I get to my feet, gasping, and start landing my own punches. Each impact feels good, righteous, like I’m beating out the years of manipulation and control and lies. Gilbert’s head snaps back with each hit, but he’s still laughing—actually laughing through broken teeth.
Axel attempts to bolt for the door, seeing his opportunity in the chaos.
Gilbert’s foot shoots out, tripping him. Axel goes down hard, face-first into the concrete.
“Traitor,” Gilbert mutters, and there’s genuine venom in the word.
I punch him again, putting my full weight behind it. My knuckles connect with his jaw, and I feel something crack—his bone or mine. Blood gushes from his mouth, running down his chin and soaking into his expensive suit.
Adrenaline takes over his system and he wrenches himself free from Atticus’s hold with strength that shouldn’t be possible. I think he’s going to come at me again, finish what we started.
Instead, he lunges for the gun on the floor.
We both dive for it at the same time, hands scrabbling. My fingers brush the metal grip as his close around the barrel. We’re locked together, both pulling, both refusing to let go.
Then a delicate hand reaches down and picks it up while we’re still fighting for it.
I glance up.
Lexi.
She’s standing over us, the gun held professionally in both hands, pointing at the ceiling. Her face is completely calm, expressionless in a way that’s more terrifying than rage would be.
“Reaching for this, Dad?” Her voice is sweet, almost sing-song.
Gilbert stands proudly, straightening despite the blood covering his face. “Give it to me.”
She checks the magazine with practiced ease—when did she learn to handle a gun?—then turns the safety off. The click echoes in the sudden silence. “All loaded and ready. All I need to do is press this little trigger.”
Then she starts to pace, moving in a slow circle around all of us. The gun swings lazily as she walks, pointing at each of us in turn.
“Eenie meanie miny mo.” She aims at Gilbert. “Which head am I going to blow?” Swings to Axel. Then to me. Then to Atticus.
She laughs, and the sound is cynical, psychotic, and—fuck me—hot as hell. This is what power looks like on her. This is what happens when you push someone too far and they stop breaking and start burning.
She stops in front of Gilbert, the gun steady now. “It’s funny... you know... I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I gave you every excuse in the book, similar to what I do with this one—” She swings the gun toward Axel, who’s still on the floor. “But you...” Back to Gilbert. “I want you to know that I watched you shovel pills down Mom’s throat. Watched you force her into drug addiction because you didn’t want to be the only monster in the house. You judge Vincent, but my God, look at you.” She points the gun directly at his face.
Axel’s eyes widen. “What?”
“You think you’ve done something wonderful here,” Lexi continues, her voice dropping to something cold and deadly. “But I know you. I remember you. And that’s why you… have to die.”
“Wait.” Axel scrambles to his feet, hands up in surrender. “Lexi, please. Did Revan tell you that Dad paid him a quarter million dollars to bring you to Koa and Koa to Vincent? This was the plan for revenge. For justice.”
She points the gun at me, head tilting. Those brown eyes are not dead, in fact they’re alive like the soil before potting. They bore into mine, and I see the question there. The accusation.
Fuck.
Axel continues, desperate now. “Or that Koa set us up from the very beginning because he was following Vincent’s orders? That this was always the plan? But instead of Dad standing, Vincent thought it’d be him.”
She swings the gun to Axel. “You’re a fucking coward.” Each word is sharp, precise, cutting.
Gilbert lunges toward her in that moment, thinking she’s distracted by Axel’s rambling, thinking he can disarm her before she reacts.
He’s wrong.
In a flick of a second—so fast I almost miss it—the gun points at Gilbert’s chest and she pulls the trigger.
The gunshot is deafening in the enclosed space. My ears ring.
