Written with You (The Regret Duet #2)(65)

“Okay,” she breathed, wrapping her hand around the tattoo on my forearm. “We’ll be fine. I promise.”

And she would. I knew it with every fiber of my being.

Or at least I thought I did.

The moment we made it to the living room, I realized just how wrong I’d been.

We must have seen him at the same time, because I threw an arm out to the side to stop her just as she fisted the back of my shirt, pulling me up short.

“Oh, God,” she croaked.

Twenty-four hours earlier, it would have been a welcome sight. A surprise visit from my brother—Rosalee’s favorite uncle. But in that moment, finding Trent on the couch with his arm draped around my daughter, who was sitting beside him with a book open on her lap and a smile on her face as she turned the pages…

It was the most terrifying thing I had ever witnessed.

And that was before I saw the gun in his hand.

And it was definitely before I caught sight of Jenn and Alejandra lying facedown, unmoving, in the hallway.





WILLOW


My heart stopped, and the oxygen became too toxic to breathe.

It was too much.

I’d never get used to how much he looked like Malcom.

Especially now that he had a gun.

And Rosalee.

And…

My head began to spin and the past roared in my ears when I saw Jenn and Alejandra lying in the hall. It wasn’t the food court. But it was too close. Too similar. Too devastating. My vision tunneled and I couldn’t tell if they were breathing. They were so agonizingly still.

My legs began to shake and it was all I could do to stay on my feet, but falling was not an option.

He had her.

He had my Rosalee.

“Hey, Daddy! Hey, Willow,” she chirped. “Look, Uncle Trent bought me a book about animals. It has llamas and everything.”

He grinned at Caven, slimy and baleful. “I sure did. Uncle Trent’s the best. Right?”

“Right,” she replied.

“Rosalee, come here,” Caven rumbled, taking a long stride forward. “Right now. Come here.”

She started to slide off the couch, but all at once, Trent’s arm snaked around her and he slapped a hand over her mouth. As he stood up, he leveled the gun on his brother’s chest.

“Please stop!” I cried, darting forward as she dangled in his arms like a rag doll.

His gun swung to me, and just as fast, Caven sidestepped in front of me.

“No!” Caven boomed, lifting his hands in surrender. “This is not about them. This is about me and you. Let them go and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

He cocked his head to the side. “What I wanted was for you to keep your fucking mouth shut.” He jerked his chin toward the hall. “Do you see that? You did that. You told Jenn about the goddamn pictures and left me with no fucking choice. My own wife and you fucking killed her.”

My pulse thundered in my ears, the fear from the past almost as debilitating as the panic in the present.

This wasn’t happening.

Not again.

Not again.

When I heard Rosalee’s muffled scream, I moved around Caven, unable to hide for a second longer while she was in the arms of the beast.

Tears were rolling down her face as she kicked her legs and had both arms outstretched for Caven. Her eyes. Oh, God, the confusion and terror in her bulging eyes were like a million arrows falling from the sky. I didn’t want this for her. I’d have given my life right then and there if it meant she never had to know a fear like that.

“It’s okay, baby,” Caven choked out. “It’s okay. Daddy’s right here. Just relax.”

His reassurances only made her fight even harder, and my chest constricted as Trent’s fingers bit into the side of her face.

“Please. You’re hurting her,” I pleaded.

“And you,” Trent snarled, his gun once again training on me. “You and your fucking sister have been nothing but a pain in my ass for years. If I’d known there were two of you, I’d have killed you both at the same goddamn time.”

“What?” I gasped, his confession penetrating my brain one syllable at a time. “You…you killed her?” That wasn’t possible. It’d been a car accident.

An accident just like the first of Malcom Lowe’s first twelve victims.

I blanched as his verbal knife slid, slow and violent, into my gut.

“She was a cokehead who deserved far worse than what I gave her. The crazy bitch was constantly asking for me at the station and following me home from work. She and that worthless piece of shit, Aaron White, camped out in front of my house, taking pictures like they were at a fucking zoo. I’ve never had a dead woman blackmail me before. Or man for that matter. Good old Aaron can attest to that from the morgue.”

He shifted Rosalee in his arm and cracked his neck. “Everything would have been fine until you, like a cockroach, came back. I knew you were a liar from the moment I saw you. I’d already killed Hadley Banks. There was no fucking way she was sitting in my brother’s house, waiting to blow out her birthday candles. You should have stayed gone, Willow. You should have fucking stayed gone. And none of this would have happened.”

He suddenly turned the gun to Rosalee’s temple.

I screamed, tears springing to my eyes, but Caven lurched forward. His jaw so hard that it was magic that his teeth hadn’t crumbled.