Page 13 of Vengeful Reign

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I escaped those crazy men.”

“So you abandoned my brother.”

“No. They separated us.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” I roar. My hand is in her hair, slamming her head back. “He’s been gone for two months. I want him safe and home where he belongs. You better pray that he’s alive, or I’ll make your torture last for the next five years.”

“What do you want him for?” she asks, staring into my eyes with such intent, like she’s reading me.

“He’s my little brother and everything to me, so you better tell me where he is,” I warn her through clenched teeth.

“You didn’t seem to care this entire time. He’s better off away from this terrible family,” she spat out.

I wipe my face. “How dare you? He needs his family. Who gave you the right to rip him from the people who loved him?”

She scoffs. “You’re not going to see him ever again.”

I shake my head, and my heart sinks deep into my gut. “Tell me he’s alive,” I roar, tears filling my eyes because that can’t be true.

Her face softens as if she understands the pain her words are truly causing me. “You do love him, don’t you?” she asks.

“Of course I do.” Her head turns, and her eyes scan the room as if she’s gauging the men around the room, but it’s almost empty.

“He’s better off without your father,” she whispers.

I bend down, moving in closer because I don’t want anyone else to hear what I’m going to ask. “I know. Is he alive?”

She gives the faintest nod. Before I can ask her, a shot is fired, and she’s hit in the head. “Fuck,” I shout, jumping back. My men and brother spin around to see my father with his gun aimed at the nanny.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” I roar, ready to tear his fucking head off.

“She killed your brother.”

“No, she didn’t. He’s alive.”

“What? Where is he?”

“We don’t know. You are a fucking stupid bastard,” I say, rushing toward him. “She was about to say.”

“Sorry. She was involved in his abduction and the death of our men in the first place. I just couldn’t stand to see her face.”

“You’re sorry? You killed our only lead to our brother and your son. How could you be so reckless?”

“You don’t want him to be found,” Connor accuses him.

“Of course I want him found. He’s the last bit of your mother I have. I want him found more than you know.” He stares at the dead body of John’s former nanny with watery eyes. The devastation is written in his gaze, but I refuse to give him another moment.

“Clean this up,” I say, waving my hand toward her dead body. As I leave, my head ponders one thing. John is alive. My mission will be to find everything on her, where she was staying and all those she got to know. It takes my driver a few minutes to get her address since the men who have her information are in the building and without a signal, but finally we get it and head that way. Apparently, there is already a team dispatched there.

As my men reach her apartment, it explodes, sending debris everywhere.

“Son of a bitch.” I stay in the back of my SUV and watch from across the street as plumes of smoke and embers fill the air. I tell my driver, “Just drive.”

“Where to, Boss?”

“Home. I need to be there when the police arrive for questioning.” I lost any chance to find clues in her apartment, and the assholes who went in without checking for explosives better hope they’re dead because they’ve just cost me the last bit of hope I had to find my brother.

If any of those fuckers survive, I’ll end their lives for their failure. How dare they not check for traps before entering? They’re about to pay the price if they haven’t died already. I storm into my home and up to my bedroom, rattling my door so hard that I nearly splinter the fucker in two. My brother is lost forever, and for a brief moment, I feel sympathy for Joanne. She didn’t want my brother anywhere near my father, and that I understood. He claimed the cut my brother got before he was abducted was an accident because John got a hold of a kitchen knife, but I wasn’t sure that was true.

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