DECEIT (B723) by Hazel Grace (ebook reader for surface pro .TXT) 📕

one of my many favors,” he counters. “You won’t go off assassinating without backup, which will be me.”

“Alright…when I’m ready, you can be nearby and on standby if I need you.”

Minutes later, we pull off on the side of the road in a highly shitty part of town. The studio apartment is run down with chipped white paint, hanging gutters, and cracked cement stairs.

Neither of us makes an effort to get out. The moment that I do is when everything will crash around me. The reality of going to a home without my babies will suffocate me until I rid myself and them of Alexander.

My heart beats triple time, and my palms begin to sweat from nerves.

Self-doubt begins to creep its ugly head, but I try to focus on revenge.

He almost killed us. 

Alaric and Atlas shouldn’t be in the world yet overcoming their medical needs. 

“I don’t like it,” Mills quips. “You couldn’t pick out anything better?”

“Didn’t have a lot of time.” I hold out my hand. “I need your gun.”

“How about we get you into a hotel room and—“

“It’ll be fine,” I urge. “It’ll give me something to do when I’m not obsessing over what I’m missing.”

“This place is a dump.”

I snort. “Then it’ll match what this whole situation is.”

A month later…

My heart is ripping in two, and I can’t breathe. 

The outcome of this ordeal isn’t going to end well, and I can’t help but feel guilty for everything that’s happened. 

I spent the lot of six years protecting and loving her, and I’ve only admitted it out loud once. But I’m proud of who she is and what she’s been in my life. 

And when large hands wrap around her neck, I can see that her face begins to turn paler mixed with a light shade of red. 

She’s trying to fight him off, but he’s too big, and I can’t help her. The zip-ties around my wrists are too tight. My throat aches from screaming at them to stop. 

But she can’t hear me. 

I’m watching my life fade before my eyes. 

I’m looking upon my soul crushing into powder because there will never be anything that’ll make me be able to get past this. 

I was always afraid that I’d be the death of her somehow, and I was right. Something inside me repeatedly warned me away because demons always find me in one way or another. They taunt and take from me—the people that mean the most. The only family I have left. 

My voice thunders again, but it doesn’t fall on ears that I want to have hear it. 

No matter how long and loud I yell or scream, she’ll never know how sorry I am. How I’m here, and she’s not alone. 

How I love her, and it doesn’t matter. 

I watch her arm limp over the table, her lifeless body now fallen, and it’s over. 

Emmy’s dead. 

And I killed her. 

“Kace! Kace!” My body jolts, and I haul myself upward, knocking into a hard body that isn’t supposed to be here.

In the darkness, I see the figure of a man and it sets off the rage simmering in my body.

I lunge forward, connecting with the second person in the room, and we fall to the floor together with a heavy thud. My fist swings and connects with a stiff jaw as I grip the t-shirt of the stranger to pull them up.

“Motherfuck—Kace!” It’s a yell-whisper. One that doesn’t register as quickly as it should, but when it does, I crawl off my fucking brother.

The light to my bedroom flicks on, and I hear Kyson’s muttered shit as I plop my ass to the floor with a thud, watching my best friend help Hardy up.

My brother doesn’t leave, nor does he bother to hide the worry along his face with what just happened.

It’s not safe for me to be here anymore; I know that. I’ve done nothing but cause destruction to my whole home, and this isn’t the first time that I’ve clocked my brother in my sleep.

Apparently, I’m having nightmares that reach outside the realm of my head. They’re all different scenarios, but the outcome is always the same—me not rescuing Emmy in time, and in result, she still dies.

My breathing is haggard at best like I just ran ten miles, and I don’t bother to contain it. Everyone knows about my episodes and the change in my demeanor. They all know the reason, and I can’t stop myself from feeling empty through and through because there’s no way to get rid of it.

I never got to see her face again.

Our last moments together replay over and fucking over in my head until I can’t take it anymore.

If I would’ve acted differently and not have been such a bitch about being scared to express myself, she’d be safe.

She’d be mine.

Those kids of hers would fucking be mine as well. I don’t give a shit if he spermed them.

Emmy was mine.

Emmy will always be mine.

She has to be. Because the idea of throwing her away to date someone else like she didn’t mean jack shit to me hurts more than the nightmares do.

“We’re good here,” I hear Kyson tell Hardy. “I’m sorry, man.”

“What can I do?” Hardy’s voice is but a whisper, and I don’t bother telling him to not worry about it.

He should be concerned about me. His fucking daughter lives under the same roof as a man who can’t pull his shit together.

Maddy is almost terrified of me now because I can’t and haven’t kept myself from snapping at her. I can’t hold in the violent need to break, burn, or smash something and I need help.

I need Emmy.

I was aware that she was the glue that kept me whole, and with her being gone, I’m falling at the wayside. I’m disintegrating and crumbling into nothing.

I can’t get over her.

I can’t get her out of my head and how soft her lips felt against mine.

How holding her was heaven and I never wanted to come out from the clouds. It was the most peace I have ever felt in my life, and