Page 56 of Restitution

True. Within hours of Kade putting a bullet in her head, Cassie’s picture has started circulating news channels and social media.The Sawyers are grieving a terrible loss, the reports say.

In the nicest way possible, the girl is better off dead.

And as much as the idea of Chris being kept alive and forced to suffer as Kade described is tempting, I meant what I said to Jason. I want him gone. Knowing he isn’t walking the same world as me would make me far more comfortable.

I pat Aria’s hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I say. “For all of this. If I’d told Kade about Chris when we were together, then we wouldn’t be standing in puddles of my stepbrother’s mess.” I gulp and lower my head. “Maybe our kid would be here too.”

“You can’t blame yourself for any of this, Stacey. He’s the monster. He’s the one who took from you. And, therefore, he’s the one at fault. Survivors deal with abuse differently, and not everyone can speak up. I don’t want to hear that from you again.”

“After my dad didn’t believe that Chris was abusing me, I didn’t feel like I could speak to anyone. I thought he would target Kade. I wanted to keep him safe,” I admit, wetting my lips, remembering how innocent and full of life Kade was when we were eighteen. “I fell in love with him so fast, and the thought of Chris ruining that made me stay silent.”

I know Chris, in his slowly dying body, can hear me.

“Chris wanted me to love him, but it was always Kade.”

The corner of Aria’s mouth curls slightly with a look of exhaustion, the lines at the side of her eyes tightening. “I know, sweetheart.”

I slowly turn, walking towards Chris. “Can you give me a minute?” I ask her, and she smiles with a nod and walks up the stairs, leaving me alone with my stepbrother.

I kick the chair he’s strapped to, but he doesn’t budge. “Kade didn’t touch your ears, so I assume you can hear me.”

Nothing, not even a twitch.

I kick the chair again as I circle him, and he lets out a low, pained groan.

“Do you remember my twentieth birthday?” I walk around the chair, not caring that my shoes are getting covered in sticky blood. “When your mum went to Italy, and Kyle was away at college, and you forced me to wear a short dress and dance for you?”

He doesn’t reply. Not that he’s strong enough to do so.

“You invited two of your friends to watch me too. Do you remember what you did when I refused to have sex with all three of you?”

My anger is spiking. I can feel blood roaring in my ears as I circle the chair once more. I snatch his hair and pull his head back.

“You made me swallow pills, nearly broke my jaw, and I woke up in your bed hours later. You said you didn’t touch me, but did they?”

I have so many memories that are broken from him drugging me, and now that I know he raped me multiple times, I’m trying to figure out when. I blacked out more times than I can count.

For some reason, before I saw the video of him sliding inside me, I believed he hadn’t touched me. I thought he would’veboasted about it; yelled in my face, but he kept it to himself.

“Or the time we went on the cruise and Kyle had to shove his fingers down my throat when he found me nearly drowning naked in the pool? I had bite marks on my inner thighs, remember?”

Thankfully, Kyle didn’t see much, since he’d launched a towel over my body. My dad had been dead three months, so they decided me getting wasted was my way of dealing with his death.

The more I think, the angrier I get.

My foot hits metal, and I pick up the blade Kade dropped after mutilating him. I twist it in my hand, the point of the knife against the pad of my pointer finger as I keep walking around him, reeling off all the times he screwed with me.

The pain he caused me.

Mentally fucking me.

Physically too.

He was never brave enough to do it without me being drugged. I would have fought until my dying breath if I’d been conscious.

“You should know, you look hideous right now. And I think death is far too kind for you. You should suffer. You should see what my life is going to be like without you. But you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as my future children.”

The door at the top of the steps opens, and Tobias walks down, his eyes trained on me. I stop behind Chris, watching as Barry walks down too.