“Lies!” Judge Kearns’s face flushed purple. “Lies she told to justify what she did. My son wasn’t a monster. But her? Look at her record. Her history. The violence that follows her everywhere she goes.”
My gut twisted.
“You want to talk about history?” Ryker’s voice dropped to something dangerous. “Fine. Let’s talk about history.”
He took a step forward, the bat still in his hand.
“Faith survived a childhood that would have broken you. Broken your son. Hell, it would have broken me.” He locked eyes with Judge Kearns. “She watched violence destroy everything she loved. She could have let it destroy her too. Could have become exactly what your son was: someone who uses their pain as permission to hurt others.”
Ryker’s voice dropped and became fierce.Protective. “Instead, she became the person I admire most in this world.” My heart burst inside my rib cage as Ryker continued, “The only person I’ve ever met who took a childhood full of horror and chose to build something beautiful from it. She turned her worst nightmare into someone else’s salvation.”
Judge Kearns’s face twisted.
“Your son had every advantage,” Ryker continued. “Wealth. Education. A father in a position of power. And what did he do with it? He stalked. He threatened. He terrorized a woman who’d already survived more than he could ever comprehend.” Ryker’s jaw clenched. “He tried to destroy the one good thing she built from all that pain.”
“The person I admire most in this world.”The words wrapped around me like absolution. Like everything I’d never dared to hope someone would see in me.
Ryker took another step forward.
“So, yes, Judge. Let’s talk about history. Let’s talk about who uses their past as an excuse to hurt people and who uses it as fuel to help them. Let’s talk about which one of them is the monster here.”
My throat burned.
His voice became eerily calm. Almost rational, mirroring the judge’s earlier tone.
“Because from where I’m standing? The violence that follows Faith isn’t hers. It’s from people like your son. People like you. People who see someone who’s overcome hell itself and decide she deserves to burn anyway.”
I couldn’t begin to describe what Ryker’s words meant to me. Didn’t have time to fully digest them, but my God.
“She became the person I admire most in this world.”
If Ryker expected to get through to Kearns though, he was sorely mistaken. Kearns didn’t unclench any part of his rage. If anything, he looked even more disgusted that someone would see me as anything other than the monster he’d painted me in his mind.
“You’re both going to die for this.” Kearns struggled to his feet, the knife still clutched in his hand. “Then anyone else who helped her.”
Ryker’s hand clenched around the bat so tightly, his knuckles went white.
“Like father, like son,” Ryker whispered.
Judge Kearns smiled. It was the smile of a man with nothing left to lose.
Then the judge lunged at me. The knife flashed in the dying light, aimed at my chest, and as it did, time slowed. I saw it all: the blade descending, Ryker moving, the bat swinging.
The cracking sound was wet and final.
Just like when Blake had saved me all those years ago. The same sickening whack. The same sudden silence after.
But this time, I didn’t scream. This time, I didn’t fall apart. This time, I just breathed.
A few seconds passed.
Ryker stood over the judge’s body, gripping the blood-soaked bat. His chest heaving.
The man who’d just defended me with words had defended me with action, crossing a line he’d drawn for himself.
When he dropped the bat, it clattered against the floor, rolling to a stop near my feet. The same kind of bat that had saved me as a child. The same kind of violence that had haunted my dreams.
But I wasn’t that terrified little girl anymore.
