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Adrian sped through the run-down streets of Thurrock to Dex’s house, and I couldn’t stop the rage flaring up inside me. My hands shook, eager to wrap around his throat and steal every bit of life he threatened to take from me. My jaw clenched, holding back from tearing Adrian’s arse apart for not going fast enough. And my chest and lungs burned from holding back the Saint trying to talk sense into me. Bitch, It’s not your fucking turn.
My knee bounced at an impossible speed. My ears still rang from the same shots that took Mum’s life. I gave up trying to calm myself down a long time ago. Dex had sent Leigh to kill my wife—my baby. Sweat and infuriated tears poured down my face in the dead of winter. I couldn’t feel the cold. I couldn’t feel anything aside from the madness. My clenched fist pounded over the middle console. “Hurry the fuck up,” I screamed out.
Adrian jumped at my side and gripped the steering wheel. “You need to think about this. Stop for a second, and think about what you’re about to do.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Don’t fucking question me.”
“What the bloody hell are you going to do?”
I’m going to crack the world open and swallow them whole.
I’m killing them all.
The Honda hopped the curb, and before Adrian had a chance to come to a complete stop, I jerked open the car door and jumped out.
Flames. Red, yellow, and searing orange flames blazed through my hazy sights as I sprinted up to the house and through the door with no weapon, no gun, only me. Vengeful, enraged, and on the warpath, anger ripped me open and controlled me. My emotions turned into ammunition, and at this point, I wondered if I cut my own flesh, if I’d still bleed because the power roaring inside me made me believe I was invincible.
And if I’d die tonight, perhaps my immortal anger would bring me back to life.
Three men lounged in the living room when I’d busted through the door, none of them expecting me.
Dex jumped from the couch, and his smile quickly faded when his confused eyes locked with mine. Smith stood beside him, eyes bouncing between Dex and me, and I picked up the small telly over the three-legged table and pitched it across the room and into the side of Smith’s thick skull, and he instantly went limp and fell over the couch.
Dex’s eyes widened as he reached behind him for his gun, and I flipped up the coffee table into his face just as the gun went off, the bullet punching a hole through the ceiling. The sound of the gunshot couldn’t affect me. Nothing could throw me off. Not until all three of them were dead.
The single thought of her kept my mind racing, my feet moving forward, and my reactions moving quicker. The third bloke took off to the kitchen where his gun sat over the fridge, and Dex pushed the table against my chest, shouting vulgar threats. I gripped the edge of the table and threw it against the wall, and a window shattered.
Dex threw a punch, but I dodged his fist and landed mine into his jaw. He fell back against the couch, and I snatched the dropped gun from the floor and snapped up, pointing it at the runaway bloke’s back.
It all happened so fast.
A bloodcurdling scream shot up from my pained heart, and I pulled the trigger, again and again, firing at his back. The color of red stained my vision as blood sprayed over the white fridge, and the bloke dropped to the ground, head bouncing off the tile.
By the time I looked back over to Dex, his fist co
Smith.
My eyes slid to him, and he stood off to the side with his pistol pointed at me.
“You don’t want to fuck with me!” I screamed, my hand shaking and tears streaming down my face. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
A single gunshot cried out, ripping through my side. My eyes bulged. Tears stopped. The impact jolted me back and knocked the air from my lungs. I fell back against the wall, the gun heavier in my hand and gravity dragging me down.
Mia, my baby … I grasped at every ounce of strength to pull myself up against the wall and waved the gun in Smith’s direction, refusing to stop until they were all dead.
Desperate, I pulled the stiff trigger, and a thunder sliced through the air as a bullet tore through the center of Smith’s forehead, blood painting the wall behind him.
A second wind jolted a rush inside me like a shot of adrenaline. Despite the burning, the heart-wrenching pain materializing, and the warm blood seeping from the bullet hole at my side, I stormed over to Dex.
He slowly shook his head, panic invading his senses, and before he could get a word out, I slammed the base of the gun into the side of his head.
Dex fell back into the couch, and I gripped his black hair, yanked his head back, and dug the tip of the barrel under his chin.
“Alright, I get it,” Dex’s voice shook with his palms in the air. “I get it, Oliver.”
Flashes of Mia and I went off like fireworks in my head. The first time our eyes met in the mess hall, her small smile in the bathroom when we first talked, the late-night rendezvous’, chasing her in the library, reading to her, the lovemaking, the fighting for each other, the tears, her golden eyes, the paper roses, the dancing, the stars, the sunrises, proposing, our drunken nights, the wedding … Falling into this maddening love that stayed forever and ever …
“No,” I wiped my face into my sleeve and cocked my head, “you don’t fucking get it.”
Then I pulled the trigger.
“Oliver!” Adrian shouted, my eyes weighing heavier and heavier. He’d taken off my black hoodie, and I had it pressed against my side, but it wasn’t helping. My white tee soaked in blood. It was everywhere. The color of rage. The color of love. How is it possible? “Hang in there, mate. We’re almost to the hospital.”
“No,” I croaked, shaking my head. With the gun still in my grip, I clenched both my eyes from the white blistering pain, my body begging to pass out. But, I knew Mia. She was waiting up for me. “Take me home.”
“You’ll never make it,” Adrian nervously explained, whipping the car to the right, and my head dropped over the passenger side window.
I lifted the gun over my thigh and pointed it at him. “Take me the fuck home,” I seethed through gritted teeth. We couldn’t be more than ten minutes out. I could make it to her.
“Fuck, Oliver!” Adrian slammed his palm against the steering wheel once before he shook out his hands and released a drawn-out breath. “I’ll take you home, but I know you, and you won’t fucking shoot me,” his voice shook, and his hand came down over the gun as he took it from my clenched fist, “You have to trust me, mate. Blindly. It’s your turn to trust me blindly, Oliver. You hear me?”
Nodding, my hand relaxed over my thigh as Adrian drove with his knees, wiping down the gun with his shirt. Going well over a hundred miles per hour, he dropped the gun inside the door pocket and snatched his mobile phone from the cup holder, punching in numbers before bringing it to his ear. Adrian’s wide eyes flicked over to me. “Yeah. This is Officer Adrian Taylor,” he turned his frightened gaze back to the road, “I’m undercover with SC and O ten. I have a twenty-three-year-old male in critical condition. Gunshot wound to the abdomen. I need an air ambulance right away …”