Page 27

Bang.
“I killed him,” I muttered to myself, staring at my hands. Then my eyes trailed to my arms, chest, and stomach, seeing the blood that had once covered them from head to toe. “Ipulled the trigger.Ifucking killed him!”
“Cammie, I’m coming in!” Dusty yelled through the door and burst in, looking beyond worried. He was now wearing jeans, his chest bare yet dry. His eyes softened when he saw me, and he gently pulled me into his arms.
“I killed him.” It was more of a question than a statement. I needed a confirmation that I had murdered a person, not that I felt one bit of regret. I just needed to know if I had crossed that one line and took a life with my own hands.
“This was not your fault. None of this is your fault.” He squeezed me a little tighter. “Rush deserved to die.”
Rush.
That was the man in the mask.
Suddenly, I could see his face. His green eyes that looked like Dusty’s. The flashes raced through my consciousness, planting a deep ball of misery in my gut.
My head whipped up. “He was your real father. Beth. She was behind it all. She set him on me because she wanted you to stay President. They did this together.” I told him everything I recalled about that night. I’d never seen Dusty cry. His eyes shone with tears, yet mine were cement dry. I was reciting the horrors that I’d gone through, and while a man as rough as Dusty was being deeply affected by my words, I felt nothing.
“It’s okay, baby. I know. I’m so sorry.I’m so sorry!” He framed my head with his hands. “You’re safe now, here with me. I’d never let anything hurt you again.”
Safe?
That word should be removed from our dictionary. The President of the Night Skulls and hisol’lady. I snorted in my head.
He pressed me back to his chest. “Baby, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“There’s more to that horrible day than I recall, isn’t it?” I asked, his heartbeat thumping in my ear.
“It’s…”
He didn’t need to say it. It was all coming back to me, slicing at my heart, darkening my soul. I could see it in my head. The pool of blood. The hole in her head. “It wasn’t really a dream.”
“No, baby. The son of a bitch put a bullet in Ash’s head.”
I nodded. I only fucking nodded.
It was as if he was talking about someone I never cared about. Never considered as my little sister. Why the hell wasn’t I crying? Why wasn’t I pushing him off me and screaming in his face?
There was this big fucking numb darkness crawling, spreading to every corner of my heart, wrapping around my soul so tightly, turning every shred of emotion inside me into…nothing.
“Cammie? Did you hear me, baby?”
He, too, was wondering why I wasn’t reacting as I should have been. Why I was dead inside.
“Yes.” I lifted my head off his chest. “Where is Beth?”
“Beth will get what she deserves. Don’t worry about her or anything else. All we need to do now is get you better.”
“Is she here? We need to ask her what Rush meant when he said you wouldn’t kill him.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said there was a lot I didn’t know, and you couldn’t kill him because you wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He made sure of it.” I stared at him. “Beth must have plotted something with him, a leverage of sorts that would stop you from killing him. We need to question her and make her talk.”
“I will, baby. I’ll take care of it.”
“Bring her now. Where is she?”
Here came that stare again. “She ran away. But don’t worry. I’ll find her, and you will have your revenge.”