Kylie Bray (Love, Hate and Billions) novel Chapter 63

Papa took the long drive back to Washington. We stopped for takeout and ate in silence.

We both knew it, both of us knew that I had reached my point.

This was it.

I said nothing to papa as he held my hand and we took the long ride up to his Penthouse suite. There was nothing left to be said.

I kissed my papa's cheek and I went into my white and lilac room.

Taking off my shoes, jeans and bra. I then sat on my bed and I finally let that truth in.

My fingers interlocked around my toes of my right foot. I placed my chin to my knee while my other leg dangled off the bed and I cried.

I cried for all those nights I sat lonely. I cried for all those days I wished he would love me.

I cried because I was raped and tortured and the man that claimed to own me was using me as an excuse to kill innocent people.

And I cried for us because no matter how hard I tried, no matter how long I wished and hoped, I would never truly have Vincent Stone because the fact was Vincent Stone wasn't mine. He was in love with someone else and I was just a pawn on his board. A reason he needed to take more lives, kill more innocent people.

Vincent Stone was a killer and I was just the excuse.

I sat in my father's penthouse in Washington DC and for the first time I let it all out.

My body shook with the extent of my heartache.

My eyes burned with my love as the tears fell continuously down my cheeks, and my brain, my brain became resigned.

It realized that Vincent Stone and me, Marcus Bray's daughter would never be more.

I wasn't sure how much time past, or how long I sat there.

But when my tears dried up and the hole in my heart froze, I got up and slipped on my jeans.

I walked to the bathroom bra less, and washed my face, and spent twenty minutes covering my puffy eyes.

Familiarizing myself with the woman with the cold brown gaze staring at me from the mirror.

Then I left.

I didn't take my father's car.

I took my bike and I drove.

I didn't stop unless I had to, and I arrived at the hotel.

My hardships are my own, I can't put my weight on the ones I love any longer even if I know they would hold me up.

I take the elevator to the hotel suite where I once laid victim in a bed.

Nobody has to tell me that Vincent is here.

I know he is because he would never stay in my home without me.

The guards don't bat an eye-lash as I walk the corridor to the suite.

I pull out my key and walk-in.

“Vincent,” I call his name.

He comes out of the bedroom and I stay exactly where I am.

He is sober for once, his suit and tie perfect as always. His blonde hair neatly combed, jaw shaven.

“I thought you were staying with your father.”

He frowns and I see it- the wariness marring his eyebrows.

I pull the gun from behind my back and point it directly at him.

His eyes widen,

“Kylie, what are you doing?”

My tears blur my vision, but I keep my hands firm on the gun.

When I turned seventeen Kevin told me another pass of way. If I was the sister of a sniper I had to learn to shoot a gun.

I never thought I would be pointing it at this man. The one who owns my heart.

“You need to stop this Vincent, I am tired of the killings, you need to stop this bloodshed,” I yell at him, hoping he would.

He smiles at me shaking his head, “I can't stop Kylie, not until Lucca pays.”

My tears fall freely, my heartbreaking.

“You killed so many people, innocent people Vincent, that boy, he was seventeen, he didn't deserve to die, that girl she just wanted to protect her father, she didn't deserve that,” I scream, trying to get through to him.

He runs his hand through his hair,

“I can't stop Kylie, just like I can never love you. I am a killer it is who I am. Please just put the gun down.”

I look at him, with my tears falling aimlessly down my disfigured cheeks.

When is enough, when is the time to stop the one you love from being a monster, yet a savior at the same time?

All these moments, all these occurrences has brought me to now.

I can't change the past, I can't predict the future but I can do something now.

I click the safety off,

“I love you, Vincent, I will always love you.”

“NO,” he screams running toward me.

The gunshots ring out twice, both to the heart.

My body jerks with the impact as I watch the man I love fall to the ground not far from my feet.

His shocked, unbelieving wide brown eyes will forever haunt me as I watch him fall.

He is waiting for his men, but they won't be coming to his aid tonight.

I drop the gun down on the ground and my knees to the tiled floor.

Lifting his head onto my thighs, my vision becomes almost non.

I wipe away my tears, knowing it isn't going to stop.

“When did you first know you loved me,” he asks me as I push back his hair, my tears soaking his, as our unrequited love affair comes to an end.

“The day in the restaurant, you met Kevin, hugged him, and walked out,” I snort as more wetness soaks my face, dropping on to his, sealing us at least in another way.

He coughs up blood, it spills from the corners of his mouth.

Smiling comes hard as I wipe it away with my blood-soaked hands.

“How Kylie, how do you love a man like me?”

“I don't know Vincent, the heart chooses for itself, there is no logic.” I cry louder as he coughs up more blood.

Playing with his hair, his face, his neck, anything,

“I am so sorry Vincent, I am so sorry I had to do this.”

His fingers lift nimbly to my cheek, and I look into his dying eyes,

“No you not, Don't be, I'm not.”

Vincent smiles at me, his arm dropping hard onto his chest as his head tilts lifelessly to the side.

And just like that my first love dies.

Papa once told me that sometimes our choices were intertwined with other people's actions, we just couldn't help but go with the flow hoping to be breathing in the end.

What happened to me was a tragedy. I never asked for the hand I was dealt.

I never asked for Beggar to come into my life the way she did.

My actions, her actions led us to that dock.

Vincent's actions led him and I here.

I pulled the trigger because I knew he wouldn't stop.

Sometimes we have to make choices, today I made the hardest choice of my life.

I took Vincent Stones life. I took a brother, a friend, a lover, a future father from this world, it was the choice I made.

The cuffs lock around my wrist. I don't hear the bustle around me as my body shakes with the after effect of what I had just done.

When I get downstairs, with my hands behind my back and police escorting me out, the reporters and paramedics are already here.

I see the paramedics take Vincent's dead body on the stretcher, hidden by the silver body bag.

I have no thought as I watch them lift the stretcher into their van.

No thought at all as I am put into the back seat of a cop car.

There is no greater loss than losing the ones you love, there is no greater loss than you taking their lives.

It was eight months and seven days that I was locked up. I managed a plea deal thanks to The Satan Snipers.

Roberto was killed three weeks after Vincent, guess Marco kept his end clean.

Lucca is still missing, out there somewhere, nobody knows where he is, but we will find him.

My freedom didn't come without a price. The day they put Vincent Stones's body in the coffin, I was in a cell. And Kylie Bray was finally put to rest too, but I guess she had been for a long time.

Once the world found out what I did, so did my family. I was no longer a Bray as I didn't want my family to suffer for my actions.

As predicted, I was also no longer a relative to the Stones, well most. There was still one left.