Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bella
I wake up to find them with my toys, yet I don’t have time to feel embarrassed as Latham steers me toward the kitchen.
Looking at the clock, I realize it is morning. I must have slept the entire night.
“How are you feeling?” Latham asks, pulling my gaze away from the clock.
“Yeah, fine now. I think the day just got away from me,” I tell him honestly.
I have never been a fainter. Hyperventilating, yes, but not to the point of passing out twice in one night.
“So, you went to my place?” I ask him.
He sighs while making coffee. “If I say yes, will you be angry?”
I shrug.
“Then yes, we went to grab your box in the living room.”
“You don’t believe me?” I ask him. I should have known better. No one ever believed me.
“We do, but it doesn’t make sense,” Latham answers, handing me a mug.
Grabbing the mug, I realize how cold my hands are when I nearly drop it from the heat.
“Please, Bella, just let one of them blood sift. Then we can find out who this demon was,” Latham says, and I chew my lip.
I have more secrets than just a demon that would cause Brian issues if let out.
“I can’t. Can we discuss this after work?”
“You aren’t going to work today. I already called in for us,” Latham says, and I look over at Blaine.
Xavier currently has him pinned to the ground, and I chuckle as Blaine lifts his head and pecks his lips distracting him for a second so he can flip Xavier over. The latter starts clawing at the carpet, trying to escape Blaine, who is dry humping him.
“Get off me!” Xavier snaps at him.
“Giddy up, horsey,” Blaine says, slapping Xavier’s ass.
“Are they always like that?” I ask Latham.
“Give them twenty minutes, and they will be fucking,” Latham says before gripping my hips and lifting me onto the bench.
He steps between my legs and invades my space, pressing himself against me.
“If you won’t let us blood sift, then tell me everything,” Latham says, and I shake my head.
“Your brother can’t hurt us. We have told you this. We won’t report you, so you have no reason not to tell me,” Latham says, running his hands up my bare legs, making me look down to see one of them has removed my clothes.
I only have one of their shirts on.
“You can trust us,” Latham says, leaning in and running his nose along my jaw.
“It’s not that I can’t trust you. I just—”
“You think we will look at you differently if we know.” Latham sighs, pulling back to look at me.
I chew my lip. That is most of it but not all. I can’t risk Brian finding out.
“How about I say what I think happened?” Latham asks, making me look up at him.
My stomach is twisting in knots with worry.
“I am a good judge of character, Bella. You can tell me without telling me. Just let me try to work it out.”
His hands move higher, his thumbs brushing my hip bones on either side under the shirt.
“I think you killed your sister, and then your parents found out, so you killed them too and hid Isobella,” he whispers, and my eyes dart to him.
My lips tremble, and I bite down on them to stop them from quivering.
“Am I right?” Latham asks, and I turn away, looking at Xavier and Blaine, only to find them behind me.
“My mother unlocked my door. When the drugs wore off, she was stuffing my clothes in a bag. She wanted me to run. She said she wouldn’t let Dad sell me.”
“Then what happened?” Blaine asks before leaning down and kissing my shoulder.
“It’s like Latham said, but not in that order,” I tell them.
“You killed your parents first?” Xavier asks.
“I didn’t mean to. My mother gave me a gun to protect myself. When my father caught me, he tried to make me go back into the house, and I pulled it on him. It went off, and I accidentally shot my mother, who was in the doorway,” I whisper, looking down at my hands.
I can still picture her blood on my hands as I tried to stem the bleeding. She was shot in the stomach. My tank top was drenched in her blood, my clothes ruined, and she kept telling me to run, but I couldn't leave her.
“My father lost it and attacked me when she stopped breathing. He tried to strangle me. I escaped into the house. The back door led into the kitchen. When he slammed my head into the counter, I grabbed a knife from the chopping block and stabbed him in the neck. He died a few minutes later, and I was left with two dead bodies.”
“So, how does your sister come into it?” Blaine asks.
“She heard the gun go off when I shot my mother. We had a panic room upstairs, so she fled to it. In the meantime, I was trying to revive my mother. It was stupid. I didn’t even know CPR.
But I tried. I could live with Dad's death but not hers. But she was already dead. So I panicked. The gun was next to her body, and when my sister eventually came out of the house, I thought she was one of my father’s men.
I didn’t even look. I just shot at the door.
I shot her four times before I realized who she was.
I thought she was still in the panic room.
I heard the bolts lock in place when my father attacked me in the kitchen. ”
“Why didn’t you ring the police?” Latham asks.
“Because I was fourteen and scared, and I had just killed three people. I killed my family. I lay with Isobella for a bit when her phone started ringing. It was Brian, and when I answered, he thought I was Isobella. He caught an earlier plane and was on his way home. Isobella knew all along that Brian was organizing with my father to sell me. I was worried when he got home that he would either kill me or still go ahead with the plans to take over my father’s business. ”
“He didn’t recognize you at all? And he thinks your sister is missing?” Xavier asks, and I shake my head.
“My father was renovating the yard at the time, and my sister’s body now lies under the concrete where a gazebo was being built.
The concrete was still wet, and they were pouring more the next morning and had tarps laid out.
I placed her under the tarp. When my brother came home, he assumed I was Isobella, and I didn’t correct him.
I told him I couldn’t go through with selling Arabella, and she had run, and that I killed our parents helping her escape.
He was angry but said he loved me and helped.
But he vowed to kill Arabella if he ever found her. ”
“What did your brother do?”