Craving The Wrong Brother のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 131 - チャプター 140

The look on Dad's face is almost indescribable. Shock, definitely. But there’s something more. If my father were an emotional man, he’d be screaming. Or crying. Or both. He just stands there instead. “Wow,” he says finally. “Are you on something? Crack? Are you using, Sloane?” I roll my eyes and take a shaky breath. “I’m done talking about this.” “Mom,” he says, voice rising as he turns toward Grandma June, who’s still perched on the couch, legs crossed, wine glass in hand, eyes fixed on the television. “Are you not going to chip in here?” “And say what, Daniel?” she replies without looking away from the screen. “You’ve not seen her with that boyfriend of hers. She’s happy. He buys her designers, a lot of them. Let the kid make her own damn choice.” “And become you, right?” That makes her turn around. “Oh, you better watch that mouth of yours.” “You do realize that however you turned out has everything to do with you choosing the wrong man in the first place, right? He made yo

***~~SLOANE~~***My father is just as bullheaded as most of the men I know.He decides not to heed my warning and stands there like some old-school martyr, arms crossed, face calm in that way he thinks makes him unreadable. It doesn’t. He’s waiting for the storm that’s about to come through the front door in the form of his wife, Daphne.The door opens, and Daphne walks in with Beau.The first person she lays eyes on is Grandma June, curled into the couch with a half-finished glass of wine in one hand and the TV remote in the other.“You’re back,” Grandma says with a slow turn of the head as Daphne kicks the door shut behind her and sets her bag down.“Yeah. Couldn’t stand being around my family any longer. Decided to come home.” She looks down at her son and nods. “Beau, go say hi to Grandma.”The boy hesitates. He’s got one finger lodged in his nostril, and from the way he shifts his weight from foot to foot, he’d rather be anywhere else. But Daphne nudges him, and he reluctantly

*** ~~KNOX~~ *** I can hear Jade in the backseat of my car, loading up the guns we pulled from the hidden storage in my home basement. Mateo thought way outside the box with this one. Sloane’s sister. Of all hostages to choose from. I’ll admit—if it were under another circumstance, I might’ve been impressed. But as it stands, I am not. The minute I heard Sloane’s voice shake on the phone, the minute I heard her sound that small and that furious at the same time, my sympathy for clever strategy went out the damn window. “You sure we should be carrying this level of firearm around?” Jade asks. “What if we get pulled over and have to explain the assault rifles and all this illegal shit we have back here? My kid—or kids, if they all survive incubation in their mother's womb—will not see me for a very long time. I bet Margot won’t even tell them I’m alive. Or visit me in prison. All because your girlfriend said Mateo kidnapped that bitch, Serena. Honestly? Just let her die. You’ll be

There’s no such thing as right or wrong to me. There’s only what I want to do and what I don’t.And I absolutely do not want to apologize to Mateo.I can feel the pressure around me. Eyes heavy on my face. Every breath in this room is paused, waiting on me. Even Sloane hasn’t looked away once. I can’t bring myself to meet her gaze, not with what she might be silently asking of me.You know what? A million people owe me apologies. You don’t see me holding the world hostage over it. This whole thing has gone too far. I’m done playing along.“Tell your man to put the gun down, Mateo,” I say. “What you have is against me. Let’s not involve third parties.”But the man holding the gun to Hunter’s head doesn’t budge. Instead, I watch him flip the safety off. Sloane’s grip on my hand tightens.And now, someone is crying.It's Serena.Her shoulders are shaking, body jerking in the chair. The man crouched beside her—the one who was tending to her leg—pauses. He’s almost done with the bandaging.

***~~SLOANE~~***My heart is beating fast as I sit in the backseat of Knox’s car, listening to Jade explain how to use a gun.He holds the thing like it’s an extension of his arm, his fingers casual but firm around the grip. “Safety off,” he says, flipping a tiny lever down with his thumb. The click it makes isn’t loud, but it might as well be a gunshot with the way it makes me flinch.“Safety on,” he says and flips the lever back up.Click.Again, I flinch.He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “Wanna experiment?”“No,” I say quickly. “I got it. Let’s just…leave the off and on for when it matters.”His eyes narrow as he studies my face, up and down. “You afraid of the gun or something? How you gon’ shoot someone if you’re afraid of the damn gun?”“She’s not afraid of it,” Knox says from the front as he drives. He catches my eyes in the rearview mirror, and there’s something there. He’s not just defending me. It feels like a pep talk in disguise, like he’s willing me to b