“I love fucking you.” She sighs, coming down from the high.
And although it’s ludicrous, I want to say, “I fucking love you.”
“What will you do about your father?” Mona asks on a whisper.
“I’m going to kill him,” I tell her, our sated bodies lying naked on my bed. My fingers brush through her hair.
“You think you can actually kill?”
“If it means keeping you safe, I’d kill every person in this world and beyond,” I tell her honestly.
She snuggles in further, trying to crawl under my skin, her hands stroking over the tattoos decorating my flesh.
“Could you still be with a man who killed?” I ask, my muscles flexing, jaw tightening.
There a pause of silence, and then, “I don’t fear the darkness in you. It’s in me too. I’d kill to keep you safe,” she breathes. “I think I need to end my father’s reign, to be truly free and liberate my people trapped there.”
Her father is a piece of shit. It’s the thing we have in common. “Let it all crash down. Burn the whole fucking place to the ground. It’s poison, Mona. They feed you lies to keep you in line.”
“Will you help me?”
I tilt her face up to mine. “Again, if I have to kill every person in this world and the next to keep you safe, I’m willing and ready.” I steal a kiss from her lips.
Knuckles rapping against the door before it opens announce Cash’s entry.
Mona looks over at him. Crooking her finger, she invites him over. He crawls across the bed, taking the space to Mona’s left, his arm slinging over her hip.
“I set up a fake meeting with our father. We can finally end this once and for all,” he tells me on a yawn.
“When?” I growl, eager to finish this.
“Tomorrow.”
Mona grips my hand and clasps Cash’s in her other.
“Tomorrow it is.”
Twenty-Two
Mona
I pace the house, a nervous fluttering ever present. The windows don’t feel like they’re for me to look out of, but for evil to look in. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling of being watched since I arrived here.
The front door opening has me exhaling in relief. They’re home.
My stomach lurches, an icy hand snaking up my spine in warning.
“Mr. Ward, I didn’t expect you to be here.” I try to smile and play off my unease. Men like him enjoy the fear they instill, and last time, he quickly overpowered me. I need to play this better, leave room to flee. Colt and Cash left me here to deal with him, and now here he is.
“It is my house, dear.” He smirks, taking a couple steps toward me. It’s not the same as when Colt smirks. There’s no beauty in it.
“I’m sorry, I thought Colt owned this house.” I shouldn’t provoke him, but I can’t seem to control my tongue.
His lips thin, his eyes narrowing to slits. “I own Colt. Everything they have is because of me—every penny started out as mine.”
“I meant no offense,” I lie.
“Of course you didn’t. You islanders never do. You’re all so good and wholesome on the surface, but deep down, you sin worse than us.”
“I never claimed I wasn’t a sinner,” I tell him. I recognize what I am.
“Why did you come here?”
“To find my sister’s killer.”
“And have you?” He closes in, backing me against a wall. My pulse races, pushing the blood so fast to my heart, I think I may pass out. “Have you found her killer? Was it while you’ve been sharing a bed with her true love?”
Guilt suffocates me at those words. I haven’t been sexual with Cash, but if I had been, Clara wouldn’t hate me for it. I have to believe that.
“Cash and I are just friends.” More lies. What is he to you?
“Oh.” He laughs, holding a finger to my lips and shaking his head. “Not Cash, Colt.”
My head spins, pain and confusion raging war. He steps away from me, a smug look on his face.
“He didn’t tell you sweet little virgin Clara came to him to declare her love?”
“Lies,” I growl.
“I’m not the one who lies. You see, Cash hated me for not wanting him with her and blamed me for her death. I raised those boys, and he actually questioned whether I was capable of doing that to someone.”
“Are you?” I ask.
A sinister smile tugs at his lips.
“It doesn’t matter at this point. People made up their minds. I took out my rage and bitterness over my wife on your sister, according to the media. Only…they lacked any real evidence, so no conviction. Where Cash should have been looking is a lot closer to home.”
“I don’t believe you,” I snap, shoving at his chest.
He stumbles backward, howling with mirth up at the ceiling. “Wow, you’re a little spitfire.”
“Leave.” I point toward the front door.
Holding up his hands in surrender, he walks over to a bookshelf and removes a book. There’s a panel back there. He inserts a number sequence, and the entire wall shifts, opening up. “You can see for yourself.”