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My gut wrenches. I press a hand against my stomach, willing bile to stay down when it threatens to come up my throat.
“I get Kyle, but why the redhead? He feels like a random choice.”
“He was. We had two doses of the paralytic, and I recognized the redhead from the basement, so he had to suffice.” He grips the back of the couch, then leans down close enough that I can feel his breath on the shell of my ear. “As luck would have it, your buddy Aiden wasn’t home.”
A chill shoots down my spine.
Oh my god. He’s crazy.
“The paralytic?”
“I wanted them to be conscious of what was happening, but helpless to stop it. Just like you would have been that night if they’d had their way.”
My heart twists when he says it like that.
It’s immensely fucked up to imagine how horrifying their last moments must have been, trapped in a house on fire, betrayed by their bodies and unable to escape like everyone else.
But…
Maybe something is broken in my brain because while the gesture was horrifying, the way he frames it sounds almost… well-meaning. Protective.
He wanted to give them a taste of the medicine they tried to give me, and while that’s definitely not right morally speaking… there is some kind of poetic justice buried beneath the depravity.
It just also drives home the worst thought I had today.
That those guys are dead because of me.
Logically, I know it was their actions that started all of this, not mine, but it still feels… bad.
I swallow, trying to shrug off the guilt, but it keeps washing over me with the insistence of a waterfall.
“This is a lot, Killian.”
“I did it for you,” he states.
“But I didn’t ask you to,” I say, the passion breaking through. “I would never have asked you to do something like this.”
“I don’t need to be asked,” he states, staring down at me. “They fucked with you. They tried to fuck with us. They knew who they were messing with and the risk they were taking.”
My eyes bulge out and I rise up off the couch, turning to face him. “Maybe they did, but what about the other guys who lived in that house? Did you even think of them? You can’t control a fire, Killian. More people could have been killed—innocent people!”
His jaw ticks, but I don’t see the merest sliver of guilt in his eyes over the possibility that there could have been collateral damage. “I told you that I would take care of it, and I did. Were there risks involved? Of course. I was willing to live with them. If those other guys weren’t associating with scumbags, then they wouldn’t have been in my path. They were. Luckily for them, they all survived. It’s a happy ending, Brynn. End of fucking story.”
I shake my head, unable to believe his callousness. “Is this why you weren’t worried when Aiden said Kyle had a new plan to come after me? You knew he wouldn’t have a chance to enact it?”
He shrugs, and I take it as a yes.
He’s defensive. I think he hardly wants to talk to me right now, but in another sense, I think he does. I think he wants to talk to me more than anything.
“What if someone saw you?” I ask. “What if there’s evidence? You could get in trouble for this.”
“I’m not going to get in any trouble. It’s over. It’s done. You don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
A chill passes over me, and I think Toast is detecting a disturbance because she comes over to brush against my leg and look up at me as if to ask if everything is okay.
Yeah, everything’s great. Your new daddy is an unrepentant murderer, that’s all.
I bend down to scoop her up. I kiss her on the head and stroke her back, and as I do, I try to figure out where the hell to go from here.
