Page 72 of Behind the Shadows

Me:

I need to see you. Now.

I dragged a hand down my face, fingers digging into the back of my neck like I could claw the panic out. Please, God—or devil, or whoever the fuck is running this show—don’t let this be true. Don’t let the girl I’m obsessed with be my fucking blood relation. That was a brand of fucked-up I wasn’t sure I could survive. Not with the way I wanted her, the way I needed her.

Dope let out a shaky laugh, rolling his shoulders and popping his neck.

“Dude, you’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

I swallowed hard, my chest squeezing tight.

“Yeah. I haven’t told her yet, but yeah. For a while.”

Death exhaled, the sound like a damn funeral bell. “You might want to hold off on that confession, at least until you’re sure how she’s connected to you.”

31

HOLLAND

Her eyelids fluttered.

For a moment, I wondered if she’d drifted off—or died. I hoped for option two.

But then her mouth twitched, curling into something sharp, evil.

“Oh, darling …” The rasp scraped out, but it was as sharp as a blade. “You have no idea what I did.”

I tried to speak, a strangled sound catching in my chest. “You—” My voice broke. I slid my hand into my purse and dug my fingers into the gun, pressing hard, desperate to ground myself. “You broke him. Yourownson.”

Her brows lifted slightly. “Kip was already cracked. We simply shaped the pieces.”

“Liar.” My breath tore out of me, ragged and raw. “You didn’t just ruin me. You ruined him too.”

Her brows lifted slightly.

“You twisted everything. You carved up his soul and called it love, so he would never know what you did.”

“And look what he became,” she murmured, gaze distant now, as if reliving those times. “My goddamn masterpiece.”

The machine beside her hissed. The slow, mechanical drag of air keeping her alive, when she should’ve suffocated under the weight of her sins years ago.

“He was a wild dog,” she whispered. “Snarling. Biting. Bloody. We made him … useful.”

A tremble rippled through me, rage crawling up my spine like a second skin. “You turned him into a killer.”

She smiled—sickly sweet, gentle. “He was always meant to serve.”

I took a shaky step forward, the gun in my purse heavy against my hip. I couldn’t hear past the static in my mind as her words spun so fast in my brain, I struggled with what to say next. I understood that you couldn’t reason with sanity, but I needed to try anyway.

“Yousoldme.”

She bared her teeth, more animal than human, and I saw a flash of yellowed teeth. “You were a pretty little thing. So easy to give away.”

My vision blurred.

Suddenly, I was young again, knees scraped, hands shaking, hiding in the closet, praying to a God I didn’t believe in. I was strapped to a table. I was dragging a piece of glass across a man’s throat.

And now? I wasn’t small anymore.