Wes takes a sharp breath.
“Do you think?” Noah says earnestly to Wes.
“I do.” Wes nods.
I swing my legs off Wes and sit on the edge of the couch cushion. What the fuck is this about? Can this night get any more fucked up?
“What’s going on?” A deep sense of dread spreads from my center, like poison rot seeping into the earth around a beautiful field of purple flowers.
I almost don’t want them to answer.
“I think Shane’s father killed our parents, then he raped and killed our little sister,” Noah says while looking at his brother. “Ivy. Shane’s dad raped and killed Ivy.”
“No,” I say. A whimper comes out of me involuntarily. It doesn’t even sound like me.
“And that would mean—” Wes starts.
“You killed Shane’s dad,” I finish in a whisper.
Chapter 43
More Answers
WES
This just got so much more fucking messy.
Callie’s shaking her head. Her face has lost any trace of color, and she keeps glancing back and forth between me and Noah.
I know what Noah’s thinking. My brother is clenching and unclenching his fists and trying to contain his emotions, the primary of which is likely rage. He doesn’t give a shit that we killed the father of the man tied up in his back room. He cares that the man tied up in his back room is the son of the man who murdered our family.
He also likely doesn’t care that he’s the one who suggested letting Callie decide Shane’s fate, because I know my brother, and Noah doesn’t want to let that man leave here alive.
“Shane didn’t kill them,” I say to Noah, working hard to control the rage flowing in my own veins. A consistent thing in all the police reports is that it was a single person who broke into our family’s home.
“Nope. But he sure killed a bunch of women since.” Noah’s furious. “He might as well have.”
“You are correct. But let’s think this through.” I’m not sure what there is to really think through, and I say nothing to kick offthinking through.
Shane might not have killed our family, but he’s an awful person, just like his father. He targets homeless girls and young women. Young, vulnerable, and with no one to look out for them.
He has no right to take their lives away, just like his father had no right to rape and murder Ivy.
“What are we going to do?” Callie asks, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and horror. I wish I could whisk her away from this situation so she doesn’t have to witness or be involved in what happens next.
Should she have a say? Part of me screams no. I need to protect her from any responsibility in the crimes that are currently occurring and the ones that might occur in the future.
But the other part of me says she has every right to be here.
With this new information, the rules have changed. I know it. Noah knows it. And by the look on her face, Callie knows, too. The entire game has changed now that we know who Shane’s father was.
“Shane doesn’t deserve to die for what his father did.” I look at Noah as I finally come up with something to say. “But he might for what he’s done since.”
“Might? Of course he deserves to die. How can we let someone like him go? He’s exactly the kind of scumbag we try to eliminate. He killed our father. Our mother.Ivy.” Noah’s eyes are wide and feral.
That was all true even before we found out about Shane’sconnection with our family’s murder. But we brought him here because he’s Joe Killer, not Sammy Sorentino’s son.
“Shane didn’t kill Ivy,” I correct. I’m not very convincing. “We should punish him for his own crimes.”
