Dead Drop (The Guild #2)(111)
My gaze flicked back and forth between them, but neither one denied my assertion. It filled me with a dreadful certainty that the moment I swayed, the moment I faltered, one of them would be dead at the other’s hands. They hated each other that much.
Leon had clearly been harboring his hatred toward Kai since Layla died. Four years. And it could only have gotten worse for my relationship with him… He wouldn’t make it quick. He would draw it out and inflict maximum pain before ending his life.
As for Kai? I suspected he still believed Leon to be on the Circle. Hell, if I was honest, so did I. But for Kai, that meant Leon was to be held responsible for what had happened to Mo… and to her baby boy. Someone needed to pay for what’d happened to Kai’s sister and his nephew, and Leon would be that scapegoat. After all, he knew about Project Remus. Who was to say that he hadn’t been involved in it at some stage?
But the bottom line… I’d been living in fantasyland. And in the process, I’d broken my own heart by falling in love with two men who could never put their differences aside. By stalling for time and avoiding the inevitable, I was only making it worse.
I drew a deep breath, letting my fractured heart rest a moment. I needed a clear head, to not let the grief of losing Jude and my friendship with Carlos influence my choice. I had to push aside all the gut-wrenching hurt of that argument I’d overheard earlier, knowing logically that they’d been trying to actively hurt one another. Their barbs hadn’t been about me, but that was a symptom of the underlying cancer between the three of us.
“Noted,” I murmured, forcing my expression neutral so I wasn’t betraying any of the agony I was experiencing inside. “Well then, it seems pointless to continue this charade. Better to cut ties now, before any of us end up getting hurt.” As if we weren’t lightyears past that point already.
“What does that mean, mon cœur?” Leon asked with reasonable suspicion.
With a tight smile, I picked up Kai’s gun from the counter. Something told me neither one of them would make this decision easy.
Leon’s eyes lit up, and his gaze flicked to Kai. He was really asking whether I planned to shoot him? Christ. Was that what this had all come to? I needed to choose one… and kill the other? It made me wonder if that was even possible. I didn’t think either one of them would just stand there and take a bullet. Not that I could do that. I couldn’t shoot a man I loved, no matter how impossible my situation seemed.
“What are you doing, Siren?” Kai asked softly, giving the gun in my hand a cautious look. Wow, did he think I was going to shoot one of them, too? Dimly I found it interesting that Leon was so confident I would pick him and shoot Kai, while Kai was uncertain. He, at least, understood that things between Leon and I were deeper than just great sex.
A choice needed to be made. The longer I avoided making it, the more I was hurting everyone involved. It wasn’t fair on either Leon or Kai, and it wasn’t fair on me. But it did fall on me to make that choice… no one could do it for me. Maybe that was what I’d been waiting for. I’d been waiting for the guys to somehow make the choice easy on me, to offer me an excuse to pick one and leave the other. But they hadn’t done it. Instead, they’d both just proven why I should be with them and given me no reasons to not.
It should have been easy to choose. Shouldn’t it? Kai had literally kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured me. Not to mention he tried to baby-trap me. That kind of behavior ought to totally wipe him from contention. But I could have extracted myself from that situation at any point. I chose to stay. I chose to complete the job because I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him.
He'd also killed a man he considered family, after finding out Sam had taken out a hit on me. He’d killed Sam, and all but abandoned the rest of his team… his sister. For me.
On the flipside, Leon tried to kill me. He also moved heaven and earth to save me. Twice. Hell, he’d killed people just to work with me, to get close and spend time with me. In a world of hot and cold, his ice is pure fire.
Every time I tried to convince myself that I'd made my decision, bile rose in my throat. The idea of abandoning either of them made me physically ill.
We couldn’t keep going like we were, that was abundantly clear. So I needed to stop being so fucking selfish and put a stop to the insanity now. None of the choices available to me were good. None of them. All I could do, was pick the one that hurt me more than it hurt them.
Licking my lips, I circled around the island, moving away from them both. “I’m choosing,” I announced, turning to face them both when I was closer to the doorway. “I’m making the only choice I can make, because the two of you have backed me into a fucking corner, and I hate it here. I hate this corner, I hate this situation, and I hate how you’re both handling it. It’s become painfully clear that you both seem to think of me as a replacement for Layla, or for Charlotte, or whatever the fuck her name was. But here’s the truth. I’m not her, and I’ll never be her. She’s dead.”
Kai’s frown was deep and bewildered, denial clear across his face, but Leon… he understood. He might not agree, but he understood the point I was making.
“So, you two want me to make a choice? Consider it done. I choose neither of you. We’re done.”
The silence that met my statement was so intense it was deafening. Then Kai stepped forward, the refusal to accept my choice etched all over his face. But I’d picked up a gun for a reason, so I raised it to aim at him.