I should have just fucking believed her from the beginning!
“Now you’ve seen the ugly truth, Kill.” The pain etched in Lexi’s face, the anguish wrapping every word was a sledgehammer crashing into my perfect facade. “Your stepfather is a monster. He always has been.”
The day I believed him over her was the day my heart died and I lost my soul—because Red had always been my heart and soul. Without her, the black hole festering in my depths grew, feeding on any remaining goodness in my life.
No amount of money could ever replace what I’d lost.
Would she ever forgive me?
How could she?
“What are you going to do?” Lexi asked, leaning against the wall, her arms wrapped around her chest like a protective shield.
WhatcouldI do?
Fire sped through my veins, igniting the anger that had been brewing since that motherfucker’s hand had gripped her thigh. Suffocating waves of it slammed into me, not only for what he did, but for my own part in her pain.
I swiped my arm over Bass’s desk, tossing everything except the computer to the floor. Glass shattered and pens rolled across the hardwoods.
But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
Every crash was another piece of me I wanted gone.
My boots hit the ground as I shot out of the chair, a crimson cloud infiltrating my mind and blocking any rational thought. Rage, all-consuming and unyielding, hemorrhaged through my bloodstream and coated every cell in my body until it was all I could see, taste, hear, and smell. It even fucking invaded my dead heart, reviving it like black magic.
I grabbed expensive trinkets off the bookshelves and chucked them across the room. Lexi’s gasp barely registered as I ripped a painting off the wall and sent my foot through the canvas.
I wasn’t just destroying Bass’s office. I was trying to tear myself apart.
If I bled enough, maybe it would even the scales.
“Killian, stop!”
I couldn’t. The beast within me had been completely unchained—no, not unchained, it had fucking destroyed its chain, and it craved destruction for all the evil Stan brought, all the evil Iallowedhim to bring. All the overwhelming guilt. If I hadn’t been a selfish asshole and had trusted my best friend, Lexi wouldn’t have suffered alone all these years.
Once every piece of artwork and photograph had been yanked from the wall before me, my fists slammed into the hard surface over and over again. The pain didn’t make a dent in the blistering inferno trapping me.
My skin split across my already bruised knuckles, and blood splattered the gray drywall, but I continued the assault on my stepbrother’s office and on myself.
I deserved a spot in hell right next to Stan and Bass.
As I thought his name, a new thought, a question, bloomed to life in my mind: Why the fuck did Bass have this on his computer in the first place? This wasn’t just evidence. It was leverage. Did he get off on his father assaulting Lexi? Did he stroke his dick as she cried?
The thought of him watching her while pleasuring himself only drove me farther over the cliff of sanity. Hell, I’d left sanity in the rearview mirror the moment my Red popped up on that screen in Stan’s car.
I snatched books from the shelves, kicking and demolishing everything in my path as broken, anguished screams eruptedfrom my mouth. If Bass or Stan walked in right now, I’d kill them with my bare hands.
No hesitation.
I longed to do it, to feel their bones, especially Stan’s, fracture under my savage touch.
“Killian.” A presence appeared beside me, vanilla spiraling up my nose and warmth spilling over my side.
I didn’t even realize I’d stopped moving, that I’d just been standing in the same spot, seething.
As I turned, my nostrils flaring like a wild beast and heart hammering, a blue-eyed angel came into view, tears streaking her cheeks. The urge to run my fingers through her soft, auburn waves simmered within me.
But my hands were torn apart and bloody. I didn’t want to dirty her.
