Chapter 31 Holland
HOLLAND
Her eyelids fluttered.
For a moment, I wondered if she’d drifted off—or died. I hoped for option two.
But then her mouth twitched, curling into something sharp, evil.
“Oh, darling …” The rasp scraped out, but it was as sharp as a blade. “You have no idea what I did.”
I tried to speak, a strangled sound catching in my chest. “You—” My voice broke. I slid my hand into my purse and dug my fingers into the gun, pressing hard, desperate to ground myself. “You broke him. Your own son.”
Her brows lifted slightly. “Kip was already cracked. We simply shaped the pieces.”
“Liar.” My breath tore out of me, ragged and raw. “You didn’t just ruin me. You ruined him too.”
Her brows lifted slightly.
“You twisted everything. You carved up his soul and called it love, so he would never know what you did.”
“And look what he became,” she murmured, gaze distant now, as if reliving those times. “My goddamn masterpiece.”
The machine beside her hissed. The slow, mechanical drag of air keeping her alive, when she should’ve suffocated under the weight of her sins years ago.
“He was a wild dog,” she whispered. “Snarling. Biting. Bloody. We made him … useful.”
A tremble rippled through me, rage crawling up my spine like a second skin. “You turned him into a killer.”
She smiled—sickly sweet, gentle. “He was always meant to serve.”
I took a shaky step forward, the gun in my purse heavy against my hip. I couldn’t hear past the static in my mind as her words spun so fast in my brain, I struggled with what to say next. I understood that you couldn’t reason with sanity, but I needed to try anyway.
“You sold me.”
She bared her teeth, more animal than human, and I saw a flash of yellowed teeth. “You were a pretty little thing. So easy to give away.”
My vision blurred.
Suddenly, I was young again, knees scraped, hands shaking, hiding in the closet, praying to a God I didn’t believe in. I was strapped to a table. I was dragging a piece of glass across a man’s throat.
And now? I wasn’t small anymore.
The cold metal of my weapon pressed against my palm.
Her gaze dropped to my handbag, and her expression flickered—something unspoken bleeding through. “You’ll never outrun it, Holland. You carry it in your blood.”
“I’m not you,” I snapped.
Her chin jutted up with a knowing. “No, hon. You’re worse.”
For a second, I swayed, her words slapping me in the face, and then I smiled. How could I be worse than the woman in front of me?
“Then I’ll use it to my advantage.” The gun came up, and I held it steady.
An unsteady exhale escaped her, more sigh than sound, as if the idea of me putting a bullet in her head amused her.
The weapon felt heavier than it should have. Heavier than it had in my hands during all the nights I practiced. Heavier than when I’d killed Dom. Heavier than the rage simmering in my chest.
I leveled it at her. My muscles jittered for a fleeting moment and then stilled again.
“Say it,” I whispered.
Kip’s mother’s lips curved, thin and papery. “Say what, hon?”
“Tell me why you did it.” I gritted my teeth.
The oxygen machine hissed between us. The room felt too small, too closed up, and the air was thick with lavender and bleach. My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
Her pale eyes glittered. “You think you’re here for justice?”
I took a step closer, my weapon steady but my lungs locked, and I struggled to breathe.
“I’m here for the truth about why you hurt your son. Why you sold me and my sister.”
She sighed, almost tender—like a mother recalling a bedtime story. “Oh, little girl—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Her hands twitched on the blanket, the same hands that had once held a child down and carved his skin and drugged him.
“We shaped Kip.” Her voice softened, reverent. “We tamed him. Without us, he would’ve been nothing but teeth and blood. We made him a weapon.”
My throat burned. “You turned him into a monster.”
Her gaze sharpened, cutting through me. “And you love him anyway.”
For a second, the room spun. The gun shook with the weight, and my grip tightened on the weapon. “You’re going to die alone in this bed.”
Her lips curled like shriveled, rotten fruit. “We all die alone.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, and my arms dropped a fraction. “Tell me how it happened,” I hissed.
Her expression hardened, sharp as ice chipping away at bone. “Tell you what, hon?”
My jaw clenched so tight it ached. “Say what you did to me. To my sister.”
A flicker of amusement ghosted over her features. “Oh, Samantha.”
The sound of my name in her mouth was a blade dragged over old scars.
“You were just … so easy.”
My chest caved inward. I fought the wave, that crashing undertow of memories, the dark, loneliness, the locked doors, but it surged up anyway.
“Two redheaded angels, dropped right in our laps,” she said, almost fondly. “So pretty. So perfect. So easy to pass along.”
A cold sweat broke out down my spine. “You sold us.”
Her pale lips twitched. “We saved you.”
“Saved me?!” My voice cracked sharp, ripping through the silence. “You handed us over to monsters.”
She whispered it like a prayer, “And you survived.”
The walls closed in, and my vision blurred at the edges.
“I survived because Ally died!” I choked, tears I didn’t want, didn’t mean, burning hot down my cheeks. “I survived because I slit Dom’s throat and ran until my feet bled.”
Her attention didn’t waver. “A girl like you was never meant for softness.”
My palm pressed against the weight of my weapon. A reminder and a promise that I was safe. Yet, the hate inside of me nearly doubled me over, the scream caught behind my teeth so violent it burned. I wanted to pull the trigger. God, I wanted to. But I couldn’t. Not yet. Not like this.
Her smile slipped slightly, something old and brittle showing underneath.
“You were Samantha back then,” she added, with a cold, idle cruelty, like she was recalling the name of a doll she’d discarded.
“Your sister never let go of her real name, but you? You slipped into the new one like it belonged to you.”
Then, the final blow, soft as a whisper on the air:
“You don’t know who you are, do you?”