Page 51 of Peripheral Vision

A growl reverberates in my throat. “Connor?” I’m at a loss for words, the disgust roiling in my gut running deep becauseWhat. The. Fuck.“You’re The fucking Wraith?”

“Guilty as charged. Although, I’m quite offended, Fletcher. It doesn’t look like you’re excited to see me at all. We used to have such a good friendship: you, Jack, and I. It is quite interesting how time changes so much, don’t you think?” he drawls.

I glare up at him. “You wanted me? Here I am. You’ve got me. Let her go.”

But Connor only chuckles, the sound dark and grating. “No, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. We all have so much to catch up on.”

I glance at Dylan, at her downtrodden appearance. I need to get her out. “The fuck we do.”

“Oh, but this is the perfect time to finish telling Dylan everything I know about her mother, and what a better audience to witness that than somebody else who has lost family the same way. Of course, that’s not all I plan on doing…” His tongue runs along his upper lip as he peruses Dylan in a way that makes me lunge, but a guard shoves me onto my face before I have a chance to do anything else. “Let’s secure him a bit better. He’s going to want to see this. Or, I should say, he has no choice but to see this.”

Two other guards join the first as they haul me to my feet and drag me away from Dylan, taking another set of zip ties over my current set and securing me to a post. Connor steps closer to Dylan, his looming presence casting a long shadow over her and I see the way she stiffens. “You know, Dylan,” he says casually, as if this were just another conversation. “Your mother… she had this same defiance. Thisfire.It was charming, really. Right up until it got her killed.”

Dylan flinches, her eyes wide but burning with barely contained anger. “You don’t know anything about her,” she spits, her voice trembling.

Connor smirks. “Oh, but I do. In fact, I think this is the perfect time to walk through history. I knew her better than anyone else. That is until she woke up one day and decided she wanted your father instead. We had just been getting started in life. Well, I had anyway. At the time she wasn’t quite sure what I was involved in, but she figured out that it wasn’t anything good when I started bringing in the amount of green that I was. So, one day she confronted me. You’re a lot like her, you know. Innocent. Naive. She gave me an ultimatum. That I either tell her what I was doing, or she would leave me. I couldn’t tell her of course, and it wasn’t enough that I loved her, so she left anyway. But that’s the thing about thislife. Once you’re in, you can’t just walk away, and as soon as I would have told her, she would be in. I couldn’t let her destroy everything we had built, she would have told your dad. Probably better that I never did anyway, she proved that she wasn’t trustworthy the minute she left me.

“But your father, ever the hero, managed to keep her safe and secure on base, impossible to access… he promised her a future—one that was never meant for people like us. One that I could never promise her. A family, a normal life. They had already met, and of course he had known we had been together, but that never stopped him from going after her when she notified him of the breakup. So when she got hooked on drugs and disappeared, the easiest way to make it look like it wasn’t the scorned brother, was by continuing to show up. Regardless of how little I wanted to, especially after you were born.”

Dylan looks up at him slowly, her fists clenched in front of her as he kneels down, trying to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. I thrash against my restraints, but they’re holding with an ironclad strength that only makes me angrier. “Don’t you touch her. I swear?—”

Connor snaps his fingers, cutting me off. “Save your breath, hero. You’re not in a position to make threats. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Family secrets. Betrayals. It wasn’t hard to get her hooked. Once we found out she was pregnant with you we added substances in the form of a prenatal. I could only hope that it would kill you before she got too far along, but that never did happen because here you are. Which tells me she either didn’t take them like she should have, or she switched at some point. But it was enough because eventually she got back into contact with me. Said that she needed something to take the edge off until you were born. She figured that whatever I was involved in meant that I had access to supplies. What better way to get my revenge? As soon as she was done seeing me, she went into labor with you. She was so fucking high she didn’t bother to think about contacting your father. I went with her to the hospital andpretended to be him. And as soon as you were born, as soon as there were no nurses or doctors in sight, I grabbed her and left you. Of course, I’m not entirely heartless. I left a note with your father’s phone number so that they could contact him.”

Tears are pooling in her eyes, but it doesn’t stop her from responding. “You say you loved her and yet you killed her when you couldn’t control her. And when she finally broke free, you couldn’t handle it.”

His eyes narrow and for the first time, there’s genuine anger in his expression as he grips her by the jaw forcefully. “You’re wrong, Ididlove her. More than you could ever understand. That’s why, as much as you’re proving to be more trouble than you’re worth, I kept you alive when I could’ve just cut you out of her or made her give birth in the middle of nowhere and left you for the wolves. But if there is anyone to blame for her death, it’s your father. He’s the one who stole her away from me and changed her mind oneverything.”

She swallows back her cry, her fury outweighing her fear. “No. You killed her. Just admit it.”

Connor’s jaw tightens, and for a second, it looks like he might snap. Instead, he lets out a long breath, his smirk returning as his eyes find mine. “It doesn’t matter now, I suppose. The past is in the past. The point of that story was to give you an idea as to your own future. It’s your turn to make your decision. Are you going to choose to stay, or are you gonna go after theherothe way your mother did?” The way he says the hero is inflicted with disgust. “Stand her up, face her toward Fletcher.”

I see her eyes frantically search the area. Searching for what? I don’t know. But it’s no use as they haul her to her feet, turning her toward me. Connor wraps his arm around her waist, lazily playing with the waistband of her shorts and tilting her head to the side by her throat, kissing and licking the spot below her ear. “You’ve both brought this mess on yourselves,” he says, his voice low but filled with menace as I feel steam leave my ears. “Now you’re both going to have to watch as I take something from each of you. Fletcher willlearn what a mistake it was coming here, knowing that the last thing he is going to see is me fucking what he thinks belongs to him. As you come forme.And then you’re going to watch the life drain from his eyes.”

“Please. Don’t—” Dylan’s voice cracks as she strains against where Connor is now shoving his hand down her pants.

I glance up at where Nathan is still hidden amongst the rafters, and I let the whistle blow.

For a moment, the world seems to stop spinning, confusion and hesitation crossing the guard's faces. Dylan’s eyes dart around the room too, and I can see the moment of clarification as the shadows shift near the crates when Nathan drops down. Connor, about to speak, is cut off by a sharp clang interrupting him. One of the guards closest to Dylan crumples to the ground, a wrench bouncing off the concrete beside him.

The remaining guards spin toward the source of the noise, but it’s too late.

Chaos erupts as Nathan springs from the shadows. There are far too many guards for it to be a fair fight, but it’s the only chance we’re going to get. I don’t waste a second as I surge against the post. I may be in two sets of zip ties, but if I can just break the ones securing me to post, I’ll have an advantage I didn’t. It takes me several attempts, and my arms are aching by the time I’m done, but I successfully break through the zip ties just in time for me to see Connor dragging Dylan backward toward the exit. She’s screaming, kicking out with all her might, but her small frame does nothing to her advantage.

“Stay low!” Nathan shouts, dodging behind a crate just as gunfire erupts around him. He had managed to take out a few guards but there are still eight or nine left. I take their distraction to my advantage and run for Dylan and her uncle. But he sees me, and while Dylan wasn’t able to get free, she is slowing him down, which is all I need as Connor reaches for what is obviously a weapon at his back. But I’m faster. I barrel into them from the side, trying to avoid hurting Dylan any further, but also not caringmuch so long as he loosens his grip around her, because I know if I allow him to get his gun free, he will point it at her, not me. He releases Dylan and she goes rolling across the floor with a cry as well as the gun.

“Grab that!” I scream at Dylan. I wouldn’t be able to hold Connor down for long without use of my arms but if she could grab his gun… we’d have an advantage against all of them. She rolls to her back, heaving in deep breaths, and I know she’s fighting to breathe through the aches and pains in her body. “Dylan, little viper, the gun! Now!” Connor is fighting to get me up when I hear him brandish a knife that he buries deep into my side.

I roar as he pushes me off of him and tries to grab for his gun. But Dylan has somehow managed to scramble to her feet and grab it before he does. She’s shaking, her grip not confident, but it’s aimed right at Connor.

Chapter

Thirty-Five

DYLAN

“You aren’t going to shoot me,” Connor scoffs as he takes a tentative step toward me.

I fire a shot off, intending for it to land near his feet, but the recoil on the gun in combination with my weakened state causes the shot to land several feet away. The shock only lasts for a few moments on his face before he laughs at me. “Well, I’ll be damned. Turns out that fight extends beyond just the physical, huh?”

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