Page 111 of Reaper and Ruin

And now one of them was staring at me again.

But I’d defeated him once.

I could do it again.

“What did you do, Travis?” I asked softly.

He laughed bitterly. “Sorry I didn’t invite you to the family reunion. It didn’t last long.”

“Have you just been living here with dead bodies?”

Travis glanced over at them, like it was the first time he’d really even considered the question. When he turned back to me, his eyes were hard. “Where else was I going to go?”

In another life, maybe I would have felt sorry for him. He was just as broken as I was, ruined by two people who should have never been parents and a system that didn’t work.

But it was impossible to feel anything but thick, stabbing hate. “You’re sick,” I whispered.

He laughed like the maniac he was. He’d kept it hidden well while we were in public, but now, surrounded by the evil that lingered in this house, it was all out on display. “I am what you made me.”

But I wasn’t taking that. Maybe once upon a time I would have. I would have let a narcissist blame me for their poor choices. Blame me for the shitty hand they’d been dealt. But I wasn’t taking that anymore. “You are who youchoseto be,” I seethed.

“I never had a fucking chance.” Spit frothed at the corners of his mouth that he didn’t bother to wipe away. “You know what they fucking did to me? They kept me in a fucking box beneath the floor. Shoved me in there for hours at a time, in the dark and in the cold. You were the fucking lucky one, Violet! You think you had it bad? You should have seen what they did to me!”

I didn’t doubt it. Didn’t doubt his claims of abuse and neglect.

But that didn’t mean I could forgive him.

“Where’s Nyah?”

He laughed bitterly. “You’ve known that bitch for two fucking minutes and she’s all you talk about.” He stood and crossed the room, pointing the shotgun at my head. “What about me, Violet? What about your brother?” He shoved the gun between my eyes.

I didn’t fucking flinch.

I couldn’t look away from the pain and torture in his expression.

Levi growled behind me in warning, and I was vaguely aware of X and Whip storming in, weapons drawn.

I held my hand up, stopping all three of them from going farther.

This was my fight.

Mine and Travis’s.

“You killed my best friend,” I whispered.

He barked out a laugh, his fingers trembling over the trigger. “Who, Toby? He killed himself. Watched it with my own two eyes.” His eyes narrowed at me. “And yet you still came up golden, didn’t you, Violet? Still came up with a family who loves you. A best friend to laugh with.” His voice turned into a snarl. “What the fuck do I have? I thought I had a woman who loved me too, but you fucking ruined that as well, didn’t you?”

I didn’t know what woman he was talking about. Nyah? Maybe the girl he’d attacked and gone to prison for? I didn’t care.

One thing was clear.

Travis had made his own bed. And now he was going to have to lie in it.

“Where’s Nyah?” I whispered again.

“Dead, bitch! How many times I gotta tell you! She’s as dead as you are!”

His finger didn’t even get a chance to squeeze the trigger. Levi’s gun exploded, his bullet catching Travis in the shoulder.