TENACITY

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

"How long have you been planning this?" Trey asked quietly as he shook with the urge to break something.

"Sometime after you got Alexandra pregnant. I'd been keeping tabs on Christine, and knowing she had someone's child when she didn't give mine the chance to live angered me. So that's when it started, but Greene was like a wall around her."

Trey asked. "What has Alexandra got to do with that?"

"Did you know her parents at all?" Wheeler asked with a bit of irritation. "She's a carbon copy of her mother. Initially, it was going to work well for me because hurting both of you would hurt the two people who gave no regard to my feelings." Andrew and Christine, Trey surmised.

"But since Christine died, I had to make do with the carbon copy of her," he continued, like there was nothing wrong with his thinking.

Trey asked. "So now, what exactly do you want with Alexandra?"

Wheeler cackled. "Now that I have her, a carbon copy, I want to see what a baby with Christine would've looked like." The sick bastard! "So, I plan on getting her with my child, then you'll have her back."

"You—!" Trey tried getting to his feet again but was yelled at.

"I told you to stay put! Stay put, unless you want to die without hearing my terms," he said, and Trey heard a clicking sound which might've been a gun being cocked.

He took a deep breath, and forced himself to say in a calm voice, "I'm listening."

"Good." Wheeler sighed, tutting. "To be fair, I'm giving you thirty minutes to get to my place. —"

"Your house is farther than thirty minutes," Trey argued, hearing a car door slam.

"If you're too slow, you'll come and find me done with her," he continued as if Trey hadn't spoken, "and she'll have to stay with me till she gets pregnant. —"

"Her body is still recovering," Trey tried reasoning.

"She will get pregnant," he repeated for emphasis, "and live with me as Christine, till I die or she does."

Trey slammed a fist to the ground, trying not to let the string of foul words escape his lips. He'd never been this angry, and he was sure if he didn't get himself under control, he could kill.

"Oh and, I never really had you under gunpoint," he added. "I was watching you via camera feed and I'm at my place now." Trey growled out loud. How many times was the man going to make a fool out of him?!!

"Again, you have thirty minutes. And it starts . . . now. All the best, Tremaine."

Before Trey could spit insults at him, he had hung up. All Mitch, Jason and Andrew could do was watch Trey scream his anger, drawing the attention of the two women walking past.

Trey rose to his feet, limping. "I'll kill him. I'll kill the son of a gun for leaving my family at the mercy of those two."

"Trey," Andrew called, holding him to a stop. He held firm, his face implacable even when Trey began snarling insults in his face. "You forgot everything I taught you. He wants you to lose your cool because then he'd be able to manipulate you any way he pleases."

Trey scowled but calmed enough to speak the words, "I'll appreciate you letting go. I have thirty minutes to get her from a place that is forty-seven minutes away. I've wasted enough so I don't have any more time to lose."

"I'll call Billy," Jason offered as they helped Trey hurry towards the car.

*