I really do fucking hate being in this house. Even though he was joking, Jax had the right idea. I should douse everything in gasoline and burn it to the ground. I keep discovering more of Kellan’s secrets and lies. And it hurts, so damn much, to find out that the brother I adored and worshipped, the brother I was ready to die for, had been lying to me my entire life. And deep down, I just know his journal will shatter me once again.
The hairs on my neck rise as I sense someone coming up behind me. I’m not surprised when that someone is Liam. His hand lightly brushes up the curve of my hip as we walk, his touch providing me with an anchor to keep me grounded. It’s baffling how he always seems to know when I need that. He saved me from spiraling on the day of Kellen’s funeral, and again at Declan’s cottage when he kneeled at the foot of the bed all night, then later soothed me in the shower. There is a stark dichotomy between what he does versus how he is with me, and I’m coming to realize that I desperately need that part of him. Each of these enigmatic, violent men fills a different compartment of the empty, broken pieces of me. How can this, whatever it is, work between the five of us? Keane and Jax, Liam, and Rafe—and me. They can barely be in the same room with one another without threats being hurled and guns being drawn.
Leading us down a hallway to the back of the house, I stop us in front of a false panel in the wall that hides a nondescript door. My heart pounds viciously in my chest as the compulsion to flee grows stronger the longer I stand here.
“Want to see my childhood?” I ask him, pushing the false panel and entering the code I memorized as a teenager that will reveal a metaphorical gate into the bowels of hell. The hell I lived in for fifteen years.
In answer, Liam takes my hand in his, our fingers threading like matching puzzle pieces.
As soon as the door unlocks and opens, the caustic stench of bleach immediately hits us. Death. It’s the smell of death. I force my feet to move down the stairs with Liam in tow, recessed overhead fluorescent lights flickering on as we go. When the last light illuminates and we’re standing in the middle of a cavernous, gray room, I flinch. Instruments of torture I know all too well are neatly displayed on a table along the far wall. Chains dangle from the ceiling and another set is bolted to the wall on my left. A car battery sits in the corner with jumper cable leads coiled around it.
“Fucking hell,” Liam breathes under his breath, and his hand clenches mine tighter.
“Yes, it was,” I reply and pull him to a second door, the one that leads to a “secret” room which isn’t all that secret. There’s a padlock securing it, preventing me from opening it. My forehead touches the cool metal of the door, and I raise my unencumbered hand to splay wide across it as silent tears gather and spill down my cheeks. I need to do this. I need to see it. It’s the only way I can move on and find some semblance of closure. Max is dead. He can’t hurt me anymore.
Liam lets me go and quietly returns holding a crowbar he finds propped beside the table. Instead of using it to pry the padlock off, he hands it to me. My fingers grip the rusted iron until my knuckles go white. With a small nod of his head when I glance up at him, he steps back.
Using all my might, I wield it over my head and smash it down. The impact of metal-on-metal jars my arms. It takes just one more hit before the lock cracks open and falls to the floor in two pieces.
The hurried thumping of boots getting nearer causes me to hesitate just as I’m about to push open the door.
“Tinker Bell—”
Liam scowls at Keane. “Back off.”
“Let her do this,” Jax says to Keane, one-arming his chest to stop him from getting to me.
With precise movements, I open the door, allowing light to spear inside.
As I take one tentative step into the room, my heart rate increases until it feels like I’m on the verge of cardiac arrest.
A lone beam of light shines on the small, rectangular cage in the middle of the room. I look over my shoulder at Liam, whose face is devoid of any reaction or emotion. But I can feel the rage emanating off him.
“Thisis my childhood,” I tell him, and walk fully inside.
All three men gather at the doorway but make no move to follow me.
I slowly circle the metal prison. It looks so much smaller than I remember. Every moment I spent in this dark room—inside that thing—comes back full force. Sometimes, I would be stuck in it for days with no food or water. There was no place to use the bathroom, and I would be forced to piss and defecate in the corner. My skin would mar with raw, painful lines from the metal bars, and my muscles would cramp from being hunched for long periods of time. Knowing Rafe endured the same, sends me into a violent fit of insanity.
I don’t know how long I scream as I pummel the steel bars with the crowbar. I hit the fucking thing, over and over, until my voice is hoarse, and my arms feel like they’re going to dislocate and fall right off my shoulders. But it’s not enough.
In a blind fury, I push past the wall of men watching me warily from the doorway and run up the steps two at a time. As soon as I make it to the main floor, I destroy everything in my sight with the crowbar still gripped in my hands. The first thing I slash to shreds is that stupid fucking portrait of Max. Every priceless vase, bust, and expensive piece of artwork I lay eyes on gets the same treatment.
Leaving a trail of destruction in my wake, I blur past a confounded Dante and several other men in the foyer as I run up the stairs to the second floor. No one stops me or makes a sound. I wouldn’t be able to hear them anyway from the pounding filling my ears. I know the guys will have my back and won’t let anyone stop me.
With a single purpose, I stalk down the hall of the east wing, kicking in the door to my old bedroom. I hate this room. I hate everything it represents. I hate Maximillian Rossi for what he did to me. I hate Cecelia McCarthy for allowing him to hurt me. For keeping me from my real father. I hate Kellan for lying to me. But more than any of that, I hate myself for being so weak for so long. Never again.
Rage washes over me as I rip my room apart, piece by piece. Nothing is spared, not even the window when I swing the crowbar at the glass, raining jagged shards down onto the ground below. The only thing left intact by the time I’m done is the bed. I eye it with menace. It deserves a special place in hell.
Lowered male voices have me looking over. I half-expect Kellan to be there, haunting me per usual. But it’s not him standing five feet away. It’sthem. My Grim Reaper, my angel-turned-devil, and Keane, my savage king. Men who were once my enemies. Men who will now be my absolution.
Everything around me focuses to a pinpoint until all I see is them. My limbs tremble violently from the adrenaline spiking through my veins. Sweat trickles down my face and my back from the manic exertion of pummeling everything in my path with the crowbar. But for the first time since being back in this house, I can finally breathe.
Without a second’s thought, I peel my shirt over my head. There’s only one way to fully eradicate the demons in this room, and it’s to purge them completely. Something good to replace the bad. I need a new memory to help erase all the nightmare ones. Something thatIchoose, not something that is taken from me without my permission.
And I choose them.
As soon as my shirt hits the trash-littered floor, all three men stand taller at attention. My gaze lands on each of them as I make my intentions crystal clear.
