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“Good girl! Go rescue yourself. Don’t let me be the reason you get hurt!”

A million emotions bubble up.

The lid covering them explodes into outer space, and I am forced to come to terms with the fact that every facet of my life has been affected by the man hanging upside down beside me.

He is the reason I never met my dad. The car crash had in fact not been an accident as my mom had said.

He is the reason my mother died that night.

But he is also the reason I met Reuben. Kale. Even Orzo.

Would my mom have become an addict if my dad wasn’t killed?

He started me down a path that led me to those men.

But did that make up for the pain he caused? No.

My brain chemistry alters the longer that I hang up here.

I have to come to terms with years of accidents…

Of deaths…

Because of me.

They deserved it.

Sherry’s voice echoes around my mind, and for the first time in my life, I believe her. There isn’t guilt that surrounds it.

“You all were bad men,” I say aloud. “Everyone I was sent to kill. Everyone who has died.”

Bark! Bark!

My eyes snap up, and I find Beanie has returned, except now she has company.

In the form of three men.

My three men.

Orzo is the first to see me, he curses, running up to the vat.

“The panel,” I tell him. “Just be careful.”

He moves over to it, examining the buttons before pressing one.

It moves me up an inch and Romaine down one.

To save me, it would kill him.

“Son! Surely you won’t save this bitch over your own father!” He lets out a strangled noise beside me. “I will welcome you back.”

Orzo turns back to the pale faced Kale.

“Kale, you can get me down a different way, you don’t have to do this,” I tell him. “You don’t need to make the choice.”

My eyes flick to movement behind my men. I don’t expect Sherry to walk between the beams and into sight.

But there she is in the flesh. Aunt Sherry.