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Ivy stole two years of my life. That’s enough to justify death and destruction.
Forgiveness isn’t in my wheelhouse.
I unlock the door and walk inside. I’ve had this place for five years. I stripped it to nothing and am redoing all of it. For the parts I don’t know how to fix or build, I watch and learn and help the contractors I hire. The rest I figure out on my own, from sanding to painting to putting down floors.
Blood. Sweat. No tears, but a lot of fucking time has gone into breathing life back into this place.
It’s not done yet. But the electricity and plumbing work, and the rest is coming together slowly. I have the kitchen, two bathrooms and bedroom done. The fact I’ve taken something from unlivable to this is a balm to my senses.
It keeps the monster in me quiet.
I go to the kitchen, grab a bottle of water from the fridge, and take a swallow. Then I head up the stairs to my room and kick off my shoes.
Ivy’s brother, Jaxson, wasn’t worth her turning me in for. I don’t mean he was the scum of the fucking earth, but little Pollyanna thought her brother’s light was pure and I was the one poisoning his well.
Jaxson Gardner lived for risk. Loved drugs and pushing all limits. What I sold him wasn’t what she found. But the authorities weren’t going to believe me when a sweet little fourteen-year-old made me look like a pervert selling class-A drugs.
Fuck, the world thought the sun shone on Jaxson Gardner’s ass.
Even Jax thought Jax was the shit.
Fucker warned me to stay away from his little sister. Like I’d touch someone with knobby knees and a king-sized crush.
I hadn’t been interested then, not in a child. But she isn’t a kid now. She’s all woman. And delicious.
Not that it matters to my plans. It just makes them that much easier because she’s pretty and brings her chemistry kit to the table. All that does is make my job more pleasurable.
I take another gulp of water and reach for my iPad. I didn’t lie to her about Ruby. Henderson killed her. I’d been in prison then. She came to me once while I was there, strung out, wanting money. I turned her down—no way was I letting her get her hands on my stash. She’d have robbed me blind.
She told me Jaxson was gone and that she was in trouble.
I like to tell myself I didn’t care that she fucked Jax. That we were done. The Ruby feelings are old, like the wound from her betrayal. She went for him because he was fucking loaded and charming.
Ruby and I met on the streets. She wanted out of that. Whatever, right?
But I turned her fucking down.
She never contacted me again.
“Because she was dead.” I say it again out loud.
Yeah, because she was fucking dead and I didn’t know. Then Orion told me. That tipped the balance.
Ruby was dead. Killed.
I’m being offered a shit ton to pull off the job of not justtaking Henderson out, but getting all the secrets he has stashed away—secrets of the rich, the powerful—to blackmail others and make himself untouchable.
He stepped on the wrong toes, dangerous ones.
I took the job to avenge Ruby, and get my revenge on Pollyanna herself.
People like Ivy deserve that hard, unforgiving fall from grace.
And people like Ruby…they’re always overlooked, their deaths swept under the carpet. She was no one. Nothing. To the world, her death meant nothing.
If I didn’t have money or power, I’d be seen as nothing. Because that’s where I came from. I rose above it when she couldn’t. So for her, for people like us, I’ll make her death matter. I’ll make Henderson fucking suffer from a new poison.
And Ivy is icing on that nasty cake.
