“Shit.”
Vanessa gasped and buried her face into Carson’s chest.
“Turns out, I was captured and tortured by my own fucking dead wife who couldn’t just stay dead.”
Inés pulled back and took a step away from me, eyes full of betrayal. It pissed me off she would look at me that way. How the hell was I to know it would happen that way?
“Don’t fucking look at me like that, Inés. Don’t you fucking dare. I was in those chambers with you!” I growled.
“Y-You’re fucking wife? You mean to tell me, this was personal all along and I just so happened to get caught in the crossfires?”
I let out a maniacally laugh then. This was all fucking insane. Not only did I have to cope with the guilt, betrayal and post traumatic stress of what happened to us, now I had to deal with this.
I was never meant to be in a relationship. The universe was telling me to my face at this very instant that I was never meant to be loved.
“Inés, be real. Why the fuck would he set himself up to get tortured? That’s just stupid,” Amir whispered.
“I-I don’t know. I don’t know anything apparently,” she whimpered, wrapping her arms around herself.
I grabbed her by the shoulders firmly and Carson almost jumped at me if it wasn’t for Vanessa holding him back. Amir gripped his gun tightly in my periphery but I focused on Inés.
“I’ve killed for you, Inés. Do not forget it. I had nothing to do with that bloodsucking bitch and her decisions. I impaled her and buried her with my own fucking hands when she was bit, never to look back.”
The cogwheels of my mind clicked a few more times. There was one other person who knew about her.
I pulled Inés against my chest and stared deep into her eyes.
“Even if you think about getting rid of me, you better think again, Inés. You’ve buried yourself under my skin and in my soul too deeply for me to let go. I would haunt you to the ends of this earth if I had to.”
Her lip trembled as her eyes began to tear up.
“I-I’m sorry. It’s just—”
I slammed my lips on her and fisted her hair, preventing her from pulling away.
“It’s just you are no longer one person, Inés. You are the other half of me. You’re going to have to accept it because right now? I’m about to burn the world down for you.”
* * *
Another bomb brought out two of the teams topside. We strategically placed ourselves and our boogie traps around a specific location we needed to herd them to.
Our assumptions of which team they would send out were correct. It included every single asshole that condemned me in their prisons.
Including that knucklehead Beau.
We watched through our binoculars as the first team crossed the tree line. Two minutes in and they tripped the wire we set up, exploding the ground. Blood splattered and screams echoed as smoke filtered through the branches and into the sky.
We swiftly moved and made our way to the second location.
Amir wasn’t agreeable in taking them all down. So we planted hysteria to drive the women and children out from Black Hollow and onto the topside huts. It was the best I could do with the mood I was in. Gavin worked with Amir in making sure the innocent were safely moved to a second location Ozzy had been working on. Leadership didn’t know that their secrets were being siphoned by some of the small groups that formed once Otis came into command.
There were many who didn’t agree with my brother’s ways. Maybe who were able to see the downfall he was leading them into.
We told Gavin to wait until the first team hit our traps, creating a distraction, before moving people through the far western tunnels alongside the trenches and reservoir water.
Rumor had it, Ozzy was planning to create a second community toward the oceanside without Dean’s knowledge. He played off his loyalty well when we were around, but secretly, division was already brewing among the resistance.
I threw two fingers in the air to signal to Amir on the opposite hillside. The second resistance team was being sent out westward. On cue, Amir threw a smoke bomb and made his way around the perimeter with the camouflage, taking a few of them out before he made it to this side of the hill.
