Free Chained (Caged Book 2) by D. H. Sidebottom

Kloe, killing her in front of him, will give you that revenge?”
    “Yes,” I answered honestly. “Yes, I do.”
    “You’re a bigger fool than I thought, Anderson Cain.” He huffed. “There’s two choices. One, yeah, go ahead. Kidnap Kloe. Hurt her. Make her pay for taking the love of your father away from you. Or,” he lifted an eyebrow, “accept that that woman, and your baby, can make you happy. Show that motherfucker your happiness. Show him that what he did couldn’t kill you inside. Happiness or hate, Anderson? I know which I would fucking choose.”
    I dropped back against the chair. It couldn’t be that fucking easy. After everything, revenge couldn’t be that simple.
    I had to admit that maybe Rob was right. My father had loved Kloe, even if he had had a sick way of showing it. She was the perfect little girl he had always wanted. Yet, could revenge be as easy as showing him that Kloe loved me? That she was mine? That she had given me a child? And herself? When all she did was run from him.
    Hatred or happiness.
    Could I be happy? Did I even fucking deserve it? I knew the answer to that one but it didn’t stop me wondering, and hoping.
    “It’s too late,” I whispered. “And even if it wasn’t, I can’t ever condone the things I have done to her. I hurt her in so many ways, Rob.” Sighing, I closed my eyes. “Yes, I could take her, make her mine. But then what’s the point? If I want happiness, the only way I get it is if Kloe is with me because she wants to be, not because she has no choice.”
    “Do you love her?”
    Blinking, I shook my head. “Love doesn’t even come into it. I’m not capable of all that fucking shit.”
    “But she would make you happy?”
    I didn’t even have to think about it. I nodded. “She does. Although I don’t understand why. She calms me, Rob. She soothes the incessant bloody rage that’s always twisting inside me. It’s like she sees the pain in my soul, and she heals it. But then I have to remind myself of why I’m doing it all, and then I get so damn angry with her. She has the capability to massacre me, but she’s the only one that can bring me to life.”
    Rob opened his mouth, but before any words left him, Jenny, his sister, walked in. “Hey, boys.”
    Rob grinned, the adoration he had for his sister making me ache further. I’d missed out on so much. Judd had missed out at a normal life. Family. That one word meant so many differing things. What it should mean, and what it meant to me.
    The pain, the rage, even the sorrow that lived inside me could never quite hang on to anything with substance. It was always there, under my skin, scratching and biting at my sanity, yet I couldn’t ever seem to ground it no matter what I did.
    I had thought bringing Kloe into the retribution I so desperately wanted on my father would have stemmed that lost feeling, but it hadn’t. It had just confused me even more, the varying emotions that only she could make me feel making my goal seem all the more unreachable.
    Yet now I had to think about the ultimate goal. What would be left when I killed Terry? Yes, the hole inside me would be filled, but what then? I couldn’t even envisage life after his death. When it was all over, what part of me could finally begin?
    But then, having Kloe and my child, a family, could only fill my mind with so many things for the future. Life. Holidays, Christmas. Happiness. To wake every morning to Kloe’s face and my child’s laughter seemed untouchable.
    But was it?

 
    B EN SMILED AT ME WHEN I passed him his drink.
    It had been two weeks since I’d walked away from Anderson, or rather, since he’d forced me to walk away.
    Ben and I had been in steady contact since the hospital, and yesterday he had rang me, heartbroken, after Jenny had called their wedding off. Surprise, surprise. Now she was no longer needed, the heartless bitch had no trouble in dumping Ben quicker than she had lowered her knickers for him.
    Ben,