Objective (Bloodlines #2)(64)

“Do you have a point, Ezra?” I grind out.

“She didn’t tell you, did she?” he asks, apparently genuinely surprised. His eyes shoot to Mags and he arches an eyebrow at her. She immediately looks away and pales. The dried blood in the corner of her mouth makes me wince and my stomach roll. What am I missing?

“Tell me what, Mags?” I say, turning fully to her.

“Tell him, Cypress!” Ezra laughs. Tears start streaming down her face but she doesn’t speak. She looks like she might be sick and won't look me in the eye.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” I roar in frustration. “Ezra, what the hell aren’t you telling me?”

“I took a taste of your lady, Cane. Don’t worry, your sweet little girl didn’t go along willingly, always so loyal to you, but I got to see what all the hype was about.” He watches me carefully. I’m shocked to the core. Numb. Furious. Hurt. Broken. His mouth keeps moving but I barely hear anything he’s saying. Things snap into place. Motives, the changes in her, the lifeless empty eyes. I feel like I might break under the weight of the guilt. She’s been living with the guilt of thinking that she killed me but really the guilt should have been mine. I wasn’t home. I didn’t protect her. I involved her in my sordid life. I let her down in the worst way possible and then I led her right back to the sick f*ck who killed her inside. Red, my vision turns red. “Then you came home, early. She’s a cunning little thing, you know? She laid there like a good girl while I cleaned up, but the little bitch grabbed your pistol as I was leaving and…well you know the rest.” He snickers. His eyes shine black, deep and wild like I’ve never seen them before.

“W-Why?” I stammer. “Why would you do that to her? To me? To us?!” I scream, rage coursing through my body at an alarming rate.

“It was perfect really, I lived, you lived, and she was out of the picture. I thought you’d get your head back in the game. I needed you. Only problem with it all was that she took something of value from me. After a couple months when you still hadn’t snapped out of it I had to figure out a different plan. I needed you to get the f*ck over her and recover the f*cking pack - neither of which you’ve managed to do. Now I’m going to have to deal with this my way.” I spin slowly to face Magnolia. My sweet, sweet girl is shaking with such force that I’m sure she’s about to fall out of the chair or break it from the force of her movements. I search her face, hoping that this is all some sick story Ezra made up, but I can see in her eyes that it's all true. He violated her in the worst way. He violated me, too, because of it. I swallow the lump in my throat and slowly turn back to my uncle. Reaching into the waistband of my pants at my back I draw my gun. I aim it at him and begin trembling slightly.

“I wasn’t yours to mess with, Ez, she wasn’t yours to mess with. I am nothing like you. I would never rape someone. Ever! You’re a sick, sick, motherf*cker!” I scream. Ezra doesn’t flinch, doesn't even gesture over the goons; instead he cackles, loudly. The blood rushing through my ears makes his laugh sound more evil than it probably is. Before another thought crosses my mind I pull the trigger. There’s a terrified scream that pierces the air as I watch Ezra fall to the floor clutching his chest. There’s a strange sense of deja vu. Mags, she screamed when the gun fired that horrible day, only I was in the way then. This time, no one tried to save Ezra. My mind snaps back to the present and I turn to Mags to cut her ties. “We have to leave. Now.” I scoop her into my arms and haul ass out of the house. Jimmy and Dave are nowhere to be found as I stick my head out of the apartment door. Ezra’s biggest problem was finding truly loyal people to work with him. The problem he always ignored when I brought it up was that if you treat people like shit, even those closest to you, they won’t stick around long.

When we get to the truck I set Mags down carefully into the passenger seat and buckle her in while taking in our surroundings. No one’s around and nothing looks out of place. I jog around to the driver’s side, hop in and throw it into drive. Mags is staring blankly out the window, silent. It makes me nervous to see her so calm. I fish my cell from my pocket and dial the one person who has a shot in hell of helping us.

“I f*cked up,” I blurt into the phone.

“Spit it out,” he clips.

“I need you to meet us. Somewhere safe.”

“Us?” he grunts.

“Magnolia and me.”

He agrees and after we hang up he texts me an address. I punch it into the navigation and start following the directions.

“I can live without you, I’ve done it for so long now, but I don't want to, not anymore,” I tell her once we’re safely away from the apartment and on the road. She’s been silent all this time, just staring out the window, trembling. I’ve been checking my mirrors for the past thirty minutes for a tail but so far, it seems no one’s on to us. She doesn’t respond. She just stares out the window blankly.





Chapter 20





“Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.”- George Saunders


Two hours later we’re somewhere near Lake Arrowhead in the middle of the woods on a dirt drive.

“Where are we going?” She speaks softly, as if her voice might shatter the air between us.