Chapter 268 I Am Here, Just to Kill You

Chapter 268 I Am Here, Just to Kill You

Blood trickled down from the corner of Edward's eye. His ears rang—a deep, skull-splitting toll, like a bell shattered inside his head.

Andrew had lost his mind entirely. Every punch came with every ounce of his body weight behind it, curses pouring from his lips without pause, spittle and blood spattering across Edward's swollen, split face.

"Keep talking! Keep talking!" Another fist crashed down. Edward's head snapped to the side, and a mouthful of bloody foam bubbled from his lips.

"Who the hell do you think you are? You dare point fingers at me? Sure, I'm a bastard—sure, my mother was a whore. But what about you? You're not even worth that. Your woman got stabbed by my men. Your son calls another man daddy. What kind of man does that make you?"

Edward's eyes flew open.

Through the film of blood smearing his vision, a sharp, crystalline light ignited in his gaze.

His hand lay limp against the carpet. His fingers began to move—slowly, deliberately—inching toward his trouser pocket.

Andrew didn't notice.

He straddled Edward's chest, staring down at that blood-soaked face, and let out a laugh—a soft, contemptuous sound, drenched in scorn.

He tilted his head. When he spoke again, his voice had settled into something almost pitying.

"You know what I despise most about you? It's not that you mistook glass for a pearl. It's that you held the real pearl in your own two hands and still didn't know what to do with it. Jenna—that woman who made me stumble, the woman I'd have done anything to have—she gave you everything. And you threw it away. If you'd treated her right, how would she have ended up with Ethan?"

He leaned down, lips brushing close to Edward's ear.

"You know, after she got with Ethan, I had people watching her. They followed them to a hotel. She was there the whole night. The way she looked in his arms—have you ever seen it? Her wedding night…"

The blade caught the light.

Andrew's voice cut off.

His eyes went wide, pupils dilating around the reflection of a knife—one that had appeared from nowhere.

The blade was barely three inches long. It was more than enough.

The edge swept across the left side of his throat, parting skin, parting muscle, then slicing cleanly through the carotid artery beneath.

Blood erupted.

A vivid red arc sprayed from the side of Andrew's neck and splashed across Edward's face.

Andrew's body locked rigid. His hands flew instinctively to his throat, but the blood kept surging through his fingers no matter how hard he pressed. There was no stopping it.

His mouth fell open. He seemed to be trying to speak. The only sound that came out was a low, wet gurgling.

Edward smiled. "Andrew… I came here for one reason."

Andrew went completely still.

He had thought himself the hunter. He had believed he controlled everything. But from the very beginning, he had been the one being hunted.

His body swayed once, twice—then toppled sideways and hit the carpet with a dull, final thud.

"Sir!" The bodyguard's scream tore through the silence.

The gunshot followed.

The bullet entered below Edward's right shoulder blade. The searing heat of metal shredding through flesh and splintering bone detonated through his entire body in a single, blinding instant.

His torso jerked forward. A rush of blood poured from his mouth and splattered across Andrew's already motionless body.

He collapsed face-down on the carpet, one cheek pressed against the cold pile of the rug. Blood ran freely from his back and from his lips at once, soaking through his shirt, soaking through the carpet, pooling with Andrew's until there was no telling whose was whose.

The room erupted into chaos—shouting, the metallic click of weapons being chambered, the dense thunder of boots converging from every direction.

Edward couldn't make out any of it anymore.

His ears filled with a low, unbroken roar. The world in front of him dimmed, softened, dissolved at the edges.

He lay there, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

Andrew was dead.

The man who had reached out from the shadows and nearly taken Jenna's life—he was finally dead.

The last debt had been paid.

The chaos around him receded, growing muffled and distant, as though everything had been submerged in murky water—heavy, indistinct, sinking away layer by layer.

He felt like a man lying in the hold of a ship slowly swallowed by the deep. The world was going dark. The fireplace still burned, but the light was shrinking, pulling back, retreating to some far shore across a vast and lightless sea.

Then the darkness split.

A seam of light broke through—soft, luminous, the pale gold of early morning, five or six o'clock, when the world has just barely begun.

The smell of blood was gone. In its place came something faint and achingly familiar—laundry detergent, clean and warm, threaded through with the scent of her shampoo and the gardenias from the diffuser on her dresser.

She always used too much of that thing. Every time he'd leaned in close from behind, the fragrance had nearly made him pull away.

A girl in a white sundress came running out of the light. She held a disposable camera above her head with both hands, her hair streaming out behind her, cheeks flushed, eyes bright and gleaming like two rain-washed berries.

She ran and laughed at the same time, her laughter scattering through the afternoon like wind chimes, drifting down through the shifting shadows of the maple trees.

"Edward! Hold still—let me get a picture!"

He saw the boy on the bench at the edge of the basketball court—sweat-damp, mid-reach for a water bottle. His features hadn't yet been worn into hard angles. His eyes hadn't yet been veiled by that settled, grey distance.

He watched himself wave an impatient hand. "Don't."

But she was already faster. The shutter clicked.

The moment it did, something fractured.

Piano music drifted in from somewhere very far away—the minuet she had always loved.

A woman stood in the light.

A white gown. A long train pooling behind her. A veil falling over half her face—but he could see her eyes.

Those eyes. The ones he had seen in dreams more times than he could count. They looked back at him now through the thin white veil, steady and still.

Jenna's lips curved gently—the exact shape he knew.

Jenna…

He tried to say her name. A surge of iron-sweet warmth rose in his throat. His lips moved. Only the faintest breath of air came out.

His eyes burned. Something scalding slid from the corner—ran through blood, tracing the swollen, broken lines of his face.

She reached out her hand.

Just like that day at the wedding, when the officiant had asked him to lead his bride in the first dance. She had reached for him then, too.

And what had he done?

He had stood there, arms at his sides, and said, with barely a glance, "I'm a little tired tonight."

Her hand had waited in the air for a long moment.

Then, quietly, she had taken it back herself.