Chapter 191: Bullet in the Chamber
Edrick
We finally located the place where Kelly called us from. It was a run-down abandoned warehouse nestled deeply into the Rogue district, where it was so dark that even the lights of the city from afar couldn’t brighten the place. Behind the warehouse were hundreds of stacked storage containers where the shipping boats came up the river and picked up shipments, but other than that there was nothing else; no people, no houses, no cars. Nothing. Long story short, it was the perfect place for a crime like this to be carried out.
The police quietly surrounded the warehouse and got out, drawing their guns. I wanted to feel relieved, but I couldn’t yet until we were certain that Moana and my daughter were safe.
When we burst in through the door, however, my heart sank. What I saw inside of that warehouse was my worst nightmare.
Ethan, my evil half brother, was holding a gun to Moana’s head.
“Put the gun down!” the police yelled, pointing their guns at Ethan as we burst in. “Get down on the ground!”
But Ethan didn’t waver. In a swift motion, he swung around and stood behind Moana with his arm around her neck and the gun to her head. I could see the fear in her wide eyes, and I wanted so badly to run to her. That sick f**k had her tied up in a chair, and beside her my daughter was also tied up. Ella appeared to be sleeping. My eyes moved back to Moana, who shook her head ever so slightly; she was indicating that Ella wasn’t dead. Not yet, at least. I let out a small sigh of relief, but I couldn’t be fully relieved until they were both in my arms.
“If anyone takes one more step, I’ll shoot her,” Ethan snarled, putting his finger on the trigger and causing the cops to freeze. “I’ve already got a bullet in the chamber. Just one wrong move, and I’ll blast her brains out.”
I felt as though my chest was going to explode. Inside of me, Eddy began to rage at the sight of Ethan holding a gun to my mate’s head. I wanted to rip him to shreds, but I knew that I couldn’t. I needed to be tactful about this if I wanted to bring Moana and Ella home that night.
“Ethan,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender and trying not to show my intense and unwavering fury. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
Beside me, I heard a police officer click the safety off on his gun. I held my arm out to stop him and shook my head.
“Don’t shoot,” I said. “No one shoot.”
Suddenly, a low and menacing laugh began to rumble in my half brother’s throat. His eyes, which were usually masked by the fake charm that he used to manipulate people, revealed his true self now. Cold, calculating, and twisted. I always wanted to believe that he wasn’t born like that, that it wasn’t entirely his fault that he was so messed up, but I couldn’t help but think that he was just pure evil from the start; like he was sent here with the sole purpose of destroying my entire family, from my parents to Moana and Ella now.
“You’re too good,” he said through his laughter. “You work fast. I’ll give you that.”
“Ethan, why are you doing this?” I asked. “What do you want? What’s your goal here?”
Ethan’s laugh faded. His gun was pressed so hard up against Moana’s head that I could see her wincing, and his arm was wrapped too tightly around her neck. “You know, I wanted to get this over with before you got here so you could just face the pain of losing them,” he said grimly. “But now that you’re here, and now that I’m looking at your stupid f*****g face, I do want to tell you exactly why this is going to happen to you… Why you’ll be miserable and alone forever until the day you die.”
“Please,” I said, “enlighten me.”
“I’m not sure if you remember, or if you even care, but I was the one who found my mother’s body,” Ethan began to explain. Of course I remembered that; no matter how much I always hated Ethan, I knew how horrific it was for him to find his mother after she had killed herself. I never thought that anyone should ever have to go through that. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. Because that day, I decided that I would make you and your family suffer the same pain that I felt when I lost the only person who ever truly loved me.”
“Why?” I asked, furrowing my brow. I took a step forward, but then Ethan pushed the gun harder into Moana’s temple. I watched in horror as she shut her eyes and a tear rolled down her cheek while she trembled, and I held my hands up in surrender again. “Why, Ethan? I’m sorry about your mother. I really am. But what does her death have to do with Moana, or any of us for that matter?”
Ethan laughed again. Behind him, in the shadows created by the spotlight, I could see Kelly’s body lying motionless on the concrete floor. I tried not to show any indication that I saw her, but it made my stomach drop. Had he killed her? Was that what I heard at the end of her phone call?
“I know that you and your father weren’t innocent in that matter,” Ethan growled. “The coroner covered it up because your son of a b***h father paid him off, but I can still see my mother’s body, clear as day… she didn’t kill herself. Those cuts on her arms weren’t self-inflicted.”
Now, I was even more confused. “What are you talking about, Ethan?” I asked. “How would you even have known? You were a child.”
“Because!” Ethan shouted, clearly becoming agitated as he tightened his grip around Moana’s neck, causing her to gasp for air. “There was no knife! Your father was smart enough to pay the coroner off, but he took the knife with him when he was finished killing my mother!”
My eyes widened. I didn’t know what to say; I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if my father had orchestrated that. When the papers came out about her death, they had only ever said that she died from suicide. Only one paper ever claimed that my father may have had something to do with it, as the news of Ethan’s existence as my father’s son had only begun to circulate a few months prior. Ethan’s mother was a prostitute, so it was easy to cover up her death as well as to claim that Ethan was not my father’s child. But now, it made sense.
Either way, though, only my father was to blame for this. No one else.
“Why punish Moana and Ella for something that my father did?” I asked, taking another tentative step forward. “Your gripe should be with him, not them. Just let them go, Ethan.”
But Ethan just stared back at me with a maniacal look on his face, and pressed the gun harder into my mate’s temple.
