Chapter 33 #2
She jerked and trembled, cowering as Theo’s roar rebounded against the tiles of the bathroom. My fucking heart was hammering, pounding against the confines of my chest.
“You…don’t get out of this,” Theo’s rage simmered dark and savage. “You don’t get to stutter and fucking shake. Answer his goddamn question. Answer it or I swear to God I’ll unleash a hell on you that you won’t be prepared for.”
He lifted his gaze to Gabe.
“Family or fucking not.”
She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut like any fucking moment she was about to wake up from this goddamn nightmare. One where she was forcing for once to tell the truth.
Gabe finally spoke.
“I’d start talking,” he murmured, tone dangerously calm, like the one fucking brother she’d always had to protect her was slipping away.
She turned toward him like she might find some kind of salvation, but Gabe wasn’t going to save her.
None of us were.
I felt it before I saw it—the way her body locked up, the way her fingers twitched, like she was fighting herself.
She wanted to keep lying.
She wanted to bury the truth all over again.
What the fuck kind of battle raged in her goddamn head? I needed to understand. To pry whatever sick motherfucker was in there out of her mind and erase his fucking touch from her memory.
“Tell him,” Gabe snarled. “Tell all of us.”
Angelica’s breath was shaky, her shoulders trembling.
I watched it happen. The exact moment she broke.
She stopped fighting.
She sagged forward, as if the truth was a weight she couldn’t hold anymore.
And when she finally spoke—when the words finally ripped from her throat—it felt like they tore the air from my lungs.
“I saw them die,” she whispered. “Is that what you want to hear? I. Saw. Our. Parents. Die.”
The world stopped.
Her voice was thin, barely a sound, but it might as well have been a gunshot.
Theo stopped pacing.
Jude straightened.
And Gabe…
Gabe exhaled slowly, his jaw tightening just enough to show that it had hit him too.
I stared at her.
Stared through her.
I pushed from the edge of the bathtub, my body swaying. Pain ripped through my side, but it was nothing compared to the fire tearing through my chest.
I must’ve misheard her.
“You fucking what?”
The words were slow and deliberate, like my brain was trying to process them before they could destroy me.
Our sister wrapped her arms around herself. A pathetic attempt at protection. There was no protecting herself now.
“I was there that night,” she said, voice barely more than a breath. “I saw them as they begged. As they fought. As they—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “As they were murdered.”
The sound of Theo’s fist slamming into the wall was deafening. He let out a sharp, jagged breath, his forehead dropping against his forearm. His entire body shook with something uncontainable.
Jude was motionless, his hands open at his sides, like he didn’t know whether to lash out or collapse.
Gabe…
Gabe was staring at her like she was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
No one spoke.
No one fucking breathed.
I felt it creeping in—the cold realisation that nothing we thought we knew was real.
That she had been there all along.
That while we were searching for answers, losing our goddamn minds, spilling blood for revenge—she’d already known it all.
“You let us waste all this fucking time hunting ghosts,” Jude said, voice hoarse. “You let us?—”
His voice broke off.
He ran a hand down his face, then turned away so we couldn’t see whatever expression had just flashed across it.
The things we’d done in the wake of their death. The fucking Hell we’d unleashed on anyone we even suspected had a hand in their death was fucking sickening.
“I didn’t tell you because I?—”
“Shut up.”
My voice was quieter than I expected.
But it cut through her words like a knife.
Theo moved.
His entire body went rigid, his chest rising and falling with uneven, jagged breaths before he suddenly spun toward the counter. His hand swiped across it in one brutal motion, sending everything on top of it crashing to the floor.
Bottles of antiseptic shattered. The first aid kit burst open, gauze and needles scattering across the tiles.
The violence of it shook the air.
Angelica flinched, before she slowly pushed up from the floor.
Theo’s hands braced against the counter, his shoulders heaving. His reflection in the cracked mirror was a fucking ghost, his face unreadable, except for the way his lips curled like he was fighting the urge to scream.
“You saw.” His voice was low, wrecked, shaking with something I had never heard from him before. Something close to grief. “You fucking saw and said nothing.”
Angelica didn’t answer.
Theo turned his head just enough to look at her.
It wasn’t the look of a man who wanted to hurt her.
It was worse.
It was the look of a man who had already lost too much, and now she had taken the last thing he had left—his fucking trust.
Jude’s voice cut through the thick silence, sharper than a blade. “You saw our mother beg?”
Her brow pinched. Lips parted.
“You saw my father fight?”
Her throat bobbed.
I closed the space between us, as the image of that raged, my breath a razor against her skin. “And you did nothing?”
She shuddered.
I could feel it. The way her entire body reacted to those words.
Because she knew it too.
She’d destroyed us.
Gabe left.
No words.
No threats.
Just turned and walked out, his footsteps echoing down the hallway like the fucking death toll of what she’d done.
The silence he left behind was hallow and cruel.
Theo was still at the counter, his fingers breasted against the edge, his breathing harsh, like he was trying to swallow back something too fucking big to contain.
Jude just stood there.
Still. Staring.
And me?
I was right in front of her.
Her lips parted like she wanted to say something, but nothing came out.
Because what the fuck could she say?
How the fuck could she fix this?
“Say it,” I demanded and took a step forward, making her retreat.
She swallowed hard.
“Say it.” I didn’t blink as I stepped again, forcing her against the wall. Didn’t let her breathe without feeling it.
“I…” she choked. “I didn’t want you to?—”
I slammed my hand against the wall beside her head and pushed against her, feeling her warmth, smelling her goddamn scent. It crawled under my skin and took a savage bite out of my heart.
“You didn’t want?” My voice was pure venom. “You didn’t want us to know? You didn’t want to tell us? You didn’t want to stop it?”
Her chest pressed against mine as it rose and fell.
She was fraying at the edges, unravelling against me like a fucking thread I could rip apart with my bare hands.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Jude grunted. “You let us fucking suffer?”
Theo let out a dark, bitter laugh.
“I thought?—"
Her voice broke.
She didn’t finish.
She didn’t have to.
“You thought?” Theo’s voice was quieter than before, but the way it curled around the words made my skin crawl. “You fucking thought?”
I sensed the movement as he stepped toward us, coming up against her side. It was the two of us and her all over again.
“Tell me, Angel, what exactly you thought?”
She took a breath, but it was shaky, uneven, destroyed. “I…I thought I was protecting you.”
The words landed soft.
Too soft for how loud the answer inside me had grown.
I let out a hiss of air.
Theo unleashed a sound somewhere between a curse and a growl. Jude shook his head. I eased backwards, taking a step as I watched her.
None of us believed her.
Because it wasn’t fucking true.
She didn’t do this for us.
She did it for herself.
“Get out ,” Theo muttered, his voice strained.
Angelica stiffened as Jude turned and followed Gabe out of the bathroom, disappearing down the hall.
Theo lingered for a second longer, like he was tearing himself apart on the inside, before he exhaled sharply, and stormed after them.
And just like that?—
We were alone.
She didn’t move.
Just stood there, watching me like she wasn’t sure what the fuck I was going to do next.
I wasn’t sure either.
My chest wasn’t my own anymore.
My body wasn’t my own anymore.
It belonged to the rage seeping through my gut. The devastating poisoning my fucking lungs.
It belonged to her.
I lifted my hand.
She didn’t flinch.
She should have.
My fingers brushed her jaw.
Her breath hitched.
She was so close.
So fucking close.
I traced my thumb over the soft skin of her cheek, feeling the way she trembled beneath my touch.
I hated her.
Hated her so much I could taste it.
But I wanted to ruin her more.
I leaned in, just enough for my breath to ghost over her lips.
Her eyes fluttered closed, like she thought I might actually kiss her.
Like she thought I might still want her.
Maybe I did.
And that was the worst part.
“You will be the end of us,” I murmured.
Her whole body shuddered.
She knew it, too.
She knew there was no coming back from this.
She had destroyed us.
And still, we couldn’t stop.