Just because he lay unmoving and bloody didn’t mean he was gone.
That’s exactly what it means.
I shook my head, dislodging those awful thoughts.He’s alive.He had to be.
I couldn’t tolerate any other answer. I refused to live in a world where evil triumphed over good. That wasn’t right—life couldn’t be that cruel.
It’s always been that way.
My mind filled with images of my mother. My father’s desolation. My broken childhood. Evil had puppeteered us from day one. Why should now be any different?
He’s not dead!
I swallowed a sob.
Please don’t be dead...
I fought harder. “Let me see him. You can’t do this!”
Daniel cackled louder. “Keep begging, Weaver. Won’t do you any good.”
He’s not dead!
I locked my knees, fighting him every step. “Stop!” Looking back the way we’d come, the door to the parlour seemed so far away—a bright beacon at the end of a festering corridor. “They were your brothers, you insane psychopath. Don’t you feel anything?!”
Please let me go to him. He has to be alive...
Please let my twin stay alive...
Let all of this be a nightmare!
I couldn’t cope with Jethro murdered; I’d go clinically insane if they killed V, too.
“I feel relief. I no longer have to put up with their simpering bullshit.” He flashed his teeth. “Cut did us all a favour.”
Cut will die.
He was evil incarnate. He deserved to die in excruciatingly painful ways.
I refuse to believe they’re dead.
“I saidstop!” I wriggled harder, only succeeding in Daniel’s fingers tearing into my flesh. Goosebumps covered my skin while ice steadily froze my veins. Every second was endless torture. I couldn’t live without Jethro.
It can’t end like this!
“You won’t win, Weaver.” Daniel tugged harder. “Accept what’s fucking happened andobeyme.”
The vacantness I’d endured when Jethro and Kes collapsed hadn’t lasted long. The moment Cut had given me over to Daniel—the exactsecondhe’d delivered my life into his sick son’s control—I’d lost that blanket of numbness.
Agony I’d never experienced cracked my heart into tiny irreplaceable pieces. My every thought bled with murder and death. My wails had mixed with Jasmine’s. Vaughn’s curses and shouts drowned out by grief.
It was a never-ending loop.
He’s dead.
He’s dead.
He’s left me.
