Staring up at the white ceiling, I try to lift my arms, but they don’t move. I know they won’t, I designed this drug this way for a reason, but the instinct to survive is strong inside me, so I clench my jaw and try harder.

Sounds of Nixon moving around, opening and closing cupboards, alert me to the fact that he’s still here and hasn’t yet called the police.

I came here for my sweet Lucy. I’d managed to stay away for some time but coming back here to leave a birthday present for my granddaughter got me reminiscing about what I had to give up last time I was here.

A quick call to Four Fathers Freight, and the secretary was all too helpful informing me Trevor was out of town tonight and I could send the delivery I lied about having direct to his home address. She reeled it off even going as far as spelling the street name out like I had a low IQ.

It was too easy. Fated I thought.

And maybe it was fated, just not for the reason I wanted.

Maybe this was Nixon’s fate, his role in my life - not to be like me, but to stop me.

Now, my own poison is coursing through my veins, and the green eyes of a boy I could have killed twice over, is leaning over me, my future in his hands.

“You should have stayed the fuck away,” he tuts.

I want to tell him he knows that would never happen. I’m pulled here by the blood that runs in the veins of a girl he loves. My daughter. My Rowan.

She’s finally with the right man. A man worthy of her. Look at him. He took me down, of all people. I’m a god amongst mortals. It took me years to hone my calm, but Nixon is already years ahead of me.

“I’m pretty sure of what you had in mind tonight, Jax, but I’m afraid I can’t let you go through with it. Lucy is too close to Rowan - to us,” he tells me, no strain or conflict in his tone.

Slipping his hands under my armpits, he begins dragging me backwards through some double doors and lays me next to a table and chairs.

He moves out of sight, but continues to talk.

“Rowan’s happy. She’s finally fucking happy, and I can’t let you change that.”

Happiness is something I should want for her, but everything inside me says I want vengeance, retribution for what was taken from me - including Rowan. She allowed Eric to seduce her, and she chose him over me. The killer inside me wants her to pay in blood, but my willpower is stronger than the urges.

Rowan is my daughter, so I fight the need to snuff her out. I raised her, gave her everything, it would be a shame for all that to be gone with her pulse in a blink of rage.

“It’s strange, because I know what you are, and I used to think we were the same.” Nixon grunts from somewhere to my right. He sounds strained, like he’s doing hard labor.

“But we’re nothing alike. You kill people for satisfaction. A sexual thing,” he puffs out, coming back into view. “I kill for necessity - to keep people I love safe.”

What the fuck is he talking about. Kill? Who has he killed?

He once again grabs my underarms and swivels my numb body until I see a noose come into view, hanging from a light fixture on the ceiling. You’re going to kill me? Fucking ME? I want to roar.

But my lips won’t move.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

I doubt it.

“But that will hold your weight. You see, there were wooden beams put in especially because Lucy wanted some artsy-fartsy chandeliers, that weigh the same as a small rhino.” He reaches up, grabbing the noose, and pulls it down, pushing it over my head.

Don’t! I shout over and over in my head as he begins pulling on the extending rope and my body begins to shifts upward.

His muscles bulge as he growls, using all his strength to hike my body up. The rope digs into my skin, and I can feel it cutting, thanks to my designer drug. It numbs the motor and muscle function but doesn’t stop the sensation of feeling touch. It was how I wanted it so my girls could feel me on them - in them.

My fucking head is going to pop right from the shoulders before he has me fully suspended.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

My feet hit a chair, and my body tilts back and forth. I have no control to grasp purchase.

A chiming sounds, and Nixon begins tying the rope around the handles of the double doors he pulled me through.

“Hang tight a minute,” he jests, smirking and pulling his cell out of his pocket.

“Baby, I hit traffic.”

“Nix,” Rowan breathes through the loudspeaker. She sounds panicked.

“What is it?” His eyes clash with mine, narrowing accusingly.

“Someone left a dollhouse on the back porch,” she sobs.

“It’s okay, baby.”

“No, it’s not. It’s my dad. It has to be. Oh God, he’s going to take her, isn’t he?”

“Over my dead body, baby.”

“Or yours,” he mouths silently at me with a pointed finger.

“Just come home, please.”

“I’ll be there soon, I promise. And Ro…I love you, baby.”

“I love you too.”

He ends the call and shakes his head.

“This isn’t how I wanted things to go. You just don’t know when your time is done. You killed Eric, you got your revenge, but you just can’t help yourself. Going to our house?” he grinds out.

“You signed you own death warrant. You knew what I was capable off, you saw it inside me and yet you pushed me to this.”

A calm washes over me as realization dawns, I won’t be leaving this house breathing. I’ve been bested by a boy - a fucking boy. I’m glad it’s him. No one else is worthy of this honor, and prison isn’t something I’m made for.

It should be you. I want to tell him. Tell him it’s okay, I understand. Because I do. Rowan should be with a man who will kill for her. It’s fitting. She was born in a pool of her mother’s blood, death is her gift and curse.

“I’ll look after them.” He frowns, nodding his head. “I promise you that.”

And then, he shoves the chair from beneath me.

My vision blurs and water builds in my eyes. I can’t breathe. My instincts try to gasp out, suck air into my burning lungs, reach for the rope, but I can’t do anything but feel my life fade. My lungs seize, and darkness clouds my sight. I’m dying.

He killed me.

He fucking did it.

Nixon Pearson.

Son.

Father.

Protector.