Damaged: The Dillon Sisters by Layla Frost (young adult books to read TXT) 📗

It wasn’t with my finger.

Chapter Thirty-One

Accepted

Briar

For the truth

THIS ISN’T HAPPENING.

This isn’t happening.

There has to be some other explanation.

I was good at denial. And I was a fucking pro at repression. But even I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing with my own eyes.

Blood.

A shit-ton of blood.

So much, either Alexander had nicked an artery while shaving or it wasn’t his.

And since he was unshaven as he worked in his home office rather than bleeding out on the bathroom floor, it was pretty obvious which one it was.

The blood on the shirt I’d pulled from the bag buried in his closet wasn’t his.

It was what I got for snooping. I’d wanted to switch into one of his shirts before going to tease him.

A fun surprise.

When I’d seen the bag buried behind stuff, I hadn’t been able to resist peaking in.

A not-so-fun surprise.

It was like the cliché moment when a woman finds out her man is cheating. Except Alexander and I were twisted and depraved and far from normal, so instead of lipstick on his collar, it was blood.

My stomach churned violently until my throat burned with acid. My fingers were trembling so badly, I barely held on to the shirt that smelled like him. My legs were jelly, wobbly like a newborn deer as I forced them to move.

Forced myself to walk to the office.

Alexander looked up from his computer, a smile already forming. When he saw what I held, it froze in limbo on his handsome face before disappearing. “I can explain.”

I was worried he’d say that.

Because an explanation wasn’t a denial. It wasn’t confusion.

It was an admittance of guilt, no matter the justification or intentions.

“You killed someone.” I wanted there to be scorn or condemnation in my tone, but my words came out soft.

Wounded.

“Yes,” he admitted, standing.

I took a step back.

He rounded his desk.

I took another step back.

A big one.

“Fuck, flower. Let me explain.”

“I don’t want to hear your bullshit! I trusted you. You made me trust you. You made me love you. And this is what you do?”

“Just listen. This was the last one, I swear.”

I was trying so damn hard to be strong, but once my tears started, I couldn’t stop them. I’d cried more in the previous weeks than I had in years. It’d been for sadness. For fear. For mourning. For emotional progress.

But right then it was for heartache.

And betrayal.

“I wasn’t worthy?” I whispered through the jagged shards of glass in my throat.

Like he’d looked into Medusa’s eyes, Alexander’s body froze. Big and solid and filled with barely constrained power. After a long moment, his brow furrowed. “What?”

“You didn’t think I was worthy of mercy, but you helped,” I shook the bloody shirt, “whoever this was?”

I didn’t want to die anymore. It wasn’t about that.

It was jealousy. Anger. The pain came from not being good enough. That he’d found me lacking.

I was always lacking.

“That’s not what this is,” Alexander claimed.

Lied?

I wasn’t sure.

I couldn’t read him the way he read me.

“Did you touch them like you touched me? Did you push your hand against their pussy while you sliced?”

“Briar—” he tried.

“Did you make them come? Make them forget their pain?” My stomach retched as jealousy slid through me worse than any poison or toxin that had rotted my insides.

He was going to kill me after all.

Painfully.

Horribly.

Without mercy.

But not with a knife.

He was going to kill me by breaking—no, by obliterating—my heart.

How messed up am I that it isn’t him snuffing out a life that bothers me, but the idea of him touching someone else?

“Briar, listen to—”

“Is this your kink? Do you get off on…” a sob wracked my body, “making them feel normal and happy for the first time in their miserable lives?”

Alexander stalked toward me so quickly, I didn’t have the chance to move that time. He wrapped his large hands around my upper arms to make sure I couldn’t. “He was a piece of shit.”

It was my turn to freeze. “Wait, what?”

“He put a hit on his pregnant wife.”

“Then why would you help him?”

“I didn’t help him. I killed him. He deserved a painful death for the fucked-up shit he did. Same as the others.”

Others.

The others?

“But you’re an angel of mercy.” I was working to piece together the puzzle, but it was hard when I had no clue what the picture could possibly be.

“No. I’m not.”

“But you kill people?”

“People who deserve it. Rapists. Murderers. Pedophiles. The scum of the earth who make that same earth a better place by not walking it anymore.”

That helped the picture come together, but the implication of it made me sick.

“I’m none of those things, I swear,” I rushed out, reaching up to clutch his forearms. I was a mess, but never anything like that.

“I know, flower. I told you from the beginning, you were different. With you, it was about mercy and peace. A reward, not a punishment.”

“Then why didn’t you follow through?”

“Because I’m selfish. Obsessed. I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I want to spend the rest of my life showing you how good it is to be alive.”

It may not have taken the rest of his life, but he’d already succeeded in that.

I tried to wrap my brain around what he was saying. “So you kill bad people? How? Why?”

His words came out in an earnest rush, like his life depended on me believing him. “When the bastard who killed my parents got off with court ordered rehab, I hacked into his computer to delete shit, post screenshots, whatever I could find to make his life hell. But then I saw he was talking with his friends about partying and joking about driving since buying his way out of trouble was cheaper than an Uber. He’d killed my parents and was fucking joking about it.”

Every time I’d told him I was sorry about his parents’ death, he’d said it was a long time ago. The stark rage and pain that coated his features proved that didn’t matter. Time hadn’t lessened his pain.

“I went