Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Theo
It happened so fast I didn’t have a chance to react to one thing before the other was happening.
First, I watched my sister, the love of my life, give herself over to the man I swore to protect her from, and my heart tried to collapse in.
Then I saw her attack him, knee first, straight between his legs.
She wasn’t done. This wasn’t over. I fucking loved that woman.
“You fucking bitch!” Rafael hollered, his voice strained in pain, spittle flying, but she didn’t even hesitate to pounce on him. The gun pointing at my face fell from his hand, clattering on the floor. Thank fuck it didn’t go off, but I ducked on instinct, anyway.
I wanted to jump in and help, but… this was her fight.
Her knife raised high, her legs around his waist, she tried to drive the blade into her husband’s neck.
She was fucking incredible, a force of nature, screaming at him, straining with focus and energy.
Every time I thought she was giving up, she pushed herself back.
Amazing. I watched her in awe, hands clenched into fists to fight the urge to dive into the fray.
They wrestled and fought, and for a second she had the upper hand. But he was so much stronger than her; she was weeks into torture, running on vengeance and fumes. The instant he began to win, I was there, squeezing myself between them to force the monster away.
But I needn’t have bothered.
Even though he’d almost beaten her, she was scrappy, and as they were yanked apart, she left her blade in his shoulder. It wasn’t a death strike; I could see that with just a glimpse, but he yelled out anyway, staggering back, looking in horror.
Violet laughed, wicked and manic, trying to reach for the handle again, to yank it or twist it I didn’t know.
“What have you done?” Rafael growled, his eyes wide. He looked around, his eyes darting to his men, scattered and dead or dying. We had him. One pathetic flesh wound and he floundered.
“Die, you prick,” Violet snarled at him as I pulled her to me, my arm wrapping around her shoulders.
He was a pathetic man. Under all his blather and showmanship, he was just pathetic. Because when we stepped further away from him, uncornering the knobhead, he stumbled toward the door, bending to scoop up his gun as he did, waving it without aim as his eyes flittered about.
We watched him back his way to the door, stiff and scared. Scared. Rafael was scared. Injured and afraid.
It was a calm moment, strangely. We all just stared at each other, trying to catch our breaths, letting the events unfold and settle over our bones. Neither myself nor Violet tried to make another move on him. Rafael dropped his gun wielding arm.
My heart pounded, pulse fuzzy in my ears.
Rafe looked between us, at his dying men on the floor, and left.
He left.
He walked out of the fucking room, leaving the destruction in his wake, turning on his heel and letting the door swing shut behind him.
I gaped at the open doorway for a second before dashing over and barricading it, wedging a chair under the handle so he couldn’t return.
We needed a fucking second before he barreled in with more men, more weapons.
I gave myself a moment, a few deep breaths, before turning back to the room.
I crashed over to Violet, my eyes only for her, and scooped her up, holding her tight as her legs wrapped around me.
At fucking last, we were touching unbidden, together.
We embraced like the world didn’t exist, like it was only us.
I ran my hands up and down her spine; she sighed into my neck, breathing me in and laying gentle kisses wherever she could reach.
Wetness landed on my skin as she cried against me.
Weeks without her. Weeks wondering if she was alive, if it was better she was dead because she might be under Rafael’s thumb. Did she have another huge chunk of trauma to unpack? Did I?
“Fuck, I love you,” I groaned into her neck, breathing her in. She did not smell fresh, but that mattered not a tiny bit. It was her. Mine. Whole enough. I squeezed, and she sighed, laying a kiss on my cheek.
Nothing was better than this, having her in my arms. My entire body relaxed; my soul fucking settled. This was what I needed. Always. Together we were unstoppable.
There wasn’t a thing in this world I wouldn’t do to spend another second with her. One more kiss. Touch. I love you. She was my Violet.
“Theo…” she sighed, stroking my cheek. Our noses brushed as we drowned in each other.
“This is probably the foulest thing I’ve ever seen,” our mother’s voice echoed out. I’d almost fucking forgotten she was here.
Violet and I looked at each other, still nose to nose, our eyes ablaze with the exact same thoughts. What was another one? It passed between us wordless and cold, determined.
Slowly, Violet slid off me, her legs settling to the floor a little jellylike.
She twisted the knife in her palm and gave me a nod before turning to Mother.
So fucking beautiful when she was all murderous.
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again; they made a big fucking mistake in not training her in this life. She was a natural.
“Any other day and I’d probably have a speech for you about how terrible a mother you are,” she said, taking long steps around the table to where our mother had sat her ass back down, Margaret’s head discarded somewhere else. “But you just mean so absolutely little to me I don’t care to.”
Mother watched her eldest daughter arrive at her side, didn’t turn her head when Violet stepped behind her and took a deep breath.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” I asked, arousal at Violet’s vicious nature making my voice thicken.
Mother sniffed, and Violet yanked the woman’s head back and sliced through her neck, not even waiting until she gurgled and slumped forward before walking away, striding around the table to reach Connor.
There, she untied his other arm and stood back, looking at our uncle as he failed to move.
Since Amy had… he hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken.
It had been easy to forget he was even there.
Through every fight and shout, through gunshots and knife wounds, Connor remained frozen, his void eyes on Amy’s.
There was so much damn destruction here.
Margaret’s mangled corpse still lay on the table.
Amaryllis was slumped back with a bullet hole through her head.
Mother took her final gushing heartbeats through the slice in her neck.
That fucker of a guard Gabe was hopefully dead in the corner, a puddle of dark blood around his body.
“Theo, what are we going to do?” Violet asked me, coming over and taking my hand. “Everyone…”
“Not all bad,” I said, squeezing her palm. “Not all bad. We’ll work it out. I don’t know—”
Without a word or a sound, Connor stood up and walked over, and together, the three of us surveyed it all. He was silent, but his breathing was so ragged and uneven, his shoulders slumped.
We had another one of those beats, another heavy moment when it felt like the world was stuck mid-tick, like the cogs had paused. Just a second. A flash. A turn.
“What do you think we should do no—” Violet started to ask, but yelped when Connor lunged for her and snatched her knife, shoving her back into me in the process. She stumbled as I caught her, my hands on her shoulders.
“What are you…?” I yelled in surprise, ready to defend or protect or whatever the fuck else. I may have been exhausted, but there was always more in the tank.
Of all the things I expected Connor to do, holding the knife to his own neck was low down on the list. His eyes darted from Violet to me, to Amaryllis, dead and gone. His gaze snagged on her.
“This was all for her,” Connor spoke, hoarse and thick with emotion. “I hate myself for it, but it was.” He screwed up his face in disgust, looking at my dead sister again, his anguish eating him alive.
“When your father decided the church was the way to go, years ago now, and I realized what he had in store for the girls, I had to act,” he continued, tears streaming down his face, his voice breaking with torment.
I slipped away from Violet and stepped forward, palms raised, like he was a caged wild animal who might bite any second.
“What did you do?” I knew it all, I thought.
He decided to take down Dad’s company, destroy it, and the church, from within.
He despised everything to do with it — the criminal side, the faux religion — and he wanted it ended.
He wished our family to do good. That’s what he told me.
“I did some terrible fucking things to get what I wanted,” he growled. “And it didn’t fucking work. She’s dead. She’s dead.” He cried out, pressed the knife into his throat.
“No!” Violet gasped, stepping closer too.
Connor whipped his eyes to us, manic. “You two had it easy, really. You two are fucking taboo and disgusting, but it isn’t… it wasn’t…” he yelled out in frustration, almost collapsing before standing back up again.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” I growled at him, my pity shifting as I looked at my dead sister, still tied to the chair. I had to look across the body of my other dead sister to see her. Fuck. “What did you do??”
“Nothing!” Connor screamed. “Never. Never anything. But I wanted to. I pictured waiting until she was eighteen, not letting those feelings really come in until then. But I’m sick in the head, Theo.
Just like you. I’m sick in the head. I want her.
Wanted her. Ever since… fuck, I’m disgusting. I don’t deserve—”
“Don’t!” Violet screamed, noticing something a second before I did.
The intent in Connor’s eyes before he stabbed his own throat with her knife.
The blade slid in through his skin, and Connor fell to the floor with a crumpled thud.
Blood gushed as his life left him. Twenty seconds ago, I would have anguished as he bled out at my feet.
Maybe even an hour ago, before the many deaths one after the other filled his room.
But his confession broke me down; it was just too much.
We weren’t alike; he knew that, but he still compared us.
He what, wanted to fuck Amy? Wanted to take his teenage niece for himself?
Connor was a predator. I felt sick. Every time I’d helped him, everything I’d done was meaningless because it was all to get him Amy. All to aid that sickness in him… bile heated my throat as I watched him die.
On the brink of a spiral, I needed to shut it down. We didn’t have time for it. Not yet. I looked at my uncle, the one I’d idolized as a kid, the one who I thought meant goodness in this world still existed in whatever fucked up form he gave it. And I only felt sickness in my gut.
Violet walked up behind me, taking my hand and squeezing, leaning her body into mine. No one else lived in this room. We were the only ones left.
“Theo, what do we do now?” she asked, soft, her monster at bay.
“I… I don’t know what we do now.” Her voice was so small.
We were surrounded by the ruins of our family, and all I wanted to do was scoop her up and take her to bed.
To wrap myself around her body and sleep forever, far from these thoughts, these bodies, these memories.
Disappear into her and ignore everything else. Forever.
For almost two weeks we’d been kept apart, and I fucking missed her. Wanted to check her over and wipe away any new wounds Rafael had caused. We could heal each other, like we had before. Fucking hell, what a damned bloody mess.
But Rafe was still out there, stalking through this house somewhere, thinking Violet carried his baby. I turned to her then and touched her stomach, opening my mouth to ask.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was just to mess with him.”
I leaned down and kissed her lips. They tasted of blood, but it didn’t matter; it never did. I deepened the kiss for a moment before pulling away.
“Can we just leave here and never come back?” she murmured. “Disappear into the night and never be seen again?”
I hummed against her mouth. “Soon, love. Soon.”
“What now then?” she whispered.
“Now we find your husband and gut him like the pig he is.”