I kick my shoes off, throw my purse to the ground, and run down the sidewalk as fast as I can, not stopping until I reach Gavin and Mom’s long driveway. I keep moving until I’m at the front door, barely giving myself a chance to catch my breath. But when I see Barrett tied to a chair in the living room, there’s nothing that can stop me from turning the handle and stepping inside the house.
“You took your time, darling stepdaughter. I was starting to think you didn’t care about Boy Wonder here,” Gavin says, poking Barrett’s slack head with the muzzle of a handgun. Barrett doesn’t even flinch, his limp arms slack against the chair and his wrists bound to the wood. His legs are splayed wide and his feet are pointing outward at an unnatural angle from each other. I have to swallow back the bile rising in my throat at the thought of what Gavin has done to him.
“Let him go,” I cry.
Gavin’s eyes are full of rage, his hair skewed and pointing all over the place like he’s been running his hands through it. What has me on edge even more is the loose grip he has on the gun. I look around the room, noting that there’s no sign of a struggle and it looks just as pristine as the last time I was here with Mom.
“You think you know it all, don’t you? You think your precious FBI agent here told you everything?” His maniacal laugh chills me to the core. “You know nothing!”
I try to take a deep, calming breath, deciding to approach this whole scene differently and try to put Gavin at ease. Let him think he's controlling this until help arrives. Slowly moving his way, I lift my hands in the air so that I can make him see I'm not a threat. "I just want to take a seat. Is that okay?"
His answer comes by way of a swift jerk of the gun toward the day bed in the corner window of the room. With a small nod, I walk over and sit down, making sure to keep one of my hands visible while the other stays gripped to my phone.
"Why are you doing this to me, Gavin? I've done nothing to you."
“It was never about you, Alyssa. You’re just collateral damage. Everything was going according to plan, and you put ideas in your mother’s head and made her question our marriage. In one phone call, you planted doubts that weren’t there so she endured our honeymoon and left as soon as we returned needing space.” His agitation increases the more he speaks and I know I have to placate him so that I can give Barrett and myself more time.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to be there for the wedding,” I lie.
“Suuure you did, you spoiled brat,” he spits out. “Just how your father raised you to be.” My entire body jerks at his vicious tone.
“You knew my father?”
Gavin walks over to the front window of the house, looking up and down the street. When his body goes dead still, I stop breathing, fear freezing me in place. Has he seen the cops outside? Did he hear sirens? Is he going to shoot us both right here and now?
He turns back to face me. “Your father stole the business from me. He stole everything from me.”
“What?” I whisper incredulously, not even trying to mask the disbelief in my voice.
“I see you don’t believe me,” he says, a wolfish smile slowly growing on his face as he looks straight ahead. “And look, just in time. Special Agent Lucas has decided to join the party. Did you have a good sleep, Barrett?”
“Huh?” Barrett’s voice is slurred as he regains consciousness and my heart clenches at the sound. Without thinking, I rush to him, wiping away the hair that’s stuck to his forehead before frantically checking him over and looking for any visible injuries.
“You okay?” I ask quietly, cupping his jaw in my hands. His eyes widen before he struggles against his bonds. “Don’t,” I murmur against his lips, leaning in for a kiss to steal us some privacy, the tension easing in my chest when understanding and agreement register in his gaze.
“Get away from him. I don’t trust him not to try anything,” Gavin shouts.
“Okay,” I rush out, locking eyes with Barrett and mouthing ‘I love you’ before holding my hands in the air.
“Keep him talking” Barrett mouths back. I nod and turn to face Gavin.
“So you knew my Dad?”
“We were in college together. I had a business idea, just something small to earn us some money while we studied. That’s when we started the community newsletter and ran it out of my dorm room. When it started to take off, your father cut me out of all of it. Then he had the balls to ask your mother out on a date, knowing I had my eye on her.”
“You knew Mom too?” I ask stupidly, my brain slowly catching up.
“I just said that, didn’t I?” he spits out. “She didn’t know me, though. Or if she did, she didn’t remember me when I introduced myself at a function last year.”
Then everything clicks into place. “You targeted her, didn’t you? What was the wedding then? A ruse?”
Gavin shakes his head. "I've wanted Rosalie for a long time, Alyssa. She just happens to also be the means to an end this time. When she became my wife, her assets became mine. Meaning I could finally take my company back."
“All of this is for Jacobs Publishing?” I continue, my focus locked on keeping his attention on me and not Barrett or whatever Marlee might be organizing outside the house.
I’m not sure how much time has passed since I broke through the cordon, but surely Marlee and the S.W.A.T. team should’ve arrived by now. All I can do now is hope they’re getting ready to make a move.
"It should've been mine all along." Gavin's voice is low and deadly serious. "My company . . ." He steps toward me, his right arm straightening and I suck in a breath as I look down the barrel of his gun now pointed directly at my head. "The woman who should've been my wife from the start . . ." I freeze in place, never having been face to face with a gun before—or a man hell-bent on revenge either. I have absolutely no idea what to do now. Talking obviously isn't helping, and Barrett is still tied up. Panic wells up inside of me and threatens to render me completely useless. I know I've got to keep going though and do anything and everything to buy us as much time as possible.
Gavin keeps going though. "And then I find out I’m being investigated by the FBI and this guy . . .” He tilts the gun to my side where Barrett sits behind me. “. . . is actually an undercover agent they sent in to bring me down.”
Paralyzed by fear, I open my mouth to plead with him, to try and get him to rethink whatever plan he has for us, but no words will come out. “It was actually your little fuck buddy who told me.” I frown. Barrett wouldn’t have told him anything. That means… I gasp when it hits me. “Oh yes, now she gets it. It was quite an enlightening conversation we had, too. Now surprisingly, that’s a man with a lot of anger toward your fuck-toy here,” Gavin narrows his gaze and glares over at Barrett.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Barrett grinds out roughly. Why the hell would Aiden blow Barrett’s cover like that? Was it out of spite? Jealously?
Time stands still as silence falls over the room.
I’ve heard it said that your senses are heightened in extreme circumstances, that you take more in, and everything you feel is magnified by a thousand. In this moment, faced with my own mortality and the knowledge that one squeeze of Gavin’s finger could send a bullet careening through my body, I pick up on even the faintest of sounds around me.
The faint ticking of my mother's grandfather clock, the soft dripping from a leaking tap somewhere. Then the unmistakable quiet footsteps along the side of the house gives me hope. Maybe help is finally coming.
But before I can hear anything else, the loud click of the front door opening cuts the air like a knife. Gavin rushes for me, wrapping an arm around my throat and digging the muzzle of the gun hard into my temple. Using my body as a shield in front of him, he faces the doorway, his body tensing and poised for something when Aiden walks through the door with his hands held in the air and wearing a dark blue vest with S.W.A.T across the front.
“I’m Detective Aiden Lawrence. I rang you this morning,” he says to Gavin. “I thought you’d prefer to talk to me rather than the hostage negotiator that the LVPD has outside.”
“I said no. Fucking. Cops,” he growls loud enough for the whole room to hear, his spittle splattering over my skin and making me shudder.
The atmosphere becomes thick with tension, anger radiating off all of the men in the room in suffocating waves. Barrett’s chair scrapes along the unforgiving wooden floor, startling Gavin. He spins me around and puts my body between him and Barrett, obviously seeing Aiden as the lesser threat.
Knowing he’s cornered, his only advantage now is the gun wedged against my temple and the feelings the two men in front of us have for me.
"Gavin, let's talk about this. Tell me what your demands are. What do you need so that we can start negotiations so we can let Lucas and Alyssa go?" Aiden says, his voice low and calm, the complete opposite of how I'm feeling inside right now.
I glance down at Barrett’s hands to see the rope around his wrists is loose and my pulse jumps. He darts his eyes quickly from Aiden to Gavin a few times before focusing back on me and quirking his brow.
As he’s doing this, Aiden continues to talk. “I’ve spoken to the FBI. They want everybody to leave this house of their own volition. You will be arrested, but you will not be harmed if you leave with me now.” Gavin’s arm around me loosens ever so slightly.
I catch movement outside the front window as two armed officers take positions on either side, flanking the house. A quick look at Barrett has my gaze dropping to his fingers, watching as he makes a one, two, three count then nods forward, waiting for my silent agreement. I blink slowly then open my eyes to meet his again.
When Barrett reaches three, I go slack and drop like a dead weight to the ground just as Barrett jumps out of his chair and rushes for him. Unfortunately, Gavin has enough time to swing the gun up and squeeze one shot out, catching Barrett in the chest at close range. I scream as Barrett crashes into Gavin, both of them falling to the floor as the gun is sent sliding across the ground, stopping at my feet.
“Aly!” Aiden yells, but without thinking, I bend down, wrap my fingers around the grip and take two steps toward Gavin, pointing the gun down at him.
“Aiden, see to Barrett,” I say, my voice deceptively calm when inside, my heart is shattered beyond repair inside my chest.
“Aly, put the gun down. I’ve got him,” Aiden instructs, but I’m too out of it and too focused on Gavin for his words to permeate. I’m blinded by grief and rage and shock because of everything this vile man has done to me and my loved ones.
“See to Barrett,” I growl through gritted teeth.
Gavin’s eyes widen but there’s no fear or remorse there. He just smirks up at me. “You won’t shoot me, Alyssa. Your father didn’t have the guts to fight me when I took him down, and you don’t either.”
My fortitude wavers. "You killed my father?" I gasp, all semblance of self-control I thought I had seeps out of me and suddenly I'm having visions of taking out the man who stole my father from me and my mother and then tried to ruin his legacy.
“Never underestimate a Jacobs, ‘cause we never give up.” Gavin jerks up, reaching out for my legs. My finger flexes on the trigger then tightens just as Aiden yells, “Aly, no!”
My arm jerks back violently, wrenching unnaturally as I watch a bullet tear through Gavin’s flesh.
That’s when I know that nothing will ever be the same again.