Page 104 of My Rose

I reached the final landing, then pressed my back into the door to push it open. “Tell me,” I ordered as I set her down slowly, letting her heeled feet steady before I released her. She sighed as I unbuttoned my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“There was a wedding video, not like a professional one. My grandmother probably filmed it and then left it in that box. But there was a voice…”

“What do you mean? Whose voice?”

“I think it’s the same voice from a dream I’ve had for years—the one where I’m running from the fire and I go to hide in the clock. Only sometimes before the fire starts, she’s there, talking to my mom in her office.” She wrapped her arms around her chest. “It always follows with this immense feeling of dread like I heard something terrible but can’t remember what it was.”

Rose’s face contorted as she thought. I grabbed her shoulder, prompting her gaze to fall back on me. “Did you see her in the video?”

She shook her head. “No. Well, I saw the backside of her head. I think she was sitting with my grandmother, but the video cuts off and starts again when my parents are dancing.”

“And you’re sure it was the same voice?” She nodded, and I couldn’t help but wrap my arms around her. The pain of remembrance was draining the color from her face. “It could have been your mom’s friend. Someone else who happened to be there that day.”

“Yeah, but…in my dream, she’s always really scared.” Rose pressed her cheek to my chest and took a deep breath. “I also don’t remember her from any other time. I would remember their friends, right? I should…Iwouldremember them.”

A stab of hurt coursed through me. Ironically, as someone who kept things from her for years, I was now on the receiving end. Moreover, I felt her pain as if it was my own. Too much pain forwhat I brought her to the roof of the Met for. “Why didn’t you tell me something was wrong?”

“I—”

“Rose…Fields, is it?” The haunting voice of my father turned the air more frigid around us, and I immediately pulled Rose as flush to me as I could. She started to tremble, even as I splayed my palms to cover her back. “Of all the things I thought I taught you, son, and you never learned to leave those beneath you where they belong. Though, she should be six feet beneath us by now.”

“The only one who belongs in the ground is you,” I said through gritted teeth as my father stepped out from the shadows, his white tux sticking out against his black soul.

“I thought you’d be smarter than to make the same mistake twice, Briggs.” He wagged a finger at Rose as he paced in front of us, and I slowly let one hand fall from Rose, reaching it to the back of my waistband. “She will ruin everything we’ve worked for. Everything we are.”

I slowly glided my hand up from her back, shielding the back of her head as her heart beat wildly against my stomach. “Why? Because I love her?” It didn’t matter what came from my mouth, I just needed him to keep talking. Rose whispered the words back up to me, sending another jolt of pain through my chest. She thought this was the end. She knew the lengths he’d go through to end people, and her words came out like she’d never get the chance to say them again.

My father tsked and stopped pacing, evaluating my hold on her as my fingers tightened on the grip. “When you refused to stay with Clarissa, I should have known something was wrong.”

I snorted. “Yeah, her legs.” I lowered my voice for only Rose to hear. “I’m going to need you to cover your ears, baby.”

My father sneered as Rose did what I asked her to do. “Oh, what’s the matter? She doesn’t know?”

“She knowseverything,” I replied.

His brow arched. “Does she? She knows that you watched her family die in a fire you caused?”

“That wasn’t my fault.” Even the pain I used to feel when thinking about that night and my part in it was nearly gone now. She’d taken my guilty conscience and made me see that night for what it was—a sick man’s way of teaching his young son a lesson that had no purpose. And I’d do my best to take that pain away for her, too. “None of what happened that day was my fault, but you let me believe it was. You let me torture myself as a child for my part in whatever sick game you played to turn me into who you wanted me to be.”

He cocked his head. “Is that right? So, you didn’t give me a name and tell me where she lived. Didn’t sit there doing nothing—”

“Fuck you.” I’d had enough. “The only thing I want to hear from you is why them, and why her?” If he was going to die, I might as well get some answers.

He tapped his temple and grinned at me. “All those smarts you claim to have, and you never once put those pieces together? She should have just dropped it all and walked away. A singular womanworking against men like us has no hope. But two? That needed to be handled.”

My brows furrowed as my arm went slack beside her, the barrel of the gun slinking down by my hip. What could Rose and her mother possibly have done together to threaten him so much that he felt like he needed to shoot them and burn the bodies?

He clapped his hands together, pointing them at Rose. “She would have made us nothing—taken it all away. Is that a life you would have wanted?”

My eyes narrowed on him. “I never cared about the money.”

“Oh, yes, right. Always the fucking martyr you were. Never appreciated my gifts, my house, my fucking jet.” He laughed wickedly, spinning with his arms wide in a slow three-sixty. “There is power in money, son. It’s a concept you have yet to embrace. You have an empire at your feet and choose to ignore it.” His face twisted as he glared at Rose. “But, instead, you went and tried to leave, and for what, pussy?”

“You never truly needed me for more than a media blitz and to be your damn hellhound. Choosing her over the life you offered was never a question in my mind. It will always be. Be. Her.” I cocked the gun at my side, covering the sounds as I spoke.

The next few seconds moved in slow motion. My father had heard the sound and didn’t hesitate to reach for his gun, holstered beneath his jacket. His moves were deliberate, aiming for the best way to take me down—her.

The moment I heard the click, I turned with Rose in my arms, her screams the last thing I heard before the world went black.

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