Page 32 of Road to Ruin
“Ah, come on. It was a joke.” He takes hold of the knife I’m still holding, spins it over in his hand, and then he plunged it point first into the guy still sitting on the chair. The poor bastard doesn’t have a chance to even cry out before he’s choking on his own blood, his eyes rolling back into his head. Alex spits in his face as he’s dying—one final, cold, cruel humiliation.
“Who was he?” I ask, only half wanting to know.
Alex pivots on the balls of his feet, facing me. He points the knife at me, smiling. “You should be thanking me actually. This piece of shit called your sister a whore. I was defending her honor.”
A landslide of confusion comes crashing down on me. “You did this for Genevieve?”
“Of course. She’s my wife. She may have her part to play in this grand charade, Tee, but she’s still that. My wife. Insulting her is insulting me. That simple.” The words coming from his mouth sound absolutely mad, but for all intents and purposes he remains calm. I’d forgotten how unnerving he can be at times. The guy on the chair, now very much dead, is fucking staring at me like this is all my fault and I could have prevented this somehow.
“I need my sister back, Alex. You coerced her into marrying you against her will.”
He cocks his head to one side, frowning. “Did I?”
“There’s no way she would have married you if you hadn’t threatened her. Or threatened our lives. She had no choice.”
“Choices. Threats. Needs. Wants. I am so fucking bored of this conversation already. Please go away and don’t come back until you have something interesting to say.”
“You know why you’re doing this, don’t you?” I snap. “You feel fucking guilty over what happened to Serena. You know her death is on you, and you’ve somehow convinced yourself that killing me or making me suffer will somehow make you feel better. It won’t, though. You already know that, too.”
West cringes, baring his teeth. “Oh, shit.” He backs away from the two of us, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to call the clean-up crew. I’m not getting caught in this crossfire.”
Alex is deadly still. His hand is poised in mid-air, frozen, on its way to doing something a moment ago but the action now completely forgotten. “You have the audacity to place blame at my feet for her death? When you were the one told to watch her?”
I sigh, rubbing my hand over my face. “I’m not going through this with you again. You know in your heart Serena’s death had nothing to do with me. You know it, and I’m sick of running from a crime I didn’t commit. I wasn’t the one who murdered her, Alex. I wasn’t the one who cut her head from her body and had the fucking United States Postal Service deliver it to your doorstep. I loved her just as much as you did. I was just as devastated as you when she was killed.”
“BULLSHIT!” Alex’s shout rings out loud, echoing around the hollowed-out warehouse like a gunshot. “You never loved her.”
“Of course I did. I was around her every day for years. She used to hang out with Genevieve all the time. She was like my sister, too. And you were like a brother.” I hold my hand up, stopping him from interrupting. “We were a family, the Kendricks and the Bastiens. We used to have each other’s backs, and now look at us, still ready to kill each other years later and all because you can’t man up and handle your fucking grief, Alex. God!”
His eyes are shining brightly, his chin raised just a little. He absently touches his fingertips to the collar of his shirt, gently tugging at the material, then he looks away from me. “We were never a family,” he says quietly. “West and Vaughn are my family. The Kendricks always have and always will be the dirt under our boot heels.”
He turns around slowly, and walks away.
