I cackle manically. “I never stole from him. Or Fiz. Just you.”
If this pisses him off further, he doesn’t show it. “I’m going to enjoy this punishment.”
I snap. I’m so over this fucking man thinking he can rule everything. I kick my leg out as viciously as I can, connecting to his shin. He grunts, swearing, and I try to scramble away but he grabs my ankle and drags me back.
He wrestles me underneath him and flips me onto my back, pinning me down.
“Please,” I cry, “just let me go. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want you, I don’t want this house. Keep the fucking money, just let me go!”
“What did I just say? You don’t get what you want after behaving the way you have, Elodie. And I’m never letting you go. I told you, I can do this forever.”
“Why?” I wail. “Why do you even want to? What kind of life is this?”
He watches me struggle beneath him, although he’s blurry and I can’t see his expression through my tears. “Because… it’s expected.”
“Oh, bullshit,” I spit, “you’re just too proud to let me go now. Too petty to admit I’m too much for you to deal with. That’s why. You don’t want this. You pretend you’re getting a kick out of it but you’re as tired as I am!”
“Then why don’t you just do what you’re told? That’s all you’d have to do to have a good life with me.”
“Any life with you would be a horrible life!” I scream and kick my legs under him, going nowhere, but I carry on, needing to expel all this rage and sadness and pain before it swallows me whole.
A familiar click brings me to a halt. I open my eyes and, once a-fucking-gain, I’m staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just end this, Elodie. Is that what you really want?”
I wait for the fear, the survival mode, the desperate need to get the gun out of my face. But none of it comes. I guess that’s my answer.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He stares down at me, studying me, waiting for me to crack. We’ll be here all night, because I’m already cracked. I’m done.
We stay like this for an absurd amount of time. Long enough for my tears to stop coming, long enough for my breath to even out as the acceptance seeps into my bones. I have nothing left.
“Please, Caden,” I whisper, “do it.”
He blinks several times, then lowers the gun. “No.” He climbs off me and steps away. “You’ve got nothing now, Elodie. You have no one, no money. All you have is us. You leave us and you’ll find a worser fate out there in the big scary world. A day out there on your own and you’d discover we’re not so bad.”
Then Caden leaves the room.
He’s wrong. Nothing is worse than this. And I don’t need the money. I can make it without a fucking penny, anyway. I’ve lived my whole life providing for myself. I can do it again. Resolve sets heavy in my chest. I’m fucking done with this place and these monsters.
CHAPTER 47
CADEN
Irun straight to Alfie’s room, heart racing and thundering in my ears. I burst right through the door, and he jumps up from his bed.
“What is it?” he says, alert and wary in an instant. “What’s wrong?”
I pace his room, running my hands through my hair, pulling it, willing composure back into my body. If I suck on the inside of my snakebite any harder, I’m going to yank it straight through my fucking lip.
“Cade, brother, talk to me.”
The sickness in my stomach swells to my throat and I force myself over to Alfie’s bed, flopping down. “I almost killed her.”
“What?!Where is she, what did you do?”
I know it’s bad. I don’t need Alfie’s frantic terror in his questions to tell me that.
