Page 12 of Kingpin's Secret Baby

My feet hit the ground, jarring through my legs as Barnes releases my throat and catches my shoulder in the same brutal motion, shoving me upright. The pressure shifts- his grip tightening just long enough to steady me, to keep me from crumpling completely.

His hand. On my arm. The other on the knife dripping with my blood. That means I can breathe again, or I could if my throat didn’t feel like a crumpled plastic straw.

There’s someone standing in the door of my room, and my vision is still a little blurry, but I can tell that he’s beautiful. Beautiful and angry, with hair like rust and eyes like emeralds.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Piers snarls, bearing all his teeth.

Armstrong lowers his gun, but doesn’t holster it. Barnes doesn’t release his knife either. My legs give out, and I collapse, my knees slamming against the ground. It hurts to raise my head, so I let it drop, my gaze on the ground a foot below me.

There’s blood pooling on the hardwood floor. There’s a burning in my side and my throat and my face. But Piers is here now, and that makes me feel… better.

“We were ordered by the Ashwoods to execute this woman,” Barnes says plainly. His deep voice is too loud, even in my spacious room. I wince, and fresh pain rolls through my whole body.

“The Ashwoods,” Piers repeats, his voice trembling with rage. “Not Achilles.”

Barnes is silent for a moment, but before he can answer, Piers repeats, “Not Achilles. He would never order this. So which Ashwood told you to do this?”

“Harold Ashwood gave us these orders,” Armstrong answers, his narrow chin jutting out defiantly. “He demanded this woman’s life in exchange for his brother Skylar’s, who’s still in a coma after the fight at Wesley Hall. The oneshe’sresponsible for.”

I don’t remember that night well. I don’t remember much of the last few weeks before my withdrawal ebbed enough that I was no longer trapped in my bed. From what I’ve gleaned, though, Achilles and several Ashwoods routed Wesley Hall to reclaim it from me. They were up against dozens of mercenaries that I’d surrounded myself with, and… yes, I remember a cousin of mine being badly wounded in the fight.

“But since she’s here,” Piers says, clearly fighting for calm, “I’m guessing Achilles denied his request.”

“He had no right!” Armstrong argues. “And to be frank, sir, I don’t understand why you aren’t here exacting the same kind of revenge. Weren’t you on the run for a year because of this bitch? She ordered the Warwicks to be killed, including your own predecessor. You should want her dead more than any Ashwood.”

Piers’s silence is deafening. I can feel his gaze on the back of my head. He can’t meet my eyes because I can’t bear to raise my head, but still, he’s searching me.

“Yeah,” he says at last. “I should.”

My heart squeezes, but I’m not surprised. I don’t even bother to raise my head. This is what’s right for him to feel after everything I’ve put him through. It’s what I deserve. It’s what I first expected when I saw him on the bus going out of the airport.

Vitriol and vengeance.

Piers takes a step forward. If it’s him putting a bullet in my head, then I won’t complain.

“Truth is, I wanted to wear her down slowly,” Piers says, approaching slowly. His voice is hollow, unfamiliar, but I’m too tired to be afraid. “I was gonna spend years tormenting her, forcing her to look every day into the face of the man she betrayed more than any other.”

The toes of his shoes appear in my vision. I hear the rustle of fabric and feel my attackers tense. A gun cocks.

Everything else drops away. My pain, the other men, even the room itself. All I’m aware of is Piers above me, and the gun in his hand.

“Is this how you would’ve done it, Fantasia?” he asks softly. “Did you want me executed like this, on my knees with my head bowed?”

Chapter 7

Piers

The blood on the floor is too bright, and there’s too much of it.

Every word out of my mouth tastes like poison. My body is trembling so hard I almost can’t hold onto my gun. If I don’t hold my breath, I’ll explode too soon, and all these cruel words will have been for nothing.

Armstrong and Barnes have their eyes on me, but I keep my gaze trained on Fantasia. In my periphery, they’re relaxing their guard. Barnes’s knife is hanging from his hand, and Armstrong’s finger isn’t firmly resting on the trigger anymore. And when I aim my gun at the back of Fantasia’s head, they take their eyes off of me. They anticipate the execution.

And when I shift my aim just enough, pointing the barrel of my gun at Armstrong’s shin, he doesn’t have the second he needs to realize what’s happened before I fire.

My bullet shatters his tibia. He screams, but the sound stops when my second shot goes through his sternum. As he falls, Barnes drops Fantasia and raises his knife. I duck inside his arm, plant the hot barrel of my gun under his chin, and blow his fucking brains out.

It started and ended in three seconds, but I’m breathing like I’ve run a marathon, sweating like I’ve just spent the night in a sauna. Armstrong is still alive, albeit breathing in his own blood and bone shards through shredded lungs. He’ll be dead soon, but I put a hole in his forehead just to shut him up.

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