The Revenge by Tijan

“Take her outside,” I told Jasper.

Derek was listening to his radio, and as Jasper led Victoria outside, he approached. “They’re done outside.”

“Okay.” I nodded toward where Jasper and Victoria were going out the door. “Leave me the remote. I want you to go back with them and the guys.”

“Will do.”

A minute later, one of the men came inside and handed me the remote. He explained which button to use, how far we would need to be, and then he left.

Josh came down the stairs, a full bag with him, and he placed it on the dining room table. “I think I got everything. I’ll do a sweep of the main level and the basement.” He disappeared to the back rooms, and I moved to the far wall, which extended down the farthest hallway.

I was looking at the pictures when Josh finished, coming up to me. “Done.”

I didn’t speak. I kept looking.

He transferred his gaze, taking in the image. “Is that Victoria?”

“It’s her and her father.”

Josh looked at me. “Her father’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” That was a sad fact that I never stopped to consider until now. “My grandfather killed him.”

Josh didn’t react, but I felt his attention sharpen.

“I overlooked it. That was around when Victoria and I met for the first time, and looking back, there were rumors. I never questioned why. I never questioned the reason for it. If I had, then what? Would I have stepped in sooner? That’s probably the time when he decided to use Victoria to get to me.”

“That’s what Griogos was talking about, that Victoria was supposed to marry you.”

“Victoria was supposed to control me. That’s how my grandfather thought. He wanted me tied to him. It was just one more way he was trying to control me.”

“You and her did date.”

I nodded, moving to the next picture.

They were smiling in it. I pointed at it. “This is Maragos and his daughter.”

“The daughter who Calhoun was controlling, too?”

“He owned her. Griogos sold her to Calhoun.”

But that wasn’t the point of my trip down memory lane.

I was remembering the first time I saw Victoria.

The first flirt. The first kiss. The first date.

I came to the last picture, and Josh said under his breath, “Damn.”

It was me, Victoria, Matt, and Tony.

I forgot that, too. The four of us were friends. We were the beginning of everything.

“You’re so young in there.”

I nodded, lingering on Victoria’s face. Fuck. The bitterness was strong.

I had missed this.

I had missed it completely.

“This was another family he destroyed.” I touched Victoria’s face in the picture. She was thirteen. It would be the next year when Tony and Matt began drinking. It would be a few years years after that when Victoria and I started sleeping together. And in the midst of it all, I never thought about how Calhoun took her father first, then indebted her grandfather to him, and through all of that, began to own Victoria and her mother.

“Why am I getting the feeling you’re changing your mind on her?”

“She was a friend first. She was an innocent at one point.”

She looked like Bailey in the eyes. Both pure and both smiling.

I nodded, rapping my knuckles against Victoria’s thirteen-year-old self one last time before turning to leave. “We’re going to get her clean, and then we’ll go from there.”

We were two miles away when I hit the remote.

The sky lit up behind us, painting the sky orange and red.





TWENTY-THREE

Bailey


“I’m supposed to be hunting my grandfather.”

I gasped, whirling around. Kash had been gone for a while now, maybe a few days. It felt like forever. I was coming back from a rousing game of bowling downstairs. Seraphina won because everyone threw theirs in the gutter. She loved it. Cyclone vowed to make a robot bowling ball so he’d win forever.

There’d been an ache in me because, well, because of who was standing in front of me.

“You told me you had a brother.”

“You told me to go.”

I winced, remembering. “I didn’t, actually. You asked if I wanted you to leave, but I did hesitate on answering. I’m sorry for that.”

He sighed, coming farther into the room. He was dressed casual—a Henley shirt, jeans, a ball cap. I didn’t understand the need for a ball cap, but I’d never say no to it on Kash. It made his jawline and lips so delicious. Those high cheekbones, too.

“You weren’t wrong. I am to blame—”

“No, you aren’t. Your grandfather is. Not you. And you’re also right. I need you to kill him. I need that, Kash. I shouldn’t, but I do, because it was my mom and—”

He stopped me, coming forward, not stopping until he was right in front of me. He tipped my chin up so his eyes could rake over me. “I do not tell you enough how amazing you are.” His hand slid to the back of my neck, his fingers threading through my hair, and he cupped the base of my skull in the palm of his hand. “You are funny. You are courageous. You persevere. You endure. You adapt. You look for the positive. You are allowed to blame someone for losing your mother, and you are allowed to blame me. I failed.”