Chapter Nine #2
I step closer, heels clicking against the concrete, each sound a reminder that I am not the child he preyed on. I am not the girl he cornered. I am not the terrified thing he shaped.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
His breath stutters. His shoulders curl inward. His eyes dart to the stairs, to the door, to the shadows, searching for an escape that doesn’t exist.
“You don’t get to own me,” I whisper.
“You don’t get to haunt me. You don’t get to breathe my name like it belongs to you.”
He shakes his head, barely a movement. “Mara… please…”
“No.” The word slices through the room like a blade. “You don’t get to say my name.”
Behind me, my father exhales, a sound full of grief and pride and rage.
Kade steps closer, not touching me, but near enough that I feel him like a storm at my back.
Jaxon stops pacing, his breath sharp, waiting.
I look down at Crane.
At the man who stole my childhood.
At the man who stole my safety.
At the man who stole years of my life.
I raise the gun, flicking the safety off and pull the trigger.
I stand, arm frozen as the bullet cuts through his skull, brains painting the ground below him, the blood from the entrance wound slowly running down his face, along the shape of his nose, into his mouth.
That’s when the weight of my actions settles in. The gun slips from my fingers and clatters against the concrete, the sound sharp enough to slice through the thick air of the basement. My breath stutters, my knees weaken, my vision blurs at the edges.
I take a shaky step back.
Back into my unmoving shadow.
Back into the space where I know I won’t fall.
My body quakes with unshed tears.
My chest tightens until I can’t breathe.
The adrenaline drains out of me all at once, leaving nothing but trembling limbs and a hollow ache that feels too big to hold.
His arms snake around my waist the second I start to come apart.
Kade.
Solid.
Unmoving.
A wall behind me, a shelter, a place to break.
The moment his hands settle on me, the sobs rip free from my throat. Violent. Raw. Uncontrolled.
The kind that tear through me like storms, I’ve held back for years, I never let myself feel.
And then the sobs shift, they twist, sharpen, turn into screams.
Screams of agony.
Screams pulled from the deepest part of me.
Screams I didn’t know I had left.
They rip out of my chest, tearing through the basement, echoing off the concrete walls, filling the space with every memory I tried to bury. My voice breaks on each one, cracking, splintering, shattering. My throat burns. My lungs ache. My body shakes so violently I can barely stay upright.
Kade’s arms lock tighter around me, holding me together while I come undone. He doesn’t flinch at the sound.
He doesn’t try to quiet me.
He doesn’t tell me to breathe.
He just holds me, steady and unmovable, letting me scream until the pain has somewhere to go.
Behind us, I hear my father’s quiet inhale, the sound of a man watching his daughter break for the first time. I hear Jaxon’s footsteps stop, the silence of a brother who doesn’t know how to fix what was stolen.
But none of it matters.
Not right now.
Not while I’m falling apart in Kade’s arms.
He tightens his hold, grounding me, anchoring me, keeping me upright when my legs threaten to give out. My screams fade back into sobs, softer now, exhausted, trembling.
And that’s when I hear him.
My father.
A sound I’ve never heard from him.
A strangled inhale.
A broken noise.
The sound of a man watching his daughter collapse under the weight of a lifetime she never should have carried.
He steps forward, slow, trembling, eyes wide and glassy.
His breath shakes.
His hands shake.
His whole body shakes.
“Petal…” The word barely leaves him. It’s not a name. It’s a plea.
My screams tear through him. I see it. I feel it. The way his face crumples. The way his shoulders sag. The way his chest caves in like he’s been hit.
He reaches out, then stops, fingers trembling in the air, unsure if touching me will break me further. His breath catches. His knees buckle.
And then he drops.
He falls to the ground with me. Not gracefully, not carefully, he collapses like a man whose world has just been ripped apart.
His hands find my arm, shaking violently. His forehead presses to my shoulder. His breath comes in broken bursts.
His tears soak into my dress.
He clings to me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
“I should have been here,” he chokes out, voice cracking open. “I should have protected you.”
His body trembles against mine, shaking with grief, with rage, with guilt so heavy it drags him down to the concrete beside me. He doesn’t try to be strong. He doesn’t try to stand.
He breaks.
He breaks with me.
And then Jaxon moves.
He’s been frozen a few feet away, eyes red, jaw trembling, watching his family collapse in front of him.
But the moment Dad hits the floor, something inside him snaps.
He steps forward, knees giving out as he drops beside us, one hand gripping my shoulder, the other clutching Dad’s arm like he’s trying to hold both of us together.
His breath comes in sharp, uneven bursts. His face twists, eyes squeezing shut as tears spill down his cheeks. He bows his head, forehead pressing to the back of my arm, shoulders shaking violently.
“Mara…” His voice breaks. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I should have been here too.”
He clings to me and to Dad, shaking so hard it rattles the floor. His grief pours out of him in ragged sobs, loud and raw, mixing with mine until I can’t tell where his pain ends and mine begins.
We collapse together.
All three of us. A pile of shaking bodies on the cold concrete floor.
Kade holds me from behind, unmoving, steady, the only solid thing in the room. My father holds me from the front, broken and grieving. Jaxon holds both of us, shaking apart as he realizes the years he missed, the nights he never saw, the sister he couldn’t protect.
I lose track of how long we’ve been huddled together on the floor, eventually I stand on shaky legs, legs that ache from the position I’ve been in for far too long, it doesn’t take Kade a second to shoot by my side again, his gaze on me the entire time.
He’s watching me, making sure I’m okay, that I wont crumble again.
I step forward, my eyes landing on Crane’s lifeless body, the blood starting to dry to his skin now, and I laugh…
Not the kind of laugh that should be considered funny.
Something unhinged.
Feral.
Raw.
Kade
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I stand beside her as she laughs, a sound that doesn’t hold a shred of humor.
It’s jagged. Hollow. Torn from a place inside her that should never have been touched. I feel the pain in it. The years of torment she endured at the hands of a man who thought she was something he could own.
The pain I inflicted on him wasn’t enough. Not even close.
He deserved years of this. Years of fear. Years of knowing he couldn’t buy his way out. Years of being broken and put back together just to be broken again. Years of understanding that the force he once controlled finally got their hands on him.
I wanted him to feel everything she felt. Every night. Every bruise. Every breath stolen from her. Every moment she thought she wouldn’t survive.
And from what I’ve seen since she put the bullet in his skull, it wasn’t enough. Not enough.
Her laugh cracks again, sharp and empty, and I feel something inside me twist. Not pity. Not softness. Something darker. Something that feels like a vow. Something that feels like I would burn the world down if it meant she never had to make that sound again.
She stands there shaking, her father and brother collapsed beside her, all three of them breaking in different ways.
I stay at her back, unmoving, the shadow she steps into when she can’t stand on her own.
Her pain hits me like a blow. Her grief settles into my bones.
Her screams echo in my skull long after her voice gives out.
I approach her slowly, like a wounded animal, fearing that she’d bolt the second I moved too fast, I raise my hands in front of me. “Come on Bunny, lets get you cleaned up.” My voice is soft, gentle, a stark contrast to my usual demeanor.
“Come on.” I urge her, holding out a hand, silently praying she takes it, she lets me help her.
Eventually she takes my hand. Her fingers are cold, trembling, barely able to hold on.
I scoop her up into my arms, not trusting her legs to keep her upright.
She feels weightless, fragile, like she might slip through my grasp if I’m not careful.
I carry her out of the basement, her face buried in my chest, her breath uneven against my skin.
I glance at the room where her mother has been locked away. She meets my eyes for a moment, something frantic and hollow flickering across her face, but I don’t stop. I don’t slow. I don’t acknowledge her. I keep striding through the corridor with Mara held tight against me.