Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
I acted without thought. I wrapped my hand around his neck and squeezed.
He started to make gargling sounds, rasping, wheezing.
I kept squeezing, an ironclad grip.
He began flailing around, as much as he could, bouncing the chair.
When he began to shake like he was having a seizure, I let go.
He gasped for breath, coughing frantically. He couldn’t stop coughing, and all the while, I stood immobile. I just watched the handprint I’d left on his neck, the way the color seemed to take forever to return to normal. When the whiteness was gone, I flicked my eyes back to his.
Finally.
A small satisfaction bloomed in my chest. The first flicker of life post Kai’s devastation.
My father seemed cautious now, watching me warily.
I smiled. “I get it. I get why you love being cruel and a monster.” I turned away from his eyes. “I see why you wanted to kill me.”
The power. It was dark and addictive.
Then my stomach rolled over on itself, threatening to spew. I felt sick. That part of me was from him. I did have his darkness in me, and as I stood there, I felt it pooling, moving inside of me, growing.
My father. My mother. Kai. Having a front-row seat to this world. It had probably even started when I was seeing it through the lens of a Hider operative. I was changed. No, that wasn’t right. I was broken. There was a part of me beyond repair now. I could never have a normal life again. Kai had cemented what had been happening to me since Brooke found me.
This darkness wasn’t going anywhere. It slithered in me, like a snake, and I knew then that I’d never be able to get it out of me. It was there because of my father, Kai had brought the flame to life, and then it had burst into a bonfire at his betrayal.
And now here I was, standing in front of the man I used to fantasize about hurting, and it all clicked into place.
This was the moment all of it had been leading to, this moment when I decided my fate. Because I was the only one who could, no one else. Me. My decision.
He was frothing at the bit again, wanting to scare me.
I sighed. “You can’t intimidate me. You should give up. It’s time, don’t you think?”
His eyes widened. Surprise fluttered there before it settled into reluctant resignation.
“You thought my mother cheated on you, because that’s what you did to her. It’s how you make sense of the world. You cheat so you think everyone cheats. That’s how you think, but you’re wrong. She never cheated. It wasn’t in her. Not once.”
He scoffed in disbelief.
“She was too broken by you to even try.”
Not like Kai’s mother. I winced at the thought of her. Brooke’s mom. She cheated on their father. She must have done it to rebel. She had to. Why would the wife of a murderer cheat on that man? It couldn’t have been a careless mistake, a decision made out of passion. Not if it’d produced two sons—or three with Tanner. Maybe she fell in love after all, but to start? Perhaps it was loneliness? Misery?
She couldn’t physically leave him, so she did the next thing she could. She sexually escaped him, emotionally gave herself to others.
“Just kill me. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” A hard glint returned to my father’s gaze. A small spark of impatience. “I know I’m a dead man. So just do it. Why are you drawing this out?”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Pulling it out, I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew Kai sent it. If not him directly, at his order.
Sender: Hit play on the projector behind him.
Projector?
I looked, and there it was, sitting on a table. I moved around my father and did as Kai instructed, unsure if I wanted to see what he had lined up.
As soon as the screen lit up, silent tears began rolling down my cheeks.
It was my mother. She was at a beach, and as the video kept rolling, a dog ran into focus. My mother reached back and clasped hands with the man who was now her husband, who joined her on screen. They were talking, laughing, smiling. Then, my chest held suspended as my two half-siblings darted around them. They were kicking up sand in their bathing suits.
They looked nine and ten in the video, so this was a few years old.
Still. My heart ached. This wasn’t real-time or recent, but it didn’t matter.
I knew what Kai was trying to tell me, though if he was done with me, as he’d said he was, I didn’t know why he’d bothered. Even if he was an asshole, he was giving me the chance to say the one thing I’d always wanted to say to this man. I would’ve forgotten otherwise, and later I would’ve wished I had done it.