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A lie.
That’s what I’ve chased for ten fucking years.
A lie.
That’s what broke my heart and tore away my childhood strip by bloody strip until all that was left was what I am now—cold, savage, hellbent on going after what I want, what I thought was right.
A lie.
That’s what plagued me with nightmares.
A goddamn lie.
Air burns my lungs as I struggle to catch my breath. Everything I thought I knew is a lie—lies on top of lies, that’s all my life is made up of. An awful, broken sound echoes off the industrial windows and I realize it came from me.
“I thought,” I choke out.
They were innocent. My family was murdered.
“I know,” she murmurs with this sympathetic look that wrecks me.
“Fuck. It was just a dirty business deal gone wrong, so Stalenko took them out. I’ve fought to make this right for them for so fucking long.”
I dedicated every ounce of energy to this. Fueled my thirst for vengeance with hatred for my best friend over a broken promise that didn’t even matter. Because my parents were in on it all.
I knew corruption ran deep through the streets of Ridgeview, but I never thought it poisoned my parents.
“Fox, come on. You have to breathe.”
She hovers close at the edge of the trail I’m burning into the concrete, unafraid of the violent fury coming off me in waves. I can’t even look at her. I came back here ready to destroy everything in her life. All because I believed for so long that her family caused the destruction of mine—believed I was making things right when they’ve never been more wrong.
I should’ve pushed harder to let it all go when I was ready, because then we wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t know the truth about my parents. Wouldn’t know what really happened to them.
“Fuck!”
The yell bursts from me and the dam breaks. As I pace, the anger and hurt spill over, my heart beating faster and my vision tunneling. I kick hard at the couch and the heavy furniture scoots several inches. Maisy backs up a step and another rage-filled shout from me ech
oes off the walls.
Grabbing the next nearest thing blindly—the twisted scrap metal I worked on that she brought upstairs, calling it a conversation piece with a proud smirk—I hurl it across the room. It crashes somewhere in the kitchenette, the sound of breaking glass and carnage still not enough to make any of this better.
It’s all I’m good for—destruction.
“All the goddamn shit I’ve done to get here! So many things, all of it bullshit. I dragged Colt into this. Dragged you in.” The words slip free with each ragged gasp. The fragile control over myself is a whisper away from snapping entirely, leaving me dangling close to becoming unhinged. I feel myself dangerously near the edge as my thoughts take on a manic energy. “Destroy lives, that’s what I came to do and I fucking did it. I fucked with yours like it was a game, plotted to take down your parents, made sure your brother’s future crumbled. What was the goddamn point?!”
Maisy freezes. The patient concern for me disappears as her spine straightens.
“Wait, hold up, what?” Her voice rises. “What did you just say?”
Fresh betrayal shines in her hazel eyes.
It rips me from the precipice of losing control, reality crashing back over me as some of the overwhelming anger clears from my head. Panting and disoriented, I replay what I said and curse silently.
Holden was the first friend I ever made, before I became friends with Maisy, too. He taught me how to ride a bike when I was jealous Maisy learned before both of us. We’d race home from the bus stop, run into our houses, and meet back up to trade Pokémon, or play any of the latest games. He knew all my secret fears, and I knew his. We grew up side by side, partners in troublemaking.
We were best friends. Brothers before I had Colton and the Crows.
The rushing tide of memories of my childhood with the Landry siblings makes my chest constrict. Each one is more bittersweet than the last. I lost every good thing I had. Lost them. And what do I do? I come back and make enemies out of them. Because I wasn’t satisfied with Jacqueline and Richard. I wanted to punish them all for the years I suffered.
