CHAPTER 124
HARRY'S POV
The rage that had been simmering in my chest since Lucas revealed William's true plans finally boiled over. I stood up so fast that the coffee table scraped against the floor, my hands clenched into fists.
"I'm going to kill him," I said, my voice deadly calm. "I'm going to kill both of them."
"Harry," Skylar said, rising to face me. "We need to be smart about this."
"Smart?" I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Skylar, this bastard killed my parents. He killed Lizzy. He's been manipulating me for years, using my grief to turn me into his weapon. And now I find out he wants to hand you over to your psychopath father like some kind of fucking reward?"
I started pacing, my mind already calculating routes to William's compound, weak points in his security, the best ways to make him suffer before I ended him.
"I know you're angry," Skylar said, stepping into my path. "I'm angry too. But if you go charging in there right now, you'll get yourself killed and accomplish nothing."
"Maybe that's better than living with this," I snapped, then immediately regretted it when I saw the hurt flash across her face.
Jax stood up, his jaw tight. "Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare suggest that leaving us is better than fighting with us."
"That's not what I meant," I said, running my hands through my hair. "I just... God, Skylar, he's been playing me like a puppet since I was seventeen years old. Everything I thought I knew, everything I thought I was fighting for - it was all a lie."
She reached up and cupped my face in her hands, forcing me to look at her. "Not everything. Your love for me isn't a lie. Your love for them isn't a lie. What we have together - that's real. That's the only thing that matters."
I leaned into her touch, feeling some of the rage drain away and replace itself with something even more dangerous - cold, calculated determination.
"You're right," I said quietly. "But I'm still going to kill him."
"We're going to kill him," Lucas corrected from the couch. "This isn't just your fight anymore, Harry. He used all of us. He destroyed all our lives to serve his twisted agenda."
"And my father destroyed even more," Skylar added. "The question is, do we let our anger make us stupid, or do we use it to make us better?"
I looked at her - really looked at her. The frightened girl I'd fallen in love with was still there, but she was wrapped in steel now. The abuse and trauma that should have broken her had instead forged her into something formidable. Something beautiful and terrible and absolutely unstoppable.
"What do you have in mind?" I asked.
She smiled, and it was the most dangerous expression I'd ever seen on her face. "We give them exactly what they want. Or at least, we make them think we are."
"Explain," Jax said, moving to stand beside us.
"They want us eliminated and me delivered to William. So we fake our deaths and let them think they've won. Then, while they're celebrating and their guard is down, we take apart their entire operation piece by piece."
Lucas looked up from his laptop. "That's... actually not a bad plan. I can make our deaths look convincing, especially if we stage it as a gang hit or something similar. William would believe it - he's been expecting someone to come after us eventually."
"And while they think we're dead?" I asked.
"We hunt them," Skylar said simply. "We find every location, every operation, every person involved in their network. We save every girl we can and eliminate every threat we find. We become ghosts that haunt their nightmares until there's nothing left of what they built."
The plan was audacious, dangerous, and completely insane. It was also perfect.
"There's one problem," Jax pointed out. "If we're supposed to be dead, we can't use any of our resources, our contacts, our safe houses. We'd be completely on our own."
"No," I said, pieces clicking into place in my mind. "We wouldn't be completely alone. I know people William doesn't know about. People from before he found me. They owe me favors, and they hate trafficking operations almost as much as we do."
"My contact from earlier," I continued, thinking out loud. "Marcus. He's been hunting traffickers for fifteen years since his sister disappeared into one of these networks. He has resources, safe houses, weapons. And he's completely off William's radar."
Skylar nodded. "What about identities? We'll need papers, credit cards, everything."
"I can handle that," Lucas said. "I've been preparing contingency identities for years, just in case. William taught me to always have an exit strategy - I just never thought I'd be using it against him."
"So we fake our deaths, go underground, and systematically destroy everything they've built," Jax summarized. "What's the timeline?"
"Fast," Skylar said. "Every day we wait is another day girls are being hurt. And the longer we stay visible, the more likely it is that they'll figure out we're onto them."
I felt the familiar calm that always settled over me before a mission, but this time it was different. This time, I wasn't fighting for William's agenda or even for revenge. I was fighting for something pure and necessary - to protect the woman I loved and save innocent lives.
"There's something else," Skylar said quietly. "Something I need you all to promise me."
"What?"
"When this is over - when we've destroyed them and saved everyone we can - we walk away. No more violence, no more criminal activities. We disappear completely and build a real life together."
Jax reached for her hand. "You want us to promise we can come back from this? That we won't lose ourselves in the darkness?"
"I want you to promise that no matter what we have to do, no matter what we have to become to win this fight, you'll help me find our way back to the light when it's over."
I looked at her, then at Lucas and Jax. These three people were my family, my anchor, my reason for existing. If they could promise to come back from the edge, then so could I.
"I promise," I said.
"We all promise," Lucas added.
But as I watched Skylar's face, I saw something that made my blood run cold. She'd promised to find her way back to the light, but the look in her eyes suggested she was already planning to go much deeper into the darkness than any of us realized.
And I wasn't sure any of us would survive what she was about to become.
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