Page 42 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

Brie

“ O H, YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE THIS ONE!” Rebecka exclaims, flipping eagerly through the thick black photo album in her lap.

When she finds the page she’s looking for, she scoots closer until our shoulders touch and pushes the book across both our knees.

I glance down at the faded photograph. The timestamp in the corner says it’s from twenty-three years ago.

A tiny, chocolate-covered Damon smiles up at the camera, a Van Halen T-shirt hanging off his miniature frame like a dress. An ice cream cone is dripping down his arm, melting faster than he can keep up.

“Adorable,” I say with a grin, glancing toward the kitchen.

Damon is at the counter trying very hard to pretend he doesn’t hear us, slicing carrots and potatoes with meticulous focus.

“I didn’t realize you were such a fan of chocolate, Damon.”

“Still am,” he smirks over his shoulder.

Heat blooms instantly in my cheeks, and I look away, my lips twitching at the corners.

We haven’t talked about the other night—not really.

After that moment on the cliff, he just led me back inside, wished me goodnight, and disappeared down the hall.

I’m not sure how I feel, aside from the way my heart keeps racing whenever he looks at me.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this kind of ease.

Not safety—I’m not sure I’ll ever feel truly safe again—but something quieter. Softer .

Being here with Rebecka, in this house that smells like cinnamon and sea air, it fills something in me that’s been hollow for too long.

She makes me feel like I’m not broken.

I pass Rebecka her album before I stand from the couch. “I’ll be right back,” I say, and she nods, already flipping to another page.

I pad down the hall to my room.

It doesn’t take long to find what I’m looking for in my bag. The photos I’ve carried around—from home to that apartment to Damon’s—all pressed behind a single cheap frame.

The moment I pull them free and feel the glossy paper in my hands, my fight or flight kicks in.

For the last six months, I’ve been choosing one or the other.

Fighting for revenge.

Fleeing from anyone who gets to close.

But what if, just this once... I chose neither?

What if I stayed ?

When I return to the living room, Rebecka is giving Damon hell about the thickness of his carrot slices. But the moment she sees me, her face softens.

“Everything okay, sweetie?” she asks, her eyes dropping to the photos in my hands.

“Yeah.”

My voice comes out thin, but steady.

“I just... wanted to share something.”

I sit down beside her and lay the pictures between us, careful not to bend the edges.

“This was my parents on their twentieth anniversary,” I say, handing her the one from Banff.

The mountain range in the background is breathtaking, the turquoise water so vivid it barely looks real.

“It’s the place where they met. Where he proposed.”

Rebecka smiles—the kind that doesn’t come from politeness, but understanding.

Her fingers graze the corner of the photo like she’s holding something sacred .

Next, I show her the one of us in our hideous thrifted Christmas sweaters—my dad showing off the car-themed crewneck he found, my mom laughing, Amie mid-eye-roll, and me trying to strike a pose that made me look like a discount runway model.

We did that every year, sending out the most ridiculous holiday cards to my grandparents.

Then a picture from my mom’s bathroom—me, Amie, and Mom wrapped in robes, face masks smeared on our cheeks. Amie’s toes are propped up on a stool while Mom paints them turquoise. I’m sitting behind her, wrapping curlers into my mom’s still-wet hair.

I flip to the last photo, and my chest tightens like a vice.

Me and Amie.

Backseat of the Aston Martin.

Her eyes glassy, her smile wobbly. My own match.

We were both crying without crying, the day I left for college. She took this photo. Said it would be our goodbye picture—but not for long.

It was supposed to be see you soon , not goodbye forever .

A hand touches my shoulder. I look up.

Damon .

He’s leaning over the back of the couch now, his frame curved around me like a shield. His hand stays there, solid and warm, grounding me.

“This is the last picture I took with Amie,” I say, the words rough in my throat. “It was right before I left for Massachusetts. I didn’t see her again until that summer when they were—”

The word won’t come.

It sticks to the back of my tongue like something sour.

Rebecka reaches for me, rubbing slow circles on my arm.

“It’s okay, sweetie. You don’t have to—”

“She’s fine, Mamá ,” Damon says, his voice a quiet rumble as he begins to massage my shoulders gently. “Go ahead, Brie.”

I look down at Amie’s face again .

Damon knows how hard this is for me. He sees the war behind my silence—how much I want to hold onto her, and how much it hurts to say her name aloud.

But he’s right.

I need to talk about her.

I want to.

And there’s no one else in the world I’d rather say it all to than the two people sitting beside me now.

“They were… killed .”

The word claws up my throat like a razor dragged over raw skin. It slices on the way out, but once it’s free— once I say it —it’s like the blade is finally gone.

The pain still lingers, but for the first time, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to choke me.

Maybe the next time I say it, it won’t hurt as much.

Because there will be a next time.

To keep their memory alive, I’ll have to say it for the rest of my life.

“I couldn’t do anything to save them,” I whisper.

The admission is sharp—more honest than I’ve been with myself in a while.

“And truthfully... I don’t think I ever forgave myself for that. I never let myself move past it.”

And that was the plan all along, wasn’t it?

Alexander said it himself. The goal was to break me. Shatter me. Leave me helpless and small so that, eventually, I’d have no choice but to claw my way back. Stronger. Smarter. Sharper .

And when I did, I’d think I was fighting for them. For justice. But really, I was fighting for the people who orchestrated the whole thing.

I never realized I was turning into a weapon for the enemy.

A hot tear slips down my cheek, but I don’t brush it away.

I look down at Amie’s picture and, somehow, I smile. Just a little. Because I can hear what she’d say if she were here.

She’d tell me I’m being too hard on myself. That I’m not to blame. That I did everything I could .

She’d probably roll her eyes at me, call me dramatic, and then take one look at Damon—still looming behind me, still steady—and say I’m cuckoo bananas for running from him.

“I miss them,” I say aloud, lifting my gaze to Damon.

He’s still there. Still standing behind me like a shadow stitched to my spine.

He’s given me every reason to doubt him, and I’ve given him every reason to walk away.

But neither of us has.

And I finally understand what he meant back at the house in Staten Island—when he found me lying on the carpet, my arm stretched toward a ghost.

He told me to take all the time I needed, that he’d stay with me until I was ready to get up.

I thought he meant physically. That he’d carry me out if I couldn’t walk on my own.

But now I see it.

My body left that place months ago—but nothing else did.

My soul, my hope, my future... all of it stayed in that room. In that memory.

I never saw past it. Never believed there was anything after revenge.

But Damon did.

And when I look up at him now—into those dark, infinite eyes with their quiet flecks of gold—I see the man who’s been there through every worst version of me.

The one who chained me to a chair, and then unbound something I didn’t know I still had inside me.

He’s not the man I met in that cell.

And I’m not the girl he locked in there.

“I miss them every day,” I whisper.

Then I take a deep breath.

“But I think it’s time for me to get up off that floor.”

T HE REST OF THE day passes in a blur of warm memories and quiet comfort—shared photos, laughter that doesn’t feel stolen, and the best damn beef stew I’ve ever had in my life.

Rebecka went to bed early, claiming her nurse was coming by in the morning, but I’m not convinced that was the real reason.

Part of me thinks she just wanted to give Damon and me some time alone.

Now we’re on the back porch, settled into matching patio chairs wrapped in thick wool blankets, mugs of mulled wine in hand. Another Rebecka courtesy even though she can’t even drink it herself.

I’m really starting to think she planned this.

The air is crisp but not cruel, the scent of cinnamon and cloves wafting off my wine as I hold it close. Waves crash in the distance, carving quiet rhythms into the dark.

“So,” I begin, watching Damon’s profile under the dim porch light, “how’d you pick this place? I mean, aside from the fact that it’s secluded and impossible to find unless you take a ferry and know exactly where you’re going.”

Damon’s mouth curves into something soft, his gaze fixed on the water.

“My mom’s always loved the ocean,” he says. “When I was a kid, we used to spend afternoons at Brighton Beach, looking for sea glass. She’d make jewelry out of it—bracelets, pendants, earrings—anything she could polish and twist a bit of wire around.”

His voice trails off like he’s watching the memory play out behind his eyes.

“She had this thing about matching pieces to people’s eye colour,” he adds, smiling faintly. “If she didn’t have a shade that matched, she’d tell them to come back to her stall the next weekend. She’d spend the whole week combing the shore until she found the exact piece she needed.”

I can picture Rebecka scanning the sand, holding up pieces of green and blue and amber glass to the sunlight like tiny treasure maps.

“She must have loved it,” I say quietly .

“She did,” Damon nods. “She’d probably still be doing it now if she hadn’t gotten sick. Parkinson’s made it harder to walk through the sand... harder to grip the wires.”

A beat of silence settles between us before I ask, “When was she diagnosed?”