Of all the things I expected Connor to do, holding the knife to his own neck was low down on the list. His eyes darted from Violet to me, to Amaryllis, dead and gone. His gaze snagged on her.
“This was all for her,” Connor spoke, hoarse and thick with emotion. “I hate myself for it, but it was.” He screwed up his face in disgust, looking at my dead sister again, his anguish eating him alive.
“When your father decided the church was the way to go, years ago now, and I realized what he had in store for the girls, I had to act,” he continued, tears streaming down his face, his voice breaking with torment.
I slipped away from Violet and stepped forward, palms raised, like he was a caged wild animal who might bite any second. “What did you do?” I knew it all, I thought. He decided to take down Dad’s company, destroy it, and the church, from within. He despised everything to do with it — the criminal side, the faux religion — and he wanted it ended. He wished our family to do good. That’s what he told me.
“I did some terrible fucking things to get what I wanted,” he growled. “And it didn’t fucking work. She’s dead. She’s dead.” He cried out, pressed the knife into his throat.
“No!” Violet gasped, stepping closer too.
Connor whipped his eyes to us, manic. “You two had it easy, really. You two are fucking taboo and disgusting, but it isn’t… it wasn’t…” he yelled out in frustration, almost collapsing before standing back up again.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” I growled at him, my pity shifting as I looked at my dead sister, still tied to the chair. I had to look across the body of my other dead sister to see her. Fuck. “What did you do??”
“Nothing!” Connor screamed. “Never. Never anything. But I wanted to. I pictured waiting until she was eighteen, not letting those feelings really come in until then. But I’m sick in the head, Theo. Just like you. I’m sick in the head. I want her.Wantedher. Ever since… fuck, I’m disgusting. I don’t deserve—”
“Don’t!” Violet screamed, noticing something a second before I did.
The intent in Connor’s eyes before he stabbed his own throat with her knife. The blade slid in through his skin, and Connor fell to the floor with a crumpled thud. Blood gushed as his life left him. Twenty seconds ago, I would have anguished as he bled out at my feet. Maybe even an hour ago, before the many deaths one after the other filled his room. But his confession broke me down; it was just too much. We weren’t alike; he knew that, but he still compared us. He what, wanted to fuck Amy? Wanted to take his teenage niece for himself?
Connor was a predator. I felt sick. Every time I’d helped him, everything I’d done was meaningless because it was all to get him Amy. All to aid that sickness in him… bile heated my throat as I watched him die.
On the brink of a spiral, I needed to shut it down. We didn’t have time for it. Not yet. I looked at my uncle, the one I’d idolized as a kid, the one who I thought meant goodness in this world still existed in whatever fucked up form he gave it. And I only felt sickness in my gut.
Violet walked up behind me, taking my hand and squeezing, leaning her body into mine. No one else lived in this room. We were the only ones left.
“Theo, what do we do now?” she asked, soft, her monster at bay. “I… I don’t know what we do now.” Her voice was so small. We were surrounded by the ruins of our family, and all I wanted to do was scoop her up and take her to bed. To wrap myself around her body and sleep forever, far from these thoughts, these bodies, these memories. Disappear into her and ignore everything else. Forever.
For almost two weeks we’d been kept apart, and I fucking missed her. Wanted to check her over and wipe away any new wounds Rafael had caused. We could heal each other, like we had before.Fucking hell, what a damned bloody mess.
But Rafe was still out there, stalking through this house somewhere, thinking Violet carried his baby. I turned to her then and touched her stomach, opening my mouth to ask.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was just to mess with him.”
I leaned down and kissed her lips. They tasted of blood, but it didn’t matter; it never did. I deepened the kiss for a moment before pulling away.
“Can we just leave here and never come back?” she murmured. “Disappear into the night and never be seen again?”
I hummed against her mouth. “Soon, love. Soon.”
“What now then?” she whispered.
“Now we find your husband and gut him like the pig he is.”
Thirty-Three
Violet
Methodically,welaidoutour dead.
I ripped a massive red curtain down from the enormous windows and carried it over while Theo positioned Margaret, Amaryllis, and Connor in a row as well as he could. Margaret was… hard, her dismembered parts scattered. But we did our best. Dropping the curtain, I tried to keep my emotions at bay as I watched the scene before me.
I didn’t know exactly what Connor had confessed to, but it seemed wrong to rest him beside Amy, so he was on the end, the blood on his throat darker, dried out now that his heart had stopped spurting it out. Theo seemed to understand better than me, because he kept looking at our uncle with deep anger, muttering under his breath as he prepared him, folding his arms over his chest. Respectful, but bitter.
With each step, emotions heated my eyes, threatening tears I didn’t want to shed yet. Real grief could come later. We didn’t have time to break now. Rafael was still out there somewhere, maybe with more guards, more weapons, a better understanding of the house.
Margaret rested in the middle with all of her we could gather, her torso and her head placed at the top, her hair tugged over the gap so it didn’t look as horrific.
