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She screams so loud, Dad shows up at the doorway, but he doesn’t make a move. No, he just watches his son and his future son-in-law take the life of a woman and smiles.
I smile, too, viciously, as I slam my palm against her mouth, just like she did when Bran begged her to stop.
And then I peer down on her as her muffled screams turn into moans.
I peer down on her until she finally goes silent and her lifeless eyes stare at nothing.
I don’t believe in justice. I believe in fucking vengeance. And this woman signed her death warrant the moment she touched my Bran.
My dad and his people will make this look like a suicide, and the note she wrote is her reason. I could’ve tortured her to death or made her disappear, but no, this isn’t about her. It’s about Bran.
I hope he feels closure if he sees that she regretted her actions and was tortured by them for years to the point that she took her own pathetic life.
One demon down. A dozen more to go.
38
BRANDON
The first feeling that surges through me when I blink my eyes open is crushing relief.
Not the burning in my neck, not the sandy feeling at the back of my throat.
As I stare at the ceiling and the four holes from which light shines down on me and hear the machines beeping, my eyes burn from the sense of relief that floods me.
When I lay in my blood and watched Nikolai cry out my name and beg me not to leave him, I regretted everything. I wanted to stay, to think that I could have a future, after all.
But it was too late.
The ink submerged me and I couldn’t take being seen like that by him. I wouldn’t have been able to live it down.
So I did the one thing that could end it all.
But itdidn’tend.
The second feeling comes rushing in with Mum’s voice. “Bran…?”
Guilt. That’s what’s etched on her usually radiant face, her eyes bloodshot, her lips puffy.
The guilt she projects in waves slams against my own until I can’t breathe.
“Son?” Dad is on my other side. “You came back, oh, thank fuck.”
He reaches above my head to push something.
Failure. That’s what Dad looks like. He feels a sense of failure. Like I did for almost a decade.
“Bran?” The broken sound belongs to Glyn. She’s crying, rivulets of tears streaming down her rosy cheeks.
Her feelings of grief mix with the myriad of emotions rippling through me until I choke.
What have I done?
“Honey, can you hear us?” Mum asks.
“Yeah…” My voice is groggy and choked as I try to sit up.
The three of them help me carefully, as if I’ll break if they touch me the wrong way. And I hate that I’ve put them through this. I hate that I’m the reason people important to me are struggling.
