Page 48 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

I glance at her, still trying to process it myself.

“She came to The Speakeasy a couple weeks ago. Wanted help getting out. Her husband—Oswald—was a sadistic piece of shit. Carved her up for fun on a good day and did far worse on the bad ones.” My jaw clenches.

“We took care of him. And we got her out. She was supposed to be safe .”

Brie deflates in my arms like a balloon losing air. Her gaze drops to the laptop, but she’s not seeing it.

I can feel the way she folds inward. Not physically, but mentally. Retreating into guilt like it’s the only shelter she deserves.

“It’s not your fault,” I say quietly.

She scoffs—the sound bitter and hollow.

“I don’t see how it isn’t . I killed Alexander and put a giant fucking target on the back of anyone remotely associated with you and your circle.” She shudders, eyes shut tight. “I practically killed her myself.”

“Brie—”

“I don’t think this is about Xander at all,” Lee cuts in quickly.

We both snap our attention to the phone, like he’s physically in the room with us.

“Why not?” I ask.

Lee exhales hard. “Because Jennifer isn’t the first. She’s just the first to get noticed.”

My stomach sinks like a stone slipping into a still, dark lake—no splash, no sound, just that eerie sense of vanishing beneath the surface, where something terrible waits below.

“What do you mean?” Brie asks, her voice low.

Lee hesitates. “While I was digging for the autopsy, I saw another name that felt… familiar. Anya Taylor. ”

I run the name through memory—fast.

We helped her about three months ago. Her boyfriend was trafficking her around to his poker buddies—treating her like a trophy to be passed around the table, not a person.

Like she was part of the fucking pot. We crashed their last game, flipped the table, and left them bleeding.

After that, we got her clean housing out in Hoboken. Safe, quiet, far from the city.

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

“Was she killed the same way as Jennifer?” I ask, already knowing I won’t like the answer.

“No,” Lee says. “Anya was stabbed last month. Left in an alley. No attempt to hide her.”

Brie frowns. “So… how do we know it’s connected? That sounds more like a random city killing.”

“One?” I say. “Sure. Maybe. But two ? Two women we helped. Two within weeks of each other?” I shake my head. “That’s not coincidence. That’s the start of a fucking pattern.”

“But how?” Brie asks. “No one but you guys would know where they end up, right?”

Then the realization hits—sharp and sudden—like a punch to the sternum. All the air rushes from my lungs, and for a second, I can’t think. Can’t breathe. Just stare as the pieces snap together with surgical precision.

“King’s Eye was hacked,” I mutter, my voice dropping into a growl. “The server. Someone got in and deleted footage from the camera’s at Brie’s old apartment, remember?”

We always keep tabs on the women we help—basic check-ins, burner phones, encrypted emails. No addresses. Nothing personal.

But if someone accessed that system, even partially…

It would’ve been enough.

“Getting into a personal network is one thing, but a server is a whole different story.” Brie stiffens against me. “Who could even get through those encryptions without triggering the firewall?”

“They’d have to be a genius,” Lee says. “It’s like they already had every password, every key.

I still haven’t traced the entry point—it loops everything back to our main office.

Whoever did this didn’t just break in… they walked through the front door without leaving a trace.

This person is good. Maybe even better than Brie and me combined. ”

I rake a hand through my hair, the pressure building behind my eyes like water rushing against a dam. My brain’s moving faster than my body can keep up, thoughts leaping ahead, connecting dots I don’t want to see aligned.

If Anya was killed before Xander was taken out…

Then this isn’t retaliation.

Unless… it is.

Just slower. More methodical.

The Songbirds don’t think like that. They’re chaos incarnate—loud, reactive, violent. They don’t play chess. They don’t plan twelve steps ahead.

But Xander—Xander was different. Smarter. More patient. He said it himself that whatever was coming had been in motion long before Brie put a bullet in his skull.

And Brie… Brie was part of that plan from the beginning.

Whether she knew it or not.

A low throb pulses behind my eyes, spreading into a full-blown ache that blurs the edge of my vision.

I hate this feeling—this spiralling sense that we’re behind again. That we’re still just catching up to someone else’s game.

Because this doesn’t feel like Songbird work.

It feels like something worse .

“I’ve already sent out alerts to everyone we’ve helped recently,” Lee says, breaking the silence with grim precision.

“Nothing detailed. Just a warning to be careful, stay low. I’ve got both autopsy reports too, but there’s nothing solid in terms of suspects.

No fingerprints, no DNA, no unusual surveillance hits.

Maybe if we could find a witness or something… ”

“We don’t need a witness,” Brie says suddenly.

I glance at her, thrown by the calm steel in her voice.

She doesn’t look at me. Her gaze is fixed on the laptop, fingers twitching like they’re already coding .

Then it hits me.

“The program,” I murmur. “The one you used to track Lola.”

She nods. “CCTV cameras. If we have a timeframe and a rough location, I might be able to pull something—license plates, faces, body shapes, even reflections. It won’t be easy. The less data I have, the longer it’ll take. But I can do it.”

Her voice is steady. Controlled. But behind her eyes, something fierce burns—guilt, sharpened into focus. It’s that same force I’ve come to recognize in her time and time again. That unrelenting need to fix the things she thinks she broke.

She doesn’t want justice anymore.

She wants penance .

And no matter how many times I tell her it’s not her fault, I can see it—she’ll keep spilling her own blood if she thinks it might save someone else.

It guts me in a way I don’t have words for.

The only problem is, this place—this house, this island—it was never meant for high-stakes operations.

The satellite internet works fine for emails and streaming movies.

But not for slicing through encrypted servers.

Not for sorting hours of grainy surveillance footage.

A job that might already take Brie days could stretch into weeks out here.

And I can’t afford weeks. Not with bodies piling up. Not when we’re already behind.

The Songbirds might not be orchestrating these murders, but they did burn down The Speakeasy. They made their move. Declared open war on me and everything I built.

And I’m done playing defence.

We’re sitting ducks here—drifting, vulnerable. Waiting to be picked off one by one. And I won’t let that happen. Not to my team. Not to her.

Never to her.

“Lee,” I say, still watching Brie, “contact the others. Tell them to pack up.”

Brie’s head turns sharply, her gaze snapping to mine, wide and uncertain. Her lips press into a soft frown.

I don’t say it out loud, but I think she hears it anyway .

The quiet ends now.

And maybe… maybe we’ll find our way back to this sliver of peace when it’s all over. This stolen calm where she laughed over milk-coffee, wore my sweatpants, and smiled like the world hadn’t hurt her.

I want to believe I’ll see that smile again. Even just once more.

I draw in one last breath of simplicity, hold it in my lungs long enough to say goodbye, then let it go.

“Tell them…” I say, my voice steady, carved in stone.

“We’re going home.”