Page 1 of Blind Devotion (Letters of Ruin #1)

Seventeen Years Ago

The gun trembled in my hand. I’d never held a loaded one before. So heavy. I didn’t think it would be. My entire arm shook.

I was wrong. I wasn’t ready for this, and Papa now knew it. So did Yannick, and he looked so smug. I hated it.

The man on his knees with his arms tied behind his back dwarfed my eight-year-old size.

He just kept staring back at me. He needed to look away.

It would be easier to pull the trigger if he did.

His eyes were a deep-sea blue, so close to my father’s and my own, and the sunlight almost made them glow.

His eyes weren’t kind, especially with all the bruising and his broken nose, but they were alive.

I didn’t know him. I didn’t know why he needed to die. That seemed really important right now.

“I…I can’t.” The words tore out from me.

I hung my head, and my shoulders slumped in defeat. I was supposed to be better than this. Papa taught me better than this.

“Told you he couldn’t do it,” my older brother told Papa. “You’re such a wuss, Adrien.”

“Yannick, don’t berate your brother.”

Yannick’s words echoed in my head. They spun around and around like the wheels of Papa’s Bugatti, along with all the other taunts he always spewed at me. You’ll never measure up. Waste of space. Good thing I was born first. His footsteps crushed gravel and snapped weed stems.

“Give it here. I’ll do it. I’ll show you what it really means to be Papa’s son.”

He grappled for the gun when a harsh whistle sounded. I didn’t see the man move until he was already barreling on top of us.

My head smacked against the ground. The gun clattered away as a canister clanked between us and Papa’s men. Those blue eyes glared at the scene, creased at the corners from a cruel smile I wanted nothing more than to get away from.

“Adrien. Yannick. Run to me,” Papa ordered, suddenly sounding very far away.

Gunshots fired and echoed. Bang. Bang. Bang. The type of sounds you rarely ever heard in the South of France. Not Papa’s guns, those all had silencers.

I tried to wiggle free, but the man’s weight crushed me, and my head ached so bad. Yannick growled next to me. He thrashed, his leg kicking my own, but he wasn’t strong enough to get free either.

Gray-white smoke hissed out of the cannister. My eyes watered, and I coughed on the rotten-egg taste clinging to the back of my throat.

Yannick jerked about while I flopped in place. I…couldn’t…move. Useless, like Yannick had always told me. The man headbutted my brother in the face. Once, twice, and when Yannick stopped moving, those hateful eyes turned on me.

“Scared?” His accent was thick and deep, and his heavy breaths clung to my face. I froze.

A name was called over the gunfire, a foreign one that I didn’t recognize before the man’s bulk lifted.

“You come with us,” the blue-eyed man said.

Three others reached us and dragged me to my feet. I squirmed and kicked. A knife glimmered in a clearing in the smoke, and then the man Papa told me to shoot was free. He grabbed my chin and squeezed painfully.

“You want t’ end up like your brother?”

Yannick’s nose and head were bleeding, but his chest moved up and down.

I didn’t get to answer before we both were hauled over shoulders. The moment I was off the ground, they ran.

Papa screamed our names. I cried back in turn. I should have listened. I should have done it. This was my fault.

I reached my hand out toward his shadow as he burst through the cloud of smoke, but he was already too far away.