Page 69 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

“No,” I reply. “You said not to cause problems for Quincy. I didn’t.”

“I also asked you to keep Lucy and Foxe safe. I said to keep them close. You were the only one of them fully aware of the danger lurking in the shadows, Asher.”

Pausing, I spin around and shove him back a step.

My neck cramps, but I ignore it as my anger reaches a peak, boiling over.

“Do you think I don’t fucking know that, Dad?

You think I’m having fun down here looking for the most important people in my life, hoping like hell they weren’t killed for some stupid thing I never bothered to warn them about? ”

Dad’s eyes widen.

Still, I keep on, my emotions stirring up word vomit. “I’m not a fucking idiot , you know, and I’m not you , so save the goddamn lecture for when we get home, all right? I do not need your help right now in feeling like a piece of shit.”

With that, I turn and push past Alistair, breaking into a light sprint to gain some distance from the two of them.

The second cavern I find is empty too, but this one we can at least walk through. It splits off into two sections, and I stare at the fork, wondering which to choose.

Footsteps scrape against the ground, approaching me. My shoulders tense, preparing for Dad to lay into me some more, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, Alistair stops beside me. “Your father said he’d catch up.”

“Okay.”

He glances between the two entrances. “Which one?”

I shrug. “Hell if I know.”

“Left is Lucy ,” he says, chuckling to himself. He points to one, and we start walking again. “We used to have family trivia nights, and that’s what Lachlan and Logan would say whenever Luce answered something wrong. The opposite of right was Lucy to them.”

The corners of my mouth twitch. “I remember.”

He nods. “I never did like the teasing, but I suppose I was always a bit more sensitive about things when it came to my firstborn. Her mum made me the man I am today, but that little girl… My entire perspective shifted the first time she opened her beautiful eyes and looked at me. It was like seeing myself in a mirror, but I wanted so much more for her than I ever got.”

A pebble goes flying as we wind our way through the tunnel.

“Lachlan and Logan, they’re attached to their mum, but Lucy needed me more, I think.

She was soft and pure, and where her siblings could take the ribbing and the teasing and got along with everyone, Lucy was so terribly human that I was afraid she’d break as soon as she stepped foot outside the house.

And the problem was she didn’t really seem to get how to be human or the fact that it made her so very special to feel and love so deeply.

Vulnerability is something that gets people killed in this world, but she never questioned hers. ”

I feel his eyes on me but remain silent. That’s what I love about her too.

“It was my job to protect her,” he says with a sigh. “But a few weeks after she was born, Elena Anderson brought her infant son to meet the newest addition to the Aplana brat pack.”

A reluctant snort huffs out of me. “That the official name?”

“Don’t tell your mum or my wife I used it, but that Mafia don uncle of yours actually coined it when he realized there were going to be a lot of spoiled kids on the island.”

My mother’s younger sister, Stella, and her husband have two kids we see only sporadically throughout the year, since they’re much younger than the rest of us and in school across the country.

“Anyway, Elena brings this ruddy-faced babe to meet my daughter and asks Cora if she can put him in the crib. Just for a second. Lucy was wailing, and Cora and I were exhausted, so she agreed.” Alistair pauses.

“The second you touched the mattress, Lucy went silent. We all had to check and make sure she was still breathing—her eyes were open, staring blankly upward, but she looked so peaceful. You were holding onto her onesie, watching her, and I realized that day that I would never stand a chance. You two are connected at the soul, and I’ve always secretly despised you for that.

I used to feel like I was intruding on a bond with my own child, but now, I’m…

really goddamn grateful, I suppose, that she’s always had you. ”

My chest tightens, and I feel a little woozy. Digging my nails into my palms, I suck in a deep breath, push the anger down for a moment, and exhale. “I love her.”

He laughs. “Obviously. You tell her that yet?”

I shake my head.

“Well, don’t wait. She deserves to hear it, lad.”

And at that exact moment, we hear it—not her, and not a love confession, but the bloodcurdling screams of someone being tortured or maimed .

Male screams.

My heart drops into my stomach, bile pushing into my throat.

“Christ. Is that…”

Foxe .

We move toward the noise, the cramp in my neck spreading to my shoulders and beyond. My stomach flips, the sound obliterating all the negative space around us, shattering it like glass.

It becomes louder for several minutes and then suddenly stops.

Like a flame snuffed out.

Rage pulses behind my eyes, fueling my steps. It’s the only thing I cling to as silence fills the cave again, bathing us in its implications.

Alistair tenses beside me, nudging my arm with his elbow. “Up ahead, you see that light?”

I nod, sticking to the wall as much as I can manage, and then peer around the entrance to the cavern, clinging to the dirty stone.

A long floodlight casts warm shadows around a room filled with bloodshed: a corpse on the ground, mutilated beyond recognition.

Another spot across from it is soaked in red, leading to footprints that I hate are so fucking familiar.

They walk right out of the room.

He isn’t in here.

A dark-haired man crouches toward the back in front of a girl with mostly obsidian hair, save for the two crimson streaks framing her face.

I stare for longer than I should, soaking in the sight of her.

Alive.

Battered and bruised, but alive .

Pushing off from the wall, I propel myself inside, sprinting before the crouching man can turn or fully register my presence. He’s leaned in, speaking to her in soft tones, and I want to rip his spine out with my teeth.

Instead, I tackle him, driving my knee into his back as his face slams onto the ground. Grabbing his hair, I bring his head up and repeat the motion, not stopping when blood sprays where the impact busts his nose wide open. Same as I did before leaving Dean Bauer hours earlier .

The blood gets on my fingers, splashing onto my face and neck, and he’s totally unconscious by the time I feel a hand on my shoulder.

I spin around, pushing Alistair off me, and face Lucy.

For several seconds, we just stare at each other on our knees, struck completely silent.

“You came for me?” she whispers.

Her voice makes me lightheaded. “Of fucking course I did, baby.”

She brings her free arm up gently—so fucking gently—touching my face with swollen fingers, like she can’t believe I’m really here.

Her blue eyes are tinged red and wet. She’s been crying—no, sobbing more likely.

My chest pinches, and I itch to continue beating Beckett Dupont. I’m trembling with the need to make him hurt, but then she scoots forward and launches herself into my arms.

When she buries her face in my neck, she unleashes a torrent of tears, soaking my skin in a downpour. Her wailing echoes in the cavern, ricocheting off the walls and piercing me in the heart.

She clings to me, her breath hot on my throat. “Foxe—they t-took him. I–I don’t know where… I don’t know w-what they did, but I don’t think…”

A tear slips over my cheek. “I know, baby. I know.” I make eye contact with her father, whose eyes are red now too. “I’m so, so fucking sorry.”