Page 10 of Lose to Win: Lost Trilogy: Part 3
I lift my eyes to see him approaching me. I try not to whimper in distress when I see him. He looks scary as he limps across the floor until he is in front of me. I want to avert my eyes but can’t seem to, so I just clench my fingers in the thin mattress they laid me on when they brought me in.
“So this is the key to all our problems, huh?” he chuckles sarcastically.
“Emily is my favorite cousin,” David brags, and I wish he wouldn’t. If me being nice to him over the years is what landed me in this situation, then I should’ve been the bitch from hell to him.
“Emily Stewart,” the guy’s cold eyes look me over. “You look nothing like I was expecting.” When he smiles, he looks scarier yet. One side of his face is not moving. In fact, that side of his entire body does seem to be moving. He is in pretty bad shape.
“Who are you?” My voice comes out a lot stronger than I thought it would.
“Aw,” he tsks in amusement. “I am hurt,” he presses a hand to his chest, “to learn that your father never spoke to you about me. We used to be best friends after all.”
Oh my god. This is Dylan’s father.
“But I thought…”
“That was I dead?” He finishes my thought, then he starts cackling. “Yes, your father thinks so as well. Old age must’ve made Devereaux slow and stupid if he thought it was that easy to get rid of me.”
I am speechless for a few moments. What is the best approach to what’s happening right now? I don’t think my cell phone is on me anymore, and I doubt whoever took me from the cemetery grabbed it for me. So there’s no way for Puck to track me.
He is going to be losing his mind with worry, I think to myself, sadness taking over. If I die here today, he will never forgive me.
“Why am I here?” My voice is shaky now, no confidence in it whatsoever.
“Well, Emily,” Bricks drops in the only chair in the large room we’re in. “I have lots of irons in the fire at the moment. Ain’t that right, Shortie?” He turns his head to look at David.
“That’s right, Prez,” David snickers, then slaps himself hard on the side of his head, just like he did earlier.
“Why is he doing that?” I ask without meaning to.
“Eh,” Bricks laughs, “you know how it is. A building blows up, you’re in it, you take some debris to the head. And then, here you are. Twitching and shit.”
I swallow hard and don’t say anything else. I am scared.
“Why am I here?” I repeat my question from earlier.
Bricks stops laughing. His face becomes a scary mask when he looks at me. All of a sudden, I see the resemblance to his son. I imagine this is how Dylan will look when he gets older. In spite of Bricks obviously having some medical issues, he is still a good looking man. He is tall, wide shoulders, that are now hunched over, and the sharp line of his jaw makes him look unforgiving.
“You are going to be the distraction I need in order to bring down everyone who betrayed me,” he finally says, voice void of any emotion.
“How am I going to do that?”
“You are going to get them to focus on you and your pathetic problems. That way they won’t be paying any attention to me as I take them down.”
The way he says it causes shivers to run up and down my spine.
“You’re the one helping Steve,” I guess, and from the smirk Bricks gives me, I am correct.
“Smart, right?”
As I sit on the dirty floor, staring into the eyes of the person who wants to kill everyone I love, I realize that he is also responsible for all the bad things that happened to my mother.
“Why did you hurt Alice?” I ask, my voice hitching slightly at the end.
There is no hesitation in Bricks’ voice when he answers me.
“Because Jon needed to understand there were going to be consequences to his actions, Emily. He thought he would just swoop in and take my woman, only because he’d changed his mind and decided he was going to take her with him to Montana.”
“But hadn’t Arlene been his to begin with?” I remind him. “She was his first. You took her from him,” I point out.
