Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Laurel
I’m in our room, huddled under the covers. I stare out into the night. I didn’t bother to turn on any lights, just let the darkness fall, let the shadows stretch across the floor until they swallowed me whole.
A storm has kicked up outside. It’s raining, like the whole world is in mourning.
I can hear it through the window, the walls, and it matches my mood perfectly.
The wind howls along the eaves, shrieking like something wounded.
Lightning flickers, sharp and violent, a jagged flash that burns my vision and chases the shadows away before they come rushing back.
I pull my pillow over my head to block out the noise and close my eyes, but all I see is her.
Staci.
Sam and I had rushed up the stairs to Staci’s bedroom after a distraught Abbie told us that’s where she was. We’d pushed past sisters crying on the staircase, past the ones who stood pale and stricken in the hallway. Turns out we were the last to find out the truth.
Staci was dead.
Hanging from the ceiling fan with a brightly colored scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, blue with purple butterflies. The contrast struck me, that something so pretty was used to do something so ugly.
Staci’s feet dangled inches off the floor, pale and pointed like maybe she’d had second thoughts, like she’d reached out, tried to find a toehold.
Like she’d almost escaped. Her face was grotesque, swollen with her lips tinged purple.
One arm hung loose. The other was curled, fingers clenched into a final fist. The room had been still.
Horrifically quiet. Except for the soft, steady creak of the fan blades, which strained under her weight.
A sound I’ll never forget.
I remember covering my mouth to trap the scream that wanted to escape.
Abbie had come into the room with us and had immediately sunk to the floor. She sobbed silently on her knees with her eyes closed, like she couldn’t bear to see. She clasped her hands around her necklace, the cross of The Order. Her lips moved, whispering silent prayers.
Samantha had just stared up at the corpse.
For a second, barely that, her face had flickered with emotion, grief, guilt, maybe even fury.
She buried it fast. Shut it down like flipping a switch as her expression went blank, totally unreadable.
As always, she was the strong one, the leader, proving to the rest of the sisters she had it handled.
That even this, the worst kind of crisis, was under control.
I had stared at Staci, slowly turning with the fan, for so long it made me dizzy.
I’d stumbled and placed my hand against the wall to steady myself.
That’s when I noticed the details. The glass of water half-full on her nightstand.
Her bed neatly made like, any minute now, she would pull back the covers and slide between sheets cool and soft.
Whatever happened, it didn’t seem planned. It felt sudden. An act of desperation.
I wondered how long it took her to die. How long she dangled there, alone and kicking.
How many sisters in the house walked right past her door and never knocked.
A rage had risen in me, hot and bitter. At the unfairness of it. The senselessness. I wanted to hurl that feeling at someone, spit it out before it poisoned me, ate me alive from the inside. I almost turned to Sam and asked if this was part of the price The Order pays.
But I didn’t.
Sam was hurting, even if she didn’t show it.
Another sister had run into the room. “He’s coming,” she’d said breathlessly. “Carrson’s on his way.” She said it like he was a savior, come to make everything right again.
I couldn’t face him. Not after what he did to Richardson. I also couldn’t stomach the thought of watching him cut Staci down. I left. I gave Sam’s shoulder a squeeze on my way out. She met my eyes and nodded, understanding without a word why I had to go.
Now, the door clicks open. I squeeze my eyes shut. His scent hits me first, the forest at twilight. The bed dips as he sits down beside me. There’s a long silence as I wait for him to justify what he did to Richardson, for him to explain away what happened to Staci.
That’s not what he does.
“Your father’s in upstate New York, a place called Shady Grove Treatment Center,” Carrson says, his tone flat, cold, distracted, like his mind is elsewhere.
“What?” I sit up slowly, my heart pounding, and look at him.
His hair is damp, darkened from the rain like he walked straight through the storm to get here.
Water beads on his collar, drips down his jaw, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
His gaze is locked on his hands, fists clenching and unclenching in his lap.
His shoulders are rigid, his jaw tight, as if he’s physically holding himself together.
He keeps going like he didn’t hear me. “At Twentieth Bank, over on Fourth Street, there’s half a million dollars under your name. Just show them your ID.”
Alarms are going off in my mind. “Why are you telling me this?” He sounds like a man giving instructions for his own funeral, and I don’t like it. Not one bit.
Outside, thunder cracks the sky.
Finally, his eyes flick to mine, then dart away, but not before I see the rage simmering there, the kind of quiet fury that destroys everything in its path, including the person who wields it.
“I’m going to kill Jackson, which means his father will have me executed.” He lets out a single low laugh that has my stomach twisting with dread.
“It’s a violation of one of the many rules of The Order.” He deepens his voice into a mocking cadence and recites, “A brother cannot harm another brother without just and proven cause.” Another laugh, this one even more chilling.
“What a load of bullshit.” A breath whooshes out of him as his head drops forward. He laces his fingers together behind his neck and squeezes his eyes closed. “Jackson’s father will string me up,” he mutters, “and mine will hand him the rope.”
A ragged breath escapes him. The rest comes pouring out, thick with guilt.
“Which is exactly what I deserve. You should’ve seen the fingerprints on her. The bruises.” His voice cracks. “It’s my fault she suffered like that. My fault she’s dead. I thought I had more time. I—”
“Stop, Carrson, just…you have to stop,” I interrupt, my heart in my throat.
“Why?” He meets my gaze, and the anguish in his eyes is deep enough to drown in.
“Because you’re right. You’ll die too.” What I don’t say is how the thought of that guts me. How even now, heartbroken, shaken by everything that’s happened, I still can’t bear the idea of this world without him in it.
Carrson terrifies me. Confuses me. But I don’t want him gone.
Not even close.
His head lifts, eyes locking on mine like he heard the words I didn’t speak. “Then tell me what to do,” he rasps. “Because all I want right now is to rage. I want to tear it all down.”
I reach for his hand, flattening it with mine, feeling the tension vibrating under his skin. “Then we do it the right way. We make him pay.” A plan is forming in my mind, puzzle pieces clicking together.
Carrson pulls away and looks at me suspiciously. “Why would you help me? You hate me for what I did to Richardson.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Staci.
” I exhale, slow and conflicted. “Also, I do hate what you did to Richardson, but that’s not the same as hating you.
Part of me gets it, how if you let one brother take advantage of the system and cheat, it snowballs into two, and three, and soon there’s no,” I wince at the word, “order anymore.”
He’s silent for a second, then he frowns. “I knew you were in the dining hall. The entire time, I sensed you.”
My head snaps up. “Why didn’t you say something? You could have told me to go away. Closed the door.”
“Because I’m not hiding from you,” he says simply. “I won’t trick you. Promise you something I’m not.”
His hand traces the curve of my cheek, his calloused fingers dropping to caress my jaw. I feel the tremor in him, held in check by sheer will. He’s still on the edge of something dangerous.
I should pull away from his touch. I’m angry at him.
Don’t trust him. Apparently my body didn’t get the memo.
It relaxes at the first brush of his fingertips.
I lean into him, an instinctive response, easy as breathing.
His fingers trail lower. Down my throat until they rest at the hollow of my collarbone, where he must feel my pulse stuttering.
“I don’t regret what I did to Richardson,” he says, the words harsh, even though his touch is devastatingly gentle. “Not even a little bit. It was necessary.”
I pull back slowly, carefully, because I need space after that statement. His hand lingers in midair, fingers twitching like he wants to reach for me again, but, after a second, it drops to his side.
“I know that’s how you feel,” I tell him. “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or like it.” My voice catches. “I don’t like it.”
Silence stretches between us, taut and pulsing. In that quiet, the rain sounds louder, sharp splatters against the windowpane, a steady tap-tap-tapping as if the ghosts of this ancient house want to be let in.
“But…,” I glance away, my breath shallow, “I’m starting to realize I don’t fully understand the rules here. The way this place works.”
I let my gaze drop to the fresh cut on his forearm, the one he carved into his own skin when he was punishing Richardson. The wound is angry, red, and raw. Does it mean anything, I wonder, that he turned the knife on himself rather than inflict it on his brother?
My next words are quieter. “Maybe I need to learn that, to figure it out, before I pass judgment on you or anyone else.”