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35
LILA
The earth pitched and rolled. I couldn’t catch my breath. “No,” I whispered. My mind reeled. “No, I don’t have a brother. It’s always just been my mom and me.”
“I’m your half-brother, you idiot. Did it honestly never occur to you that our dad would knock up some other whore eventually? No, of course not. You never tried to find me. You didn’t fucking care.”
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. In all fairness, I had assumed that after what Mom had done to him, future children were an impossibility. “I swear I didn’t know.”
“That’s the fucking point!” he screamed. “Everyone says they didn’t know. Teachers didn’t know the bruises and burns were from him. Neighbors didn’t know the thumps they heard was Dad beating the shit out of me. Doctors didn’t know that the stab wound in my ribs was from my own fucking father, not some neighborhood fight like he told them. No one ever listened to me. They should have known. You should have known.”
My mind whirled. Stab wound? Like mine?
He watched me touch my ribs subconsciously and nodded. “Now you’re starting to understand.” He cocked his head, studying me. “He hated you. Did you know that? He ranted about you all the time. Your mother would have stayed with him if you hadn’t been born. Then, suddenly, he wasn’t good enough.”
That was quite the retelling. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I nodded silently, hoping he would take that as encouragement to keep talking. He seemed like he had things to get off his chest, and as long as he was talking, he wasn’t shooting.
“Oh, I know he was evil, but she put up with it before you were born, didn’t she? My mother did, too. The only difference was when my mother ran, she didn’t take me with her. She left me with him.”
My heart contracted. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for him, but shit. He had been raised by the man who tried to drown me only days after I had been born. What horrors had he suffered? I touched my ribs again.
“He was always terrible, but the worst times, it was always because of you. It was a scab he couldn’t stop scratching. He followed your career. It infuriated him that you escaped. You were his property, you understand. You and your mother. And me. But I didn’t escape. He punished me for your success. Put his cigarette out on my shoulder when you were named Thirty Under Thirty to Watch, or whatever the hell that was in that stupid magazine. I was ten years old.” He snorted.
Oh, god. My hand flew to my shoulder. I felt sick.
“You have no idea what it was like, growing up in your shadow. My perfect big sister who everyone loved. So talented. So blessed. People bend over backward to help you. To protect you. No one ever did shit for me. No one protected me. I deserved what you had, but you were too greedy to share.”
“I’m so sorry.” My eyes burned with tears. I was sorry. He was stark raving mad, but he wasn’t wrong, exactly. He’d been an innocent child, and the adults in his life had failed to protect him. That wasn’t my fault, but it wasn’t his, either.
His head cocked. “You know, that’s exactly what he said. Right before I put his foot on the gas pedal and sent him down that twisting road with a bottle of whiskey in his blood.”
My mouth dropped open. “You killed him?” I whispered.
He waved the gun at me dismissively, but a proud smile turned up his lips. “No one suspected a thing. He’d been bragging for a year about the nest egg he’d managed to hide from the IRS. And I thought to myself, it was only a matter of time before someone stole it or he spent it. He owed me that money. But I wasn’t stupid. I waited until I was eighteen so I wouldn’t be a ward of the state, and the money would be mine free and clear.”
A bad feeling roiled my gut because I knew that wasn’t what had happened.
Fuck.
“Imagine my surprise when I found out Pops had a will. He left everything to you.”
Pure hatred and fury twisted his features into something inhuman. I shuddered, my breath coming in shallow, rapid pants.
“I finally understood why he hated you so much. Because I hate you, too. Every time something good happens to you, something bad happens to me. It’s the cosmic scale of injustice. And I am so fucking tired of bad things happening to me. But I know how to fix it.”
My blood turned to ice as he leveled the gun at my chest.
“An eye for an eye, sister. A burn for a burn. A stab for a stab. Your life for mine.”
36
SEB
I didn’t allow myself to dwell in fear and doubt as I raced past the lodge, heading for the trails past the parking lot. If Clay had told Miguel they were going to the falls just to send me on a wild goose chase, then Mateo, Jay, Liam, and Holly could still find a lead. Especially Jay. Tracking was his specialty, and he’d never failed a mission.
But I was sure. He was taking her to the falls. It was one of the most popular trails around here, so even new as he was, he would be familiar with the route. That was one reason. The other reason was that above the falls was a cliff where he could dump a body.
I wouldn’t let myself dwell on that, either.
