I lift my gaze at the same time I lift the phone to my ear.
I stare at my reflection—the all black, the lines under my eyes, my hair braided back—and I play the message as my heart thunders too fast inside my chest.
“Karia.”My name breaks in my father’s mouth. There is a shaky breath.“I know where you are. Von and Isa told me. And he’s meant to tell you that we are not coming.”Another tremor in his voice.“I thought you would prefer it, but every piece of me hates staying away.”There’s a pause and I want to throw the phone into the mirror but I force myself to keep listening.
“I am sorry I didn’t listen to you. I was wrong. We all were. And I can’t promise I can fix it, you know how work is, and how it’s always been.”
Work. I curl my fingers tighter around the phone and try not to scream.
“But you deserve to know I would do so many things differently if I could go back. And not just to the hotel, but to the beginning. When you were born. You were—are—so precious to us. Please don’t forget, when Writhe seems louder than everything else, you are what’s really our pride. I’m sorry, baby.”
Another pause. My heart is heavy.
And then he begins to cry. It is the softest sound, barely audible. Shaky and quiet, but I hear it.
“I love you,”he says through tears, the words strangled in his throat.
Then the message ends.
I inhale deep and stand there for so long, phone pressed to my ear, I lose track of the time entirely. I once wanted my parents to choose me first, before the cult. But now it doesn’t matter. I have someone who always will.
After I’m done in the bathroom, I walk out with dry eyes, and hand the phone over to Von.
We don’t speak.
Chapter 37
Sullen
The house is night dark, and they are not as stupid as I wish they were. At three in the morning, we hear their vehicles, but their headlights are off.
By sound, I count two cars only, which means we outnumber them.
I glance to Karia, by my side in the darkened back room. It has a couch, several chairs, and little else. Every eye in the space is on us, but it’s her I want to see.
“Don’t hesitate.” I glance at the handgun in her fist, taken from the pile of weapons that are in this house. It looks wrong, even in the dark. Her pretty green nails—she painted them with her drugstore supplies—and slender fingers cradling something so fatal. But she’s survived me. She can survive this. “Don’t overthink. They deserve worse than a bullet.”
Von snorts. “Of course she won’t. Will you?” The Bentzen version of comfort, cocky and demanding. Von has Isa in his lap, to our left. Maude and Alivia are in the library, Fleet and Elliot standing in the doorway to this room, but ready to do Maude’s bidding as we planned, at any moment, when dragging Sanford into their hideout will be most opportune.
Cosmo is on a couch across the room, and he laughs quietly.
It annoys me.
I tighten my fingers on my girl’s thigh as she stares back at me. But the moment she starts to answer me, the windowpane at her back explodes.
My heart races as I’m on my feet, my ears ringing, glass crunching beneath my boots as I jerk Karia up and behind me.
“Let’s fuckinggo.”Fleet’s words, and Elliot’s placid laughter causes a grin to form on Karia’s face, despite the glass in her hair. There is determination in her eyes as she stares at me, our gazes locked, her fingers curled around the grip of the gun.
Then Isa says, “They won’t come in from right there,” her voice loud above the ringing in all of our ears.
She knows battle more than any of us, aside frommaybeVon, but her words are too late.
With the lights off, the only glow from an exterior one outside, we can see nothing, and in a heartbeat, even that goes out. The silence runs through the house. Someone has cut the power.
And someone is already inside.
There is a shadow at my side the moment before Karia is ruthlessly ripped away from me. I sense more bodies fill the room at the same time I hear grunts and a growl, but a gun goes off right in front of me as I blink in the new darkness and lunge closer to my girl, or where I think she is.
