Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“Xaden-fucking-Devlin,” Masen snarls, and the rage in his voice is terrifying. “He destroyed everything. My scholarship. My NHL dream. My entire fucking future. And you, my own fucking flesh and blood chose him over me! You spread your legs for the man who ruined my life.”
“You ruined your own life—”
“No!” he roars. “I made one mistake! Xaden made sure I will pay for it forever! He beat me so bad the scouts said I'd never play professionally again. They didn’t even give me a fucking chance to prove them wrong!” He’s unhinged and the wild look in his eyes is terrifying.
“To make matters fucking worse, I just found out that cunt is being offered a full ride scholarship to play for one of the best fucking schools until he gets drafted!”
He advances, and I keep backing away.
Yet again I am a fucking fool for wanting so desperately to see the good in him.
I once thought Xaden was chasing the ghosts of his past…
Turns out, I am too. I need to realize that the brother I once knew and loved is no longer here.
That brother died the same night my best friend, Emery, Neave and Miles did.
“Twenty years old and my dream is dead. Because of him. Because he had to have his revenge for his dead fucking sister!”
“You killed four people,” I say, my voice shaking. “You killed Kenna. You killed—”
“And I've been paying for it ever since!” Masen shouts. “But not anymore. Tonight, I will take back some of what he stole. I take away his future the way he took away mine.”
Understanding crashes over me with sickening clarity.
“The baby,” I breathe.
“The baby,” he confirms, his smile vicious. “His child. Growing inside you. The future he doesn't even know he wants yet.”
He raises the gun, pointing it at my stomach.
“When I kill it—when I kill you—Xaden Devlin will know what it feels like to have everything ripped away. To have his dreams destroyed. To lose the one thing that could have saved him from being a monster.”
“You're insane,” I whisper.
“I'm vengeful,” he corrects. “There's a difference.”
“No,” I grit out. “You’re delusional because what you’ve failed to see, you slimy fucking snake, is that Xaden already gave into his beast. He embraced it two years ago when you murdered his sister and best friends!” I scream.
“He was supposed to die that night!” he shouts back.
“So were you! Both of you were meant to be in those cars alone. You’re fighting for a fucking empire that was never meant to be yours.
Dad wanted you out, Masen! Why can’t you see that?
He wanted you dead so he could gain power.
I was being used as leverage so he could marry me off to gain a favor—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
I don’t hang around.
I turn and run.
Through the hallway, my feet pounding on marble, terror flooding every vein.
Behind me, I hear Masen's footsteps. Fear is gripping me by the throat but I can’t allow it to overcome my being. If I give in, I’ll shut down and that is not an option.
“You can't run from this!” he shouts. “There's nowhere to go! No one's coming! And when I'm done, I'll tell Xaden exactly how you died! How you begged me to spare the baby! How you screamed his name!”
Anger floods my veins, threatening me is one thing, but to threaten the life of my unborn child is another. I will fight tooth and fucking nail if I have to, I won’t let anyone hurt my baby.
I burst into the kitchen and start yanking open drawers.
Knives.
I need a weapon.
The door slams open behind me and I bite my scream of fright.
“It's fitting, isn't it?” Masen says, his voice eerily calm now. “That you'll die in the same kitchen where Mom used to make us breakfast before Dad killed her. Where we were a family before everything went to shit.”
His words land like a sucker punch.
I want to ask questions but I don’t have time. I need to remain focused. I can deal with what really happened to my mom later when I’m safe.
I grab a chef's knife and whirl to face him.
“Stay back.” My voice quivers but I hold strong.
He laughs. “You really think you can fight me? You've never been in a real fight in your life, Tor. Not like this.”
“Then you'll be surprised, like the day you tried to threaten me at school. I’m not the helpless girl you thought you knew,” I say, even though my hands shake.
“Put the knife down,” he orders. “I'll make it quick. You won't suffer. The baby won't suffer. One shot and it's over.”
“Fuck you.”
His expression hardens. “Wrong answer.”
He raises the gun, aiming at my stomach, and I throw the knife.
It's a terrible throw, but desperation makes it count.
The blade catches him in the shoulder—not deep, but enough to make him stumble.
“You fucking bitch!” he snarls, and I grab another knife.
He lunges forward and I swipe at him, catching his arm.
Blood blooms across his sleeve.
But he's bigger, stronger, and trained.
He backhands me across the face with the gun.
Pain explodes through my skull and I slam into the counter, seeing stars.
“That's for making me do this,” he spits, grabbing me by the hair and yanking me around as a scream tears out of me. “That's for choosing him over your own family.”
Family…
It’s such a meaningless word now. We were never a family.
We were more like a faction, bound by blood and loyalty but I see now that it was one sided.
I was loyal to them but they never were to me.
I was raised like cattle, fed and groomed to perfection so I could be paraded around until the highest bidder came along and bought me.
He shoves me against the island, the gun pressed against my stomach.
“Any last words before I end his filthy fucking bloodline?” he asks.
Terror gives way to rage.
Pure, white-hot rage.
“Yeah,” I gasp. “You were always a shitty brother, it just took me longer than it should’ve to realize it.”
I drive my knee up into his groin with everything I have.
Masen doubles over with a howl of pain, and the gun clatters away.
Something inside me snaps, I feel it like a physical blow.
I don’t fight against it, what’s the point?
This is kill or be killed. Fight or flight and I’m so sick and tired of running.
Being terrified daily and wondering if this is the last day I’ll feel the sun on my skin.
I feel a darkness working its way through me like a flood, I choose to embrace and allow it to claim control.
I don't think.
Just grab the cast iron skillet from the stovetop and swing.
The skillet connects with his temple with a sickening crack.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each impact is punctuated by rage, terror and desperation.
Masen crumples to the floor, blood pouring from his head.
A battle cry tears out of me as I hit him another three times, unable to control myself or the rage pulsing through my body.
I’m not in control, I’ve surrendered to my own monster and allowed her to have her freedom.
She’s no longer lying dormant inside me.
She’s free to reign havoc and cause misery and pain against those who have wronged me and want to harm my innocent child.
The skillet is still in my hand.
I don't remember tightening my grip on it.
I don't remember deciding to keep holding it after Masen went down.
My knuckles are white around the handle and my arm is shaking, not from fear, not yet, but from the residual current of adrenaline that is still moving through my muscles, demanding that they keep going, keep swinging, keep defending.
I made myself stop.
That is the thing I will remember. Not the sound of the impact—though I will remember that too, the sickening specific crack of cast iron meeting bone that I will hear in the dark for the rest of my life—but the moment I chose to stop.
The moment I looked at what was happening and pulled myself back from the edge of it.
The darkness that had been moving through me, that cold empowered thing I had surrendered to, receded in the same second the threat did.
It left like a tide pulling back from shore and what it exposed when it went was just me.
Just Toren. Shaking. Standing over my brother's body in a kitchen that smells like gas and blood.
I lower the skillet.
My legs fold.
I don't mean to sit down on the kitchen floor. My knees just stop being reliable and the marble comes up to meet me and I stay there, because getting up requires a decision I can't make yet.
Masen is not moving.
The blood is already spreading, finding the grout lines between the tiles, following the geography of the floor the way water always finds its lowest point.
My father built this kitchen to be beautiful.
Marble flown in from somewhere European, fixtures that cost more than most people's annual income, every surface designed to communicate the particular language of wealth that Steven Kellar spoke fluently and believed in absolutely.
None of that matters now.
None of it ever did.
I look at my brother's face. I make myself do it because looking away feels like a cowardice I can't afford.
I owe him nothing, I owe him less than nothing, I know that.
I owe him the dignity of being seen by the person who ended him.
He looks younger. That is the thing that lands hardest, stupidly, irrationally; that the man who tormented me, used me and let me rot in Walter House and aimed a gun at my unborn child looks, in this specific moment of absolute stillness, like the brother who taught me how to ride a bike.
Like the boy who sat beside me at our mother's funeral and held my hand so hard his knuckles went white.
I killed him.