Chapter 39 The Beginning of the End
Avery stared out the window, replaying what Charles had shown her on his phone. She should have known. She should have seen it. But then the thought struck her again—how could she have seen it coming?
When she hadn’t even seen his death coming.
And just like that, the memory she’d been trying to outrun slammed back into her chest. It was like she was right there again, staring at his bloodied body. The same body that had once enveloped her, stroked her hair, fucked her, and then made love to her slowly while whispering how he was going to make her the happiest woman on earth.
“You’re my ride or die, A,” he’d say before kissing her, his eyes shimmering with that stupid, devastating love.
If anyone had told her, back when she had just turned eighteen, that the poor pizza-delivery guy would be the one she’d fall madly in love with, she would have laughed. Called it a lie. But she had fallen, and she had fallen deep.
She’d given him a heart she had sworn never to hand to anyone. Growing up in the shadow of her parents’ miserable excuse of a marriage, she had promised herself she would never end up like them. But when that house began to feel like a leash tightening around her throat, Leroy had been the breath of air she hadn’t known she was suffocating without.
To the wealthy people in her world, he was a nobody. At first, even she thought the same and when she made that clear to him, he had only smirked. Still came on to her. Still pushed back against her snide remarks, brushing them off like they meant nothing.
Then she remembered that night at the front door, the night he stole his first kiss. The night everything began.
He had leaned against the doorway with one shoulder, arms crossed, eyebrow raised like he already knew what she was going to say before she said it.
“I’m serious, A,” he’d murmured, voice low and teasing. “You keep running from me, I’m gonna start thinking you don’t like me.”
“I don’t l‑like you. And don’t call me that, I’m…”
Her voice had stuttered, her confidence unraveling under the warm weight of his stare.
He pushed off the doorway and stepped closer. The air thickened around them. “You can’t lie to me. Not like that.”
His smirk was crooked, dangerous, like he was daring her to prove him wrong.
“I’m not lying!” she protested, though her shaking hands betrayed every word.
That smirk softened for a moment just one heartbeat before he tilted his head. “Good. Because I like it when you’re honest with me… even if it’s just a little.”
Her pulse tripped. Stumbled. Then shot off in a reckless sprint. She remembered brushing his sleeve with her fingertips, barely a touch and how he’d caught her hand instantly. Warm. Steady. Protective. And still, that maddening smirk stayed right where it was.
“You know…” he murmured as he leaned in, his breath ghosting across her cheek, “I’ve been waiting to do this all damn night.”
Avery’s breath hitched. “Do what?”
His lips crashed onto hers. Soft but hungry, claiming but gentle, a kiss that stole the floor from beneath her feet. The world had snapped into a single point—the taste of him, the weight of him, the way he whispered against her mouth, almost reverent:
“You’re mine, A. Don’t fight it.”
She had wanted to pull back. To scream. To run.
But instead, she had melted. Given in. Fallen into the chaos he brought into her carefully ordered, tightly guarded life.
In that moment, standing at the front door with the night pressing against the glass behind her, she somehow knew. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Even then, with all that fire and reckless hunger, she hadn’t yet understood how far she would fall for him…
She ripped herself out of the memory with a choking gasp. Tears poured down her cheeks in a frantic rush as she clutched her chest. Her heart pounded so violently it felt like it was trying to break free. No, not felt like, she actually couldn’t breathe. Her throat tightened, refusing to let air in. The pain was too sharp, too much.
“You didn’t deserve that,” she whispered then sobbed so violently her voice cracked the air. Her cry was so raw, so full of agony, that every staff member in the house paused where they stood. They didn’t just hear her grief; they felt it, like it was their own.
And now, the same monster who had taken Leroy from her… was threatening to take his family too.
On Charles’s phone, shown so casually at the dining table, like it was nothing, was a picture of Leroy’s family. A recent one. They were smiling, enjoying their day, completely unaware. And each of them had a small red dot resting on their forehead.
A laser.
A sniper’s aim.
One word from Charles… and they would all be gone.
And he had leaned back, so calm, so certain of his power, as he asked,
“What will it be, my little girl? Your twin sister… or his family?”
The choice was instant. Brutal. Unfair.
But she owed Leroy. She owed them.
So she had no option except to go against the person who shared her face, her own twin.
“I promise you, Leroy…” Her voice broke. She pressed a shaking hand to the window as tears ran freely. “Nothing will happen to them. Even if it’s the last thing I do. And when it is the last thing I do… I’ll burn everything down. All of it. He’ll die buried under the riches he worships. And then…”
She swallowed, her whole body trembling.
“...and then I’ll come meet you again.”
Her forehead rested against the cold glass. Her breathing steadied. Her resolve hardened into something sh
arp and unbreakable.
And right then and there… it all began to unfold.