Page 112 of Judas

Unable to withstand the urge to goad the hell out of him, I pout my bottom lip out and allow my brows to slide into a position of pity. Mockery at its finest.

Hmph, poor Kace.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you? Ladies and gentlemen, here sits the one and only Lucien Bardot. A conniving, objectionable, and damnable waste of space. Do yourself a favor for once and just shut your fucking mouth.”

“Kace!” Nadia shouts, shoving out of her chair to push him back from me. Angling her body between the two of us admirably. Leaning to the side, looking around her, I grin so fully my cheeks hurt, savoring this moment as it will likely never happen again.

“He got into your head, didn’t he? That fucker digging around in the empty space of his skull found the perfect leverage to hold over yours. Since you’re so easy to read, it’s no wonder he’s manipulated you—absolutely fucking effortless on his part. Now you’re ready to beg for scraps that he doesn’t have to feed you with, aren’t you?! Starving for a place to belong. Hate to break it to you, Snitch, you do not belong with him.”

“You know, it’s not wise to throw stones in glass houses,” I jeer.

Kace tilts his head back, exasperated I’m sure. Hands meeting his hips where they squeeze, doing his absolute best to reign in the anger I’m dying to provoke.

Jabby jabby, one more push.

“Why don’t you tell Nadia what you did, Kace?”

Warmth floods my veins; for the first time in days, I feel elated seeing the one real pupil he has flex and zero in. The satisfaction I’m experiencing feels like a straight shot of adrenaline to the chest. Fingertips that once faded to a slight shade of blue, cold and lacking circulation, now throb from the way my heart is beating wildly in my chest.

“What is he talking about?” Nadia chimes. The insurmountable weight of her question sucks the air from the room. Suppose it’s a good thing there’s a fiend keeping my body alive—if it wasn’t for the maestro, I wouldn’t get to witness this man annihilate everything he’s worked so hard to accomplish.

If looks could kill, Kace might have just murdered me in a thousand different ways. Oh, I’m nowhere near done. He’s going to confess his sins and will answer to the only God he knows: Nadia. Before this is over with, he will recognize the fact he owes everything to my sister, including what’s left of his life.

“Yeah, Kace. Why don’t you tell her how Sadie was the one who killed her adoptive parents—and you were the one who made it happen.”

Chapter thirty-nine

Havok

Dead. He’s a dead fucking man.

If time travel existed, we would go back to the forest to the exact point where my rifle was trained on him. Then, instead of being idiotic and wanting to get answers to shit he’s refused to remedy, I would have painted Nadia with his brain matter. But it doesn’t exist, and I’m standing here looking at her in her horror-stricken face. Ready to rip him limb from limb, yet I have to wait for her accusatory stare to pull away from me all while trying to keep mine impassive and calm to prevent setting her off even more.

Sly, bottom dwelling, soul sucking fucking parasite.

All I can do is stand here. Teeth grinding against one another, every muscle in my body so tense that if they were rock hard, they’d surely shatter. Motherfucker doesn’t have anything to lose; I shouldn’t be surprised that he ran his mouth to Nadia but here I stand corrected. Furious, stunned, and in shit deeper than I am tall. No matter what, I can’t look at her. Seeingthe devastation, the way she’s shivering with what I’d consider wrath, and waiting. Waiting for her to go nuclear on me.

It’s no fucking secret that we don’t know each other like we use to—hell, we didn’t really know each other then, either. She was young and I was a lonely sap set on toying with her as hard as she was toying with me. Doomed from day one. I’d never give her what she wanted and needed other than holding her hand and fucking the hell out of her when I could. Then, she wouldn’t get anything substantial in return. We were stupid as shit. There was so much time to learn who she was, show her the fucker I could be, before bringing our daughter into a world as shitty as ours.

Terrible choices, one right after the other, have brought us to this point, including the murder of Sadie’s adoptive parents. But you know what? I’d do it all over again. I could say it was love that drove me, but putting it that way makes me look like a kiss ass. Truth is, I did it out of selfishness. Everything. For my entire fucking life I made choices to benefit myself; bringing my woman and child back to me will forever be the one level of selfishness I will paint as a gold standard. Nothing short of total planetary annihilation will stand between me and my family. The person who decides to get in the way will end up under the ground.

So yeah, Lucien can throw me under the bus. Rat me out to Nadia—I don’t care. The sacrifices I would make for her are endless.

Reigning in my anger is a whole other problem. It’s been an ongoing issue I’ve tried working on since coming out of the pit. Disdain and rage do not begin to cover the amount of hatred I have for this sack of shit. I have seen it slip through when I’m in the middle of a job, usually manifesting in more brutality and tunnel vision, but in those moments I chose not to shove it to the size—I relished it.

Now? He’s only made it worse.

Still, I cannot bring myself to glance at her. Damn woman knows it too, since she decides to step directly into my line of sight. Blotting out the silhouette of the scumbag brother she now seems to care for. She even goes as far to tilt where we fall eye to eye and what I see hurts—hurts as much as I’m sure she’s hurting. Betrayal sits in those stormy hurricane hues. My throat dries up with a quickness, as if we are standing in the middle of the Mojave and I just sucked in the first breath after being submerged for too long.

Lucien is smirking off to the side—exasperating troll. Yet the strain of the air is pulling me apart, feeding the guilt.

“Would you like to clue me in on what in the hell he is talking about?” Her tone is chilling, contradicting the distress in her expression. When I don’t respond right away, a brow arches at me, followed by a slow disbelieving nod. Nadia goes to turn away; assuming she’s going to crawl right back to Lucien, I reach for her arm and grab the elbow bringing her right back to me. She can be mad, hate me for not telling her, but she’s not allowed to side with him. It’s one thing to mourn the lives they had as children and want to protect them, but this is not that time nor place.

We’re fucking adults, even if we are all three emotionally stunted. Lucien will suffer the consequences for his actions, and apparently so will I.

“Nadi—“

“Don’t fucking touch me!” she shouts, wrenching away from me and taking a step back. This time not turning away so she can keep her eye on me—where I can’t touch her without her seeing it coming. Lifting my hands in surrender, I stay rooted in place and let her fume. This shit is going to come to an explosive head because if I know her like I think I do, that hard-ass ‘protectmyself, fuck life and everyone in it’ side of her is about to show up.

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