Chapter 13
Thirteen
Theo
Violet didn’t stir again through the four hours we had left to drive, nor when I carried her to bed, and not when I stripped her naked and threw her clothes into the fireplace.
We’d burn them tomorrow. I chucked mine in there too, walking through the cabin stark naked to return to her, my bare feet slapping on the wood.
The sheets her blood coated body lay on would need burning too, but in that moment, all I needed was to get in next to her, pull her full body against mine and sleep off the exhausting day.
I woke well into the next day, the afternoon sun shining through gaps in the curtains.
Violet was still squeezed against me, sweaty and sticky, fast asleep.
I smiled, reconciling my peaceful sister in my bed with the feral, almost wild woman of last night, the one who’d killed a man with joy, like she’d been born for it.
The one I’d fucked in the mud to bring back from the brink of whatever hell was going on in her mind.
“Vi,” I muttered, trying to wake her up.
But she wasn’t ready; she mumbled something and nestled into me further.
But I needed a piss, so I climbed from the bed and wandered off, sorting myself out, washing the blood and mud from my skin under a burning hot shower, brushing my teeth and feeling a damn sight more human for it.
Violet didn’t wake up for two days. She didn’t get out of bed until I made her, unless I carried her.
I stayed with her as much as I could, but energy buzzed through me.
I cleaned the cabin, exercised with the shitty equipment I found in a hall closet, and walked room to room, restless.
Waiting. Patiently and impatiently in tandem.
She needed her time. She slept a lot when her body was trying to heal, when her mind was trying to catch up.
She ate when I made her, waddled to the toilet on occasion, but otherwise, her body switched off. It drove me crazy. The energy I had after what we’d done never slowed. I wished to get back out there. Find some other bastard who’d hurt her and make him sing in pain.
I felt bloody impotent, biding my time for Christian to call.
Waiting for someone else to help me again when all I wanted to fucking do was fix it for her myself.
But I waited, I drifted, hoping Christian would phone me with another asshole to kill or with news from Connor.
Fucking anything. He’d said he’d try to contact my uncle, figure our shit out from the outside.
I hated it.
I was ninety minutes into lifting the shitty weights I’d found in the living room, two full nights after we got back from murdering Damon, when my phone rang out at last.
“Christian,” I said, no preamble, putting him on loudspeaker so I could keep lifting. My muscles burned, but I didn’t want to stop, letting the ache of them soothe my mind.
“Theo,” he said, his tone flat, low, and right away my hackles were up. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” I asked, slamming the weights down with a clang, straightening up and focusing.
Resigned, he spoke. “You’ve gotta re-enter the world now, bud.”
“And why would I do that?” I huffed, thinking of how good we had it here - even though I was bored fucking shitless right now.
We could just sneak out every so often, kill a monster, then come back and fuck until we had no more energy.
That’s all I wanted really, all I wanted for Vi.
Wait on her, dote on her, kill with and for her. Fuck her raw.
“Rafael has your other sister now. Margaret?” he told me, resigned, shaky.
“I check the cameras every so often. I don’t know why.
But… There’s another girl in Violet’s old room now.
She looks, she looks sad. I checked online.
It’s Margaret Lewis.” Christian’s words tumbled from him in one breath. “She looks sad but not injured, Theo.”
“Fuck,” I said, shoving my hands into my scalp, dragging my fingers through my hair, scratching my skin to relieve the pressure building in me.
What the hell did we do now? Violet wouldn’t let her remain there; she’d want to go storming in, guns raised and piles of feminine rage fueling her.
“How long?” I asked, grabbing the phone and holding it closer.
This was not good. I hadn’t banked on them going for the others.
In the darkest parts of me, I’d let her die.
Let them all die. Only Violet. She was the only one I cared about.
But she would care. Margaret and Amaryllis may be my sisters, but I always considered them extensions of my mother, with their stupid fucking names and haughty attitudes. They were nothing like my Violet.
“I don’t know. I checked it a few days ago, and she wasn’t there. Like I said, she looks okay—”
“Theo?” Violet’s voice came, of course she chose this damn moment to wake up. To actually venture from the bed. “What’s going on? You’re shouting.”
“Shit,” I sighed, turning to face her. My eyes landed on her, and I tried to not look tense and irritated, but as soon as our gazes connected, I could tell she knew something was wrong.
“Morning,” I murmured, wishing this was a normal day, that I didn’t have bad news for her.
If she’d been even a few minutes later, I might not have told her at all…
“Are you okay?” she asked, tentative, playing with the hem of my shirt she wore more often than not. That with a skimpy pair of underwear was all she had on, making her look vulnerable, small. Her cheek was still creased from the pillow she’d been rotting on for days.
“Hang on,” I told her with a slight smile, then spoke into the phone, not looking away from her. “Chris, can you tell Violet what you just told me?”
Christian agreed, his tone as low as my mood, and did as I asked, telling her as emotionlessly as possible that our sister was in the same hellish position she’d once been in.
My chest ached as he spoke, as I lost any control of the situation.
There was not a fucking chance in this life that Violet wasn’t already plotting her way back into that mansion.
Blood drained from her face as I watched her take it in; her arms went slack.
“She was delivered to him by your father. I don’t know when. I check up on that house every so often, and there they are,” Christian finished, and for a moment, nothing happened. Violet’s anguished face lost more color, but she did nothing for about ten full seconds.
Then she jolted, gasped and stiffened up. “We have to go,” she said frantically, turning on her heel, taking a step forward then retracting it, before whirling back to me, her hands flapping by her side. “We have to get her, Theo,” she said, brow furrowed. “I can’t… We have to get her.”
When I didn’t dive into action, throw the phone down and charge to the door, to the car, her demeanor shifted again.
But we had to think this through. There was no way I was taking her to Rafe’s compound, no way she was getting near him ever again.
Not with my consent, anyway. So I stayed on my knees, the weights discarded, my phone still live with Christian’s call.
“Now, Theo!” Violet shouted, her voice wobbling. “Right the fuck now.” In her t-shirt and nothing else, she suddenly barreled off, running to the bedroom with fire under her ass.
She knew where the gun was, where the weapons were.
Oh no. Fuck. I scrambled up, chasing her. “Vi, stop!”
I caught up to her with ease and wrapped my arms around her waist, lifting her off the ground while she fought and squirmed, yelled at me.
“Stop!” I shouted, hating that I had to manhandle her. But I couldn’t have her running into the chaos, unprepared and angry. That anger needed to be fed, managed, not let loose without care. I’d lose her to it if we weren’t careful.
I plonked her back down onto the bed as she wriggled, watching her bounce, rage and pigheadedness impeding reason. I opened my mouth to get her to calm the fuck down so we could come up with a better plan, when Christian spoke again, his crackly voice coming from the hall.
I darted off to grab the phone. “Say again,” I asked, shooting Violet a look that begged her to stay still for just a fucking second.
“As far as I’m aware, Margaret isn’t being mistreated yet.
She’s being kept in your old room. I can see her right now, sitting on the bed, reading.
No injuries I can see. No trauma.” He paused.
“She’s sad but not like… devastated. Not like…
” he trailed off, then continued with his voice barely above a whisper. “Not like you were, Violet.”
Violet’s eyes widened at being addressed, but it didn’t soothe her like I hoped. Her brow furrowed, and she looked distant, like she’d gone into herself.
My heart didn’t slow. “That means nothing; we have to go,” Violet said, full of resolve.
Once again, she tried to get off the bed, but I stopped her, sitting on her hips to hold her still.
“Let me go!” she demanded, but I didn’t.
I’d never stopped her like this, never held her back.
But she had to fucking understand. She couldn’t wake up from a three day long nap and go into the pits of her hell, guns blazing.
“We have to think about this logically,” I urged her, panicking. I wouldn’t stop her, not really. I refused to be her captor, but I needed her to look at me, to fucking listen. If she still wanted to go right now, I’d follow her. “We can’t go running in there to save her, Vi. Not right now.”
“I don’t give a shit, we can’t let her suffer like I did!” The anger leaking from her was only like what I’d seen when she was hurting those who hurt her. She was a meek thing usually, but this fire was becoming her norm.
This time, I let her shove herself free, the fear in her eyes not something I wanted to see untethered. She started dressing, shoving her legs into jeans as I watched, that rage inducing impotence racing through me again. I needed to support her, not stop her. Join her.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, coming up behind her as she rummaged through a drawer. “You going to go in, hobbling and injured, and kill Rafe? I think you’ll take one look at him and pass out from PTS fucking D.”
She whirled on me, hurt by my bitter words.
Truth was, her body was almost healed of the superficial wounds he’d given her.
Weeks had passed now, and she’d gained strength, better fed, better rested.
She dealt with Damon like a pro. She wasn’t weak, not at all; she was stronger than anyone I knew, including myself.
But she was precious. Too important to risk.
“You think that little of me?” she asked. “You think I’m broken?”
Shit. I’d hurt her feelings. “No,” I said, hushing her and coming closer, cupping her cheeks and kissing her nose even as she bristled. Christian could probably fucking hear, but I didn’t care. “Not broken. Fragile.”
She scoffed. “Don’t say that.”
“Violet, listen, please,” I implored, trying not to tear my hair out, trying not to lose my rag completely.
“We’ll get her. Together. Safely. Properly.
I’m done waiting around for things to happen.
We. Will. Get. Her.” I kissed her nose to punctuate each word.
“But I am NOT letting you go in there unprepared. I am not letting you not think it through and get yourself tangled up in his world again. You are more important than that.”
“She’s our sister,” Violet muttered, though some of her fire had gone out. “She’s a bitch, but she’s our sister.”
I snorted at that. Margaret was the female Charlie, so enamored with the culture and the lifestyle, she was cold with it.
Stuck her nose up at everyone that wasn’t just like them.
On Violet’s wedding day, she’d vibrated with jealousy watching her older sister walk down the aisle, be more important, have all eyes Margaret revered not on her.
Really, she’d be loving this life. But she was only a child; she didn’t know. Not yet.
Both of them, Margaret and Amaryllis, were so young, so raised in our mother’s image with no outside input. They would welcome Rafe’s touch. Believe him when they hurt them and said it was necessary. Amy was with Connor, at least I thought so, so I just had to pray he was getting through to her.
Margaret would be good. Maybe she wouldn’t be treated like Vi? No. We had time. But not much.
“We can’t let her suffer, she won’t even know it’s happening,” Vi pleaded, and I realized tears had flowed from her eyes when I lifted a thumb and wiped a stray droplet from her cheek. Her breathing was slowing, her chest no longer heaving with energy as she calmed. “We can’t let her live that.”
I nodded, stroking her hair, studying her face.
“What do I have to do to stop you from running off now?” I asked.
“You have to understand why I can’t let you go.
I love you too much, Violet. And you won’t survive it, not yet.
We haven’t finished. You haven’t got your strength up. Please, give it time. They have time.”
“I can’t not go, Theo. I can’t. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Stay.”
“Make me.”
“No,” I spat. “I won’t make you. I won’t hold you captive. I’ll go after you, Vi. I’ll follow your every stupid scheme and die right with you.” I pushed her against the wall, my hand hard on her chest, her heart beating against my palm. “Let’s do it right, okay? Let’s do it right.”
More tension.
“Okay, Theo,” she muttered. “I trust you.”