“She’s my daughter.” Her voice is suddenly more level and less frantic than a few moments ago, and while it’s absolutely fucking frightening, there’s a part of me that understands why. “I love her more than anything on this earth, and I always have, even though I’ve always known there was something about her that wasn’t quite right.”
It’s the mama bear inside her, clawing its way to the surface like a rabid animal prepared to fight anything that threatens her child. That instinct is one I know all too well. I’ve felt it before…hell, it’s one of the reasons we ended up here in Hallowed Springs.
“I get it,” I tell her, trying not to look directly down the barrel of the gun. “I really do. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of just to keep Jovie safe, but come on, listen to yourself, please. You just said Sarah was going to kill me.”
“Because she loves him!” Victoria snaps, her hand shaking a little. I fight every urge I have to duck, dive, or run—not knowing if she’ll fire on reflex. “Love makes people do crazy things, Brynn. And Sarah loves Grizz. She’s loved him since he moved into town, and that love changed her for the better. It made her happy. It gave her something to focus on instead of… instead of… those damn voices!”
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
“For years she’s been normal,” she continues, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as her attention drifts and her eyes wander. “For years, she’s been happy. Happy to work beside him, to be around him, believing what she wants to believe, creating her own story about their lives. It was perfect…”
The unsaid words hang in the air.
Until you showed up.
“Do you understand how crazy this sounds?” I question, clearly enunciating my words in hopes they might actually get through to her. “Your daughter is hearing voices… voices that at one point were telling her to kill me?—”
“And if you’d just gotten the hell out of town, it wouldn’t have mattered!” she says with a cold laugh, finally dropping her hand with the gun to her side as she takes a long, deep breath. “I tried to help you, Brynn. I tried to get you to leave before things got any worse. I pointed out how dangerous the MC is. I took you out into the wilderness and told you all those tales about the town.”
“You pushed me,” I murmured as the realization came to light. “At the Devil Pools. Jovie did see someone. You were trying to scare me.”
She starts to pace.
Back and forth, across the floor in front of the bar.
She’s lost in her thoughts, and I use that to move closer to the front doors of The Gallows. One step at a time, planning my escape.
“Sarah saw the way Grizz comforted you, how he got close to you when he saw you were hurt,” Victoria explains, swallowing hard and swiping a hand over her face. “She would have lost it completely, right there in that moment. So, I started the fire.”
My throat tightens, and I take another step back, slowly retreating toward the front doors.
If I can get out onto the street, surely she won’t come after me.
She wouldn’t dare risk someone seeing her as anything but perfection.
“I really thought that would do it,” she continues with a heavy sigh.
“You could have killed me,” I whisper through my teeth, tears burning at the back of my throat. “You could have killed Jovie!”
She barely even acknowledges my outburst, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.
“Part of me wishes it had killed you,” she answers with a shrug and finally sits back on one of the barstools. “Then things would have been over. But no, he took you home, and she spent the next few days watching you three play happy families together.”
Watching.
Sarah was watching.
During the snowstorm!
Victoria starts to laugh. “That look on your face,” she says with a chuckle. “See, you’re getting it now. You know the extent of what she will do. And you can go ahead and judge me, but you have no idea what it’s like to love someone and fear them at the same time. To want to protect them but also know the vile things that they're capable of.”
“Has she done this before?” I ask without even thinking, and Victoria’s body jerks, her eyes wide as her head whips toward me.
Her lips part, as if she’s about to object and tell me all the reasons why that’s a crazy accusation to make.
But nothing comes out.
