Page 128 of Scarred Redemption

“I know you have another family, Bedford. Your daughter is in the hospital, dying of cancer and you’re fucking another woman.”

“Shut up, Anna. This was never a marriage. This was an arrangement.”

“How dare you!”

I would never forget my mother’s tearstained face. Or seeing him knock her across the room. It was the first time I’d come to her defense with a knife in my hand, successfully driving the blade into the side of his neck. He’d left that night.

I was shaking all over. I’d suppressed the memory.

“Ah, you do know who I am.” Jagger laughed.

“What do you want?” I was cognizant Kristoff was behind me. There was nowhere to go.

“Isn’t that obvious? To destroy the man responsible for killing our father.”

“After murdering his wife? After kidnapping his daughter? Are you fucking kidding me?” I swung the knife, backing toward the wall so I could see the two men. “You’re a monster.” I was close to being hysterical, but I had to hold it together.

“And what do you think the man you’re sleeping with is? He killed my mother in cold blood. I plan on spending every day making him suffer. And the way to make him suffer the most is to know you’re alive with me, and there’s nothing he can do about it. You’re coming with me, sister. Together we’ll be a family. Just like you want.”

Was he fucking kidding me?

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

All the suffering my mother had experienced, the horrible cries of my baby sister who’d wanted her daddy to hold her. All the nights of holding Mina in my arms while she cried for her papa. And for all the memories and nightmares Maxsim had endured, they all came crashing down. I couldn’t care less about what happened to me.

I swung the blade toward Jagger, almost catching him in the face, but he smashed his arm across mine, the force knocking the knife from my hand.

“Get the girl,” Jagger instructed to Kristoff.

“No!” I managed to hold it together long enough to twist and kick Kristoff before Jagger wrapped his arm around my throat, yanking me off the floor. I jammed my elbow into his stomach, belting out a scream.

Suddenly, the sound of gunfire became an unmistakable sound.

Light flooded the kitchen, blinding in its glory.

An invisible force snapped the room’s gravity, dragging it to the interior doorway just as tiny prickles of heat spread across the back of my neck and down my arms.

All noise suddenly faded into the background, leaving on the rapid pulse in my ears. Yet not from terror, but from a rapid rush of adrenaline created by a prickling vibration of electricity.

And why?

Because Maxsim had arrived.

My lover and my hero.

“Get the girl. Now!” Jagger instructed.

As the world seemed to erupt in violence all around me, I used the moment, the single opportunity I had to fight. Not only for my own survival, but also in savoring a moment of revenge for the horrors this man who had the blood of my monstrous father running through him had inflicted.

I yanked out the paring knife and before Jagger realized what I was doing, I jammed it into his neck.

Just like I’d done with my father.

And as he spun around, a look of horror on his face, I fled the kitchen to the outside and into the darkness.

CHAPTER 26

Maxsim