Chapter Forty-One

Snow

I watch Lyrical slam the door in my face, and I go to my suitcase and toss my stuff into it, zipping it up. Usually, I wouldn't let her go, but I have to because I don't want her to hate me for the rest of our lives together. The look of defeat and hurt on her face made me realize just how much I fucked up. She thinks I chose my revenge over her and she's second on my list of priorities.

But she's wrong.

At the beginning of the semester, when I was blinded by rage and anger, she was just a pawn I wanted to use. But she's become more than that. I didn't marry her to piss off my father initially; I married her because I truly love her and want to protect her. Yes, I knew it would hit the mark with my father, and a part of me did marry her to get back at him. Show him that he doesn't have control over my life.

I glance at the rings and I put them in my pocket.

She has another thing coming if she believes that I will actually sign the divorce papers. She's going to be wasting her time finding a lawyer and serving me those papers. I meant every word—if she sends someone to serve me divorce papers, I'll slit their throats and send their hands to her.

I told her before that I'm not letting her go, and I meant it. There is a way to fix this mess that I made. I've broken her trust, but I'm going to earn it back somehow. I should have been upfront and honest from the beginning.

My father would just love for us to break up so he can find a way to kill her. He doesn't want to kill me, otherwise he wouldn't be sending women my way for me to marry them. He wants me to get rid of Lyrical because he's pissed off that she made a mistake. Now, all of sudden he cares about Bailey? Yet when she was alive, he treated her like a liability. He was happy to announce her marriage to Tim because he was getting something out of it.

How did Lyrical know about the revenge plan against my father?

I pick up my phone from the bed and see a text message open from our chat group. Jameson sent a message informing me that the plan didn't work, so I close out of it and pull up my call log. My father is the last person who called, so she must have answered. He must have told her what's going on. I should have been upfront and honest with her from the start, but I kept her out of the loop in fear of losing her.

I click on my father's name and hold the phone to my ear. It rings three times before he picks up.

"I'm not killing Lyrical, and I'll have your head once I'm done with you."

I tap the End button.

When I get on the plane, I fly back to North Haven. Once I make it to the mansion on campus, I walk in to find Jameson and Keanu sitting on the couch playing on the PlayStation Five. Keanu takes out his gun and points it at me, but when he realizes who I am, he places his gun back on the coffee table.

"Motherfucker, have you heard of knocking? I could have blown your head off. You're back early from your honeymoon trip." He gets up from the couch.

A girl is naked with her hands tied behind her back. A blindfold covers her eyes and a gag is in her mouth. Dried-up residue smears her face and I'm assuming it's cum. She's propped up on her knees with her head bowed.

I raise my brow.

"This bitch stole three million dollars from me, so I'm using her body as payment. Before I kill her," Keanu answers, slapping her across the face.

"How did she get a hold of your bank account information?" I question, folding my arms across my chest and leaning against the wall.

He yanks her by the hair. I realize it's the same blonde chick who asked to be my pet earlier this semester at a party.

"She waited until I was asleep and stole my credit card."

Jameson tosses the controller onto the end table and gets up from the couch.

"Where is Lyrical?"

"She's staying at her parents' house because we had a fight."

When I checked the tracker on my phone, that was her last location, and she hasn't left since.

Has she told her father everything? It doesn't matter at this point. I'll have to prepare for the worst, for when her father attacks me, when I show up there begging to talk to her.

I'm not going to tell Jameson and Keanu that she's threatening me with divorce, because she isn't going to get it.

"The plan failed. Your father noticed a tracker on his car. I wouldn't be surprised that he is on to us." Jameson pulls a bag of Skittles from his pockets and pops one in the mouth.

"He sent me messages saying he's going to take care of me for marrying her. He knows that since I married her, he can't touch her unless he wants there to be a full investigation. I'm sure he's looking for a loophole."

"I followed your father while you were gone," Jameson says. "He has been conning the mayor out of money. Screwing over people at the club. And he meets at some mansion out in the middle of nowhere. I can't get close to it because they have cameras everywhere."

"We have another problem. Lyrical knows about my father wanting her dead, so she might tell her father and it might start a bloodbath between our families. I don't want my mother to be caught up in the middle of it, nor her mother. My father won't hesitate to kill her parents, and her father will do the same thing."

Keanu removes his gun from the coffee table and scratches his head with the butt of it. "What's the plan?"

"I'll talk to Clemon, if he'll let me. Then we'll go from there. Until then, keep a lookout for my father. He's filled with rage and is unpredictable."

Keanu puts the gun to the girl's head and pulls the trigger. Her lifeless body hits the floor, getting brain matter on the cream carpet and staining it with blood.

"Got it."