubted he would take me to Dare now if he realized I was Elle. Then again, I was under no delusion he wouldn’t kill me himself anyway.
He was the reason behind Dare’s continued need for vengeance. It was like Einstein had said: Dare had a devil on his shoulder. And that devil had me in his grasp.
My mind raced as I considered what I could do, but his large body and the way he was dragging me as if I weighed nothing was paralyzing me.
“This world will be a better place when your heart sto—”
I shoved my feet against the floor and smashed my head into his face as hard as I could, staggering forward into a run, blinking away the black spots in my vision when he released me.
“Shit,” I cried as I tried to shake away the pain shooting through my skull. Screams for help tore from my lungs when Johnny’s large arms wrapped around me from behind, lifting me into the air to haul me backward again.
But my screams were futile.
The only people left breathing in this house wanted me dead. The men who lingered on the property wouldn’t be able to hear my screams from Soldier’s Row.
“Shut the fuck up!” he bit out, pressing his hand over my mouth.
My body went cold, my mind flashed to that night all those years ago.
Lines and circles.
Blood staining my carpet.
Aric.
Conor . . .
I struggled against his hold with everything I had, fear slowing my heart and sending tremors through my body when a laugh rumbled in his chest. I thrashed and opened my mouth to scream once it was free, Dare’s name on my tongue, when a low voice I knew like the caress of the wind sounded behind us.
“Lily O’Sullivan.” He laughed darkly when Johnny turned us to face him, letting the laugh end with a contended sigh. “I think this might be the greatest moment of my life.”
Even in the dark and with a bandana covering most of his face, I knew him.
His stance. Those demanding eyes. The other half of my soul . . . he was there.
“I was coming to find you,” Johnny said, his breathing rough from dragging me.
“I can see that.” Dare casually raised his arm, enough for me to notice the gun in his hand. Tilting his head to the side slowly, he asked in a mocking tone, “Are you scared, Princess? It won’t hurt.”
The venom dripping from his words was so unlike anything I’d ever heard from him, his hatred for me tearing at my chest.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded, the ache in my heart continuing to pour through each word. “I know . . . I know about your fiancée. Dare, I’m so sorry.”
I knew the moment I slipped up.
Felt it in the way Johnny nearly crushed me.
Saw it in the way Dare’s head jerked back.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Dare gritted as he took slow steps toward me. Glancing at Johnny, his eyes narrowed on him. “Drop her.”
As soon as Johnny’s arms disappeared, Dare’s hand closed around my throat and he lifted his gun to my forehead.
But once we were in that position, I saw it.
What Dare was seeing, but not understanding.
The woman he was pressing to the window who looked so similar—yet different—to the one he’d been loving.
Using the barrel of the gun, he pushed the hood back to reveal more of my face, the disbelief in his eyes increasing as he did.
“Johnny, light.” Before Johnny could respond, Dare bit out, “Fucking light. Shine a light on her eyes.”
I flinched against the cool glass, instinctively closed my eyes when the light from Johnny’s phone appeared directly in front of me, and cried out when Dare roughly forced my head back, the window creaking from the blow.
“Open your eyes!”
I blinked rapidly against the blinding light until I could hold my eyes open and had to blink again and again once it disappeared. When I could look at Dare again, hurt, disappointment, and an overwhelming confusion lingered in his eyes.
He shook his head with a quick jerk and said, “One chance to explain what you just said.”
It took me a few moments to realize what he was asking, and then I was nodding. One chance . . . and I had no doubt that was exactly what he was about to give me. “You’ve taken everything from me.”
He looked shocked for countless seconds before his eyes turned murderous. Tightening his fingers around my throat, he growled out his demand, “What was that?”
“I gave you my heart blindly,” I choked out. “And continued to love you even after I found out who you were—who we were to each other.”
The cruel look was replaced with a horrified understanding, and his hand let up marginally.
“You silently demanded my soul, and I didn’t care that it would end like this, because it was beautiful while it lasted. So I let you take and take and take until there was nothing left of me to give,” I cried.
He shook his head roughly, like he was trying to clear my words from his mind. “Have you lost your mind, Princess?”
“Dare, you know me,” I cried out.
“Stop,” he demanded. “Your family has taken everything from me.” His finger slid from its resting place against the barrel of the gun to the trigger, and my tears fell faster.
“Dare, please—”
“Just kill the bitch,” Johnny demanded from beside me, his voice filled with a crazed excitement.
“For Gia and my dad, I will celebrate the day I ended your life,” Dare promised.
“Please. I love you,” I whispered, choking on my sobs. Holding his dark stare, I reached up to place my shaking fingers on the inside of his bicep. “Until the very end.”
I knew the moment it hit him. The gun relaxed slightly against my forehead and all the air seemed to be sucked up around us by the man holding me. “Elle?” he asked on a breath.
A pained cry left my chest. Unable to nod, unable to confirm, I just prayed he could see somewhere in the ice-blue eyes I was the girl he loved.
“If you want to live, let her go immediately,” Kieran warned in a lethal tone.
Dare tensed but didn’t turn.
“Bruise her, and I’ll kill you slowly,” Kieran promised, this time his voice was closer.
“Elle?” Dare repeated.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. I wanted to tell you,” I added quickly, my soul crying out when he abruptly shoved away from me, as if I’d burned him.
He ripped the bandana off his face, his expression pained as he roughed a hand through his hair.
“Fucking Holloway whore, I knew it,” Johnny growled. “Shoulda killed you when I had the chance.”
My pleading, broken stare hadn’t left Dare, but I knew the moment Johnny’s words reached Kieran . . . I felt it.
The hall was loud with Johnny’s curses and my quiet cries, but the house had never been more silent. It was as if death had passed by, leaving an ear-shattering silence in his path.
Johnny shot toward me then immediately staggered back, his roar breaking the heavy silence that surrounded us.
He pulled a blade from his shoulder, a sadistic laugh sounding in his chest. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to bring a knife to a gun fight, Nightshade?”
Kieran’s expression and tone as he focused on Johnny were calm . . . lethal. Pure assassin. “I’ll skin you alive for hurting her.”
Dare slammed into Kieran’s body when Kieran lunged for Johnny, sending them both into the wall beside me—Dare’s gun sliding across the floor as fists and curses flew.
“You let me think she was dead,” Dare seethed, landing a punch to Kieran’s side. “After everything I did and everything you pulled me back into, you’ve been fucking me over for—”
“You stole what was mine,” Kieran growled, finally showing his rage. “You stole every reason for living because yours was taken from you.”
“She ran from you.”
I wanted to scream at them to stop. I wanted to beg Kieran to drop the knife he’d just slid from his boot. I wanted to warn Dare of what Kieran’s next move would be.
But I was being forced to watch the entire thing in Johnny’s embrace with the bloody knife pressed to my throat as he slowly backed me away.
“You should’ve died a long time ago,” he whispered into my ear, his breaths rough.
My heart lurched when Kieran swiped his blade along Dare’s calf, Dare’s roar of pain filling the hallway as he twisted Kieran’s hand backward and slammed it repeatedly against the wall until the knife clattered to the floor.
Johnny’s grip tightened when an anguished cry tumbled from my lips, pressing the blade closer to my throat.
He hushed me, the soft sound that could easily be so comforting held so much warning.
Dare reached for the knife, but Kieran raised his fists above his head, bringing them down hard on his back. Dare stumbled away, releasing Kieran from his caged position against the wall and swiping his gun from the floor to aim at the man I’d spent a lifetime loving.
His chest rose and fell sharply as he stared Kieran down. “I wanted you to know the pain of losing your world. I wanted you to feel it every day. But it wouldn’t have affected you because she was never yours.”
Kieran just stood there with an expression so calm it was unnerving, but his body was tensed and his hand was slowly moving toward one of his pockets.
Dare’s head tilted marginally, a jolt seeming to go through his body when he realized I wasn’t where he’d left me. He turned fully, rage and fear warring on his face as he took a hesitant step in my direction.
“Johnny,” he began, his voice placating. “Johnny, what are you doing?”
“Told you not to trust her,” Johnny snarled. “Told you there was something about her.”
Dare and Kieran were now matching us step for step. Dare’s focus was on Johnny’s shaking hand that held the knife to my throat, his limp growing more prominent with each step from where Kieran cut him.
Kieran kept to the wall, nearly disappearing in the shadows as he soundlessly stalked us. The easiest way to track him was the moonlight catching on his exposed blade from where it streamed in from the many windows on the wall opposite him.
“Think it’s convenient we find out she’s alive, and not two seconds later she’s crawling into your bed.”
My chest heaved with a sob and my body tried to bend under the weight of my grief. “Dare, n—” My head was wrenched back, a strangled cry catching in my throat when the blade pressed in to the point where it became painful.
“This is why Gia’s gone,” he yelled, forcing my face in Dare’s direction for emphasis before roughly releasing my hair so he was leading me by the blade alone. “Remember her, Dare? Or is a little Holloway pussy all you needed to forget?”
Dare’s lip curled and he rolled his neck, but he kept limping forward, his gun hanging loosely at his side. “Let her go, Johnny.”
“Remember what it felt like to watch her die for the sake of this girl. Remember what it felt like to hold her while her blood ran cold.”
A cry ripped from my lungs, tearing through the hall when the blade pierced my skin.
“Johnny!” Dare started to rush toward where we were, only to stop, his expression panicked.
Johnny’s chest vibrated against my back. “I missed that sound. Isn’t it nice?” he asked loudly, his voice wavering on a growl. “Know you’re there, Nightshade. If you’re smart, you’ll stay back. Fiancée for fiancée. Or did you forget why we’re here, Dare? You realized yet that every time she left you she was back here fucking him?”
Dare’s chest heaved and his armed hand raised slightly. “Let her go.”
“Now that I think about it, you probably like blades against your throat being the assassin’s whore, don’t—”
“Fucking let her go!”
Johnny snarled in pain and his body jerked, the blade twitching against my throat before it fell away along with his hand that now had a knife sticking out of it. I stood there in stunned confusion before I pushed away from him with a strangled sob, my legs automatically taking me to comfort and safety . . .
I staggered backward when Dare suddenly aimed at me, a crippling acceptance washing over me in the split second that seemed to last forever and pass within one last beat of my heart before he fired, sending my world into deafening silence.
Because I knew it would end this way, and I’d been foolish to think it wouldn’t.
I hated that we didn’t have more time and that we’d been raised to hate each other.
But given the chance, I’d do it all over again.