Page 39 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

Damon

I ’VE BEEN UP AND DOWN EVERY STREET I can think of.

Every alley. Every dead-end. Every place she might’ve gone if she were still thinking like herself.

But I haven’t found her.

And now my mind is starting to drift somewhere darker—somewhere I don’t want it to go.

Maybe she didn’t run.

Maybe someone took her.

But I can’t follow that thought. Not yet. Not until I’ve checked the one last place that still makes sense.

I cross the bridge toward Staten Island in a rental with fake plates—courtesy of Vinny, a dealership owner who owed me a favour after I pulled his sister out of an abusive marriage.

He once told me he could get us cars we could disappear in if shit ever hit the fan.

Now that it has, it felt like the right time to cash in.

Kings was supposed to be safe. Our sanctuary. But now it’s just another hunting ground.

I planned for this. I’ve always planned for this. Ever since I made that deal with Matthias O’Doyle, I’ve been building exit strategies—safehouses scattered outside the city, all under fake names, bought with untraceable cash.

My people are already out. Scattered. Safe.

But I’m still here.

Because I’m not leaving without Brie.

And maybe that makes me an idiot. Maybe Monroe was right to question me. Maybe Connor was right to challenge me .

She may have pulled the trigger. But I built the gun.

This war didn’t start with her.

It started with me.

Lee sent me the address to her family’s house—a place I didn’t even know she still owned. But she kept it in her name all this time.

There’s got to be a reason for that.

It’s the last place left to check.

I pull into a curved driveway in front of a house that looks like it once belonged on the cover of a luxury magazine. Now, it looks forgotten. Like the walls themselves are grieving.

The lawn is overgrown, blades of grass pushing through the cracks in the stone path. The garden’s full of dead roses—brittle, browned, and glazed in a thin layer of frost. The windows are veiled in grime.

There are no lights on inside. It doesn’t give me much hope.

The whole place looks… abandoned. Like time moved on and the house didn’t know how to follow.

Still, I park. Get out. Walk up the steps.

The front door is ajar, and it creaks when I push it open.

Inside, the air is stale. Heavy. Void of the kind of life a house should always hold. The light hardwood floors have lost their shine, and rust-coloured dirt has settled in the grain by the door—

I freeze.

No. Not dirt.

Blood .

Old, dried blood.

“Brie?” I call softly.

My voice doesn’t echo. It just disappears into the silence like the house has swallowed it whole.

I step over the discoloured floorboards, as if disturbing them might wake the ghosts still lingering inside. The same quiet that seemed to swallow the sound of my voice simultaneously amplifies everything else—the creak of my shoes, the beat of my pulse—as I move into the living room .

Cream-coloured carpet. White sectional. Wide bay windows casting pale light across the space. Another rust-coloured stain mares the carpet just behind the couch. Faded, like someone tried to clean it.

But you can’t scrub out trauma. Not really. Not from a place like this.

“Brie—”

I round the couch and stop cold.

She’s on the floor. Lying on her back—on top of another large stain in the carpet.

Motionless.

Staring at nothing.

One arm is outstretched, her hand reaching for the equally discoloured space beside her—like she’s still trying to hold on to something that isn’t there anymore.

Tears streak silently down her cheeks, vanishing into her hair.

She doesn’t even notice me. Not until I kneel beside her and brush my knuckle gently across her cheek.

She blinks away her trance.

“How did you find me?” she croaks, her voice hoarse—whether from crying or silence, I can’t tell. Maybe both.

“I looked everywhere for you, little rose,” I murmur. “I haven’t stopped since you disappeared on me. Again.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispers. Her eyes stay fixed on the ceiling. “They’ll find you.”

“Which means they’ll find you ,” I say quietly. “And I’m not losing you a third time today.”

She finally turns her head to look at me.

Her eyes are red, swollen, watery. Her cheeks streaked with salt and grief and the kind of pain you don’t come back from clean.

She knows she’s not safe here.

But she doesn’t care.

Because being in this house—it isn’t about safety. It’s about memory. About death.

About everything that was stolen from her .

She came back to the grave in hopes she might be buried with her family.

“This was where it happened,” she whispers, her voice paper-thin.

“I know,” I murmur. I guessed the moment I saw the blood on the floorboards.

I brush a few strands of hair from her damp cheek.

She looks so small like this. So vulnerable. Like a child who lost everything, grew from it, but still hasn’t found a place to set down her grief.

Her gaze drifts toward the couch. To the edge of a knit blanket crumpled on the carpet. “It was my first night home for summer vacation,” she whispers. “Amie and I were fighting over that blanket while our parents washed dishes together.”

She swallows hard. Her eyes go distant—hollow and unreachable. I can see that night flicker behind her lashes, like a film reel she’s watched too many times but can’t bring herself to turn off.

“Someone knocked. I remember thinking, ‘Who’d show up so late at night?’ while my dad went to answer it.”

She stiffens.

“It was them. Alexander. And whoever he was working with.”

I reach for her hand and coax her upright, then shift behind her and draw her into my lap. She doesn’t resist. Her spine settles against my chest. Her heartbeat thunders beneath her ribs.

“One of them shot my dad in the doorway,” she murmurs. “My mom tried to get us out—she only made it to the back of the couch before they shot her too.”

Her voice thins, waterlogged with memory. I wrap my arms around her tighter, like if I hold her right, I can make her bulletproof.

“I tried to get Amie to run,” she breathes. “But she was frozen. And when we saw them—those masks... part of me already knew we weren’t going to make it out. ”

She goes quiet. Still. The kind of still that feels like the world might be holding its breath for her.

“They wore red devil masks,” she says. “All I could see were their eyes.”

A tremor cuts through her.

“I begged them to take whatever they came for. Just let us go. But Alexander grabbed Amie. Said he was already taking what he wanted.”

Her gaze falls to the carpet beside us. To the stain she’d been reaching for when I found her.

“He made you watch…” I say. The words feel like glass dragged through my throat.

She nods. Slow. Detached.

“They… picked who got who. Alexander took Amie. The other one got me.”

The breath I take nearly splits me in half.

I didn’t think I had any pieces left to break. But hearing this— knowing this —proves I was wrong.

She presses a hand to her chest, like she’s trying to hold herself together with the weight of her own palm.

“He was… heavy,” she whispers, her voice cracking at the edges.

“He pinned my knees to my chest. I felt something crack—my ribs, maybe more. I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t scream. So I just… focused on Amie.

Tried to look at her instead of him. Tried to smile…

so the last thing she’d see wouldn’t be my fear. ”

The sob that tears out of her is jagged and wet, raw as a fresh wound. I turn her in my lap, tucking her head against my chest. My hand runs slow circles down her back as she breaks apart in my arms and chokes on her own breath.

She’s never said this out loud before. Not like this.

This is the moment the dam breaks.

“Shhh,” I murmur into her hair, cradling her tighter. “I’ve got you, mi rosa . I’ve got you.”

She clings to me like I’m the only thing tethering her to the earth, her hands fisting into my shirt, breath hitching like it might never even out again .

“When they were finished,” she chokes, “they shot me too. And all this time, I thought… I thought it was fate that kept me alive. That maybe I had a purpose. That surviving meant something. Like I was meant to get revenge.”

She pulls back enough to look at me, her face blotchy and tear-streaked, lips trembling.

“But they never meant for me to die,” she says. “They kept me alive. To use me. They made me into this... bloodthirsty monster , and pointed me straight at you.”

“You’re not a monster,” I tell her, quiet but fierce as I stroke her hair away from her eyes. “You were made to survive the worst kind of hell. And you did. Not because of them. Because of you .”

Her eyes search mine, glossy with tears.

“I’m not strong,” she whispers. “I used to tell myself… after I killed Alexander, after I got my revenge, I’d be done. I could finally stop... existing.”

The shame in her voice punches straight through my ribs—harder than any bullet I’ve ever taken.

I cup her chin, tilting her face until there’s no room left for her to hide. “Do you still want that?” I ask softly.

She hesitates—breath shaking—then shakes her head.

“No… but—”

“That alone,” I murmur, “is strength most people will never have.”

I look at her like the miracle she is.

Like the girl who was never supposed to make it through this—but did .

“My little rose… You were given every reason to wither. Every reason to die. But you didn’t.

You survived the blood. The fire. The silence.

You took a bullet that would’ve ended the strongest of men, and you came out the other side with all your bright colours.

All your dangerous, beautiful thorns still intact. ”

Her breath hitches.

“You didn’t just survive,” I murmur. “You turned the pain into purpose. There’s nothing in this world that can kill your flame. Not even you. ”

She bites her lower lip, her gaze dropping to the carpet. To the stain. To the echo of a memory so loud, we can still hear it breathing between the walls.

Then—finally—she looks back at me.

“Why are you here?” she asks, her voice wrecked from the storm she let loose. “They burned down The Speakeasy. You’re not safe here.”

“Neither are you,” I say gently. “I’ve gotten everyone else out of the city. It’s just you and me now. And I’m not leaving without you.”

Her expression softens—then crumples.

“Damon... you shouldn’t—I can’t—”

“You can take as much time as you need, Brie,” I tell her. “But I’m not leaving. I’ll fend off every Songbird that dares to steps through that door. I’ll stay as long as you need me too—however long it takes until you’re ready to get up off this floor.”

We sit there a little longer. In the silence. In the ruin.

Until, finally, she shifts out of my lap and stands.

She wraps her arms around herself and scans the house—what’s left of it. The blood. The ghosts. The memories that will never heal.

Then she breathes.

And she turns to me.

“Where are we going?”

The word we sows deeply in my chest like something fragile that’s trying to find a safe place to bloom.

She doesn’t even realize she said it. And now’s not the time to tell her what I want us to be. So I take her hand, grab her duffle from near the door, and lead her back out into the world.

Once we’re both inside the car, I glance at her—take one nervous breath—and finally answer.

“Somewhere only we know.”