Page 57 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

He jerks my arms behind the chair, threads the zip ties through the rungs and yanks them tight until the plastic carves into my skin.

My shoulders burn, muscles already forming knots from the unnatural angle.

Then he binds my ankles to the legs of the chair, each tug of plastic a merciless cinch until I can’t shift an inch.

It’s all painfully familiar—too close to that first night at The Speakeasy.

I grit my teeth, but don’t show my pain. I won’t give him that satisfaction.

He doesn’t even look at me when he’s done. Just turns his back and starts tearing through the house. He moves fast, methodical, like he expects her to crawl out from under the bed or slip from behind the curtains at any second .

He kicks open every door. Rips through closets. Slams drawers shut with mounting fury, as if Rebecka’s absence is a personal insult carved straight into his pride.

I stay still. Watch. Wait.

Every second he spends searching is one more second I’m alive. One more second closer to Damon.

And if he doesn’t get here in time…

Then I’ll have to be enough.

He storms out of the last bedroom, boots pounding the floor like gunfire, each step a loaded threat aimed right at me.

“Where. Is. She?”

Each word is a dagger. Each syllable dipped in venom.

I tilt my head, trying to drape calm over the raw animal panic beating in my chest. Trying to be cold. Unshaken. But my heart doesn’t buy it.

“I don’t know,” I say with a tight smile. “Maybe she’s out for a walk? Grocery shopping? Playing bingo—”

His hand closes around my throat.

Hard .

He leans in, and the panic spikes—sharp, familiar, paralyzing. But I force myself not to flinch. To pretend the past isn’t dragging its nails down my back.

“Keep it up with the smart mouth, hacker,” he growls, spittle spraying against my cheek. His thumb traces my bottom lip slowly. “Maybe I’ll just shut you up with my dick down your throat.”

The bile rises immediately. I wrench my head to the side, but his grip locks tighter, bruising my windpipe.

“I wonder if you suck cock as good as you take it,” he hisses, and something deep inside me fractures—a thin thread gone to dust.

I can’t breathe.

My lungs claw for air.

My body screams.

But I can’t move.

Connor’s grin splits wide, sick satisfaction dripping from every tooth .

“Having flashbacks, Brie?” he whispers, eyes bright with glee.

Then he sets the gun down on the arm of the couch.

I go still—utterly still.

His grip loosens just enough for the edges of my vision to stop blackening. He lifts his other hand to his own face—slow, deliberate—and with casual ease, he peels a contact lens from his left eye.

Sea-green stares back at me.

No.

No. No. No.

The same green from six months ago.

The same shade I burned into my memory.

The same eyes that haunted every nightmare.

I’d guessed he had contacts in, but the sight of his real eyes is enough to put me back on the floor. Carpet against my back. His weight crushing me down. Helplessness curling through my bones like poison.

“How about now?” he taunts, tightening his grip until my windpipe throbs under his palm, more bruises blooming before I can even count them. “Or do you need another reminder?”

His voice slices through me. When he reaches for his belt—when I hear the low hiss of leather sliding free—something inside me triggers like a bomb.

I summon everything I have left. I rake it all to the surface.

The rage. The horror. The grief.

And I spit—straight into his face.

It lands into that green eye.

He reels back with a snarl, stumbling from the chair.

Air floods my lungs so fast it burns. I choke on it, dizzy and shaking, but force my words out, each one coated in venom.

“Over my dead body.”

His face warps with rage. “You fucking bitch,” he snarls, swiping the spit from his eye with the back of his hand.

He grabs the gun. Raises it level with my forehead. Right between my eyes .

“That can be easily arranged,” he says.

He pulls back the hammer— click .

In the silence, it’s louder than a gunshot.

This is it .

I don’t get to fight. I don’t get to win.

But I did buy time.

God, I hope it was enough.

I hope Damon made it to Rebecka. I hope she’s already running. Hiding. Safe.

Connor’s finger tightens on the trigger.

I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the end.

And then—

Brakes.

A sharp squeal just outside. A car pulling up fast.

My eyes snap open. I twist toward the window. Headlights slash across the frost-bitten glass. I can’t see past the glare—

But I know that sound.

Someone’s here.

Connor lowers the gun, a grin slithering across his face. “Sounds like mommy dearest is home,” he drawls, each word dripping with mockery.

He melts back into the kitchen shadows, swallowed by the dark. Waiting.

I can’t see the car clearly from here. It’s parked just out of sightline—too far for me to make out the model through the frosted window. I strain against the zip ties, rocking up onto the balls of my feet despite how tight they bite into my skin, desperate for a better angle.

I can’t tell who it is.

Please let it be Damon.

Please. Please. Please.

The car beeps—a single chirp of the locks. Footsteps echo on the porch, but they’re much lighter than his. Slower. More cautious.

Not Damon.

Then—

A gasp. Small. Caught in a throat.

Definitely not Damon. The voice sounds like a woman .

She edges closer, eyes catching on the fractured windowpane, the blood on the frame, the door slightly ajar. Her face tilts into view, haloed by the porch light—

And I forget how to breathe.

She looks just like Amie.

So much so my lungs seize.

She’s older—early twenties, maybe my age—but everything else is a mirror.

That same long, pin-straight brown hair.

The same soft hazel eyes, blown wide with worry.

The same peach-blush skin, the same heart-shaped mouth, the same faint pink bloom across her cheeks from the cold.

Even her nose—small, round, so heartbreakingly familiar.

She looks like she could be Amie.

If Amie had lived.

If she’d grown up.

She locks eyes with me through the glass, and I’m cemented in place—tied to this chair or not—breathless and gutted clean by memory. The phantom ache in my chest surges, monstrous, like a wave swallowing me whole.

My baby sister .

Her face. Her ghost.

The woman pushes open the door, stepping inside with her phone already clutched in one shaking hand. She flicks on the light—warmth floods the room but never reaches me.

She drops a bucket of cleaning supplies at her feet and rushes toward me, breathless and frantic. “Oh my god—are you okay?”

Her eyes dart to the bruises on my throat. Her hands tremble as she reaches for the zip ties.

I find my voice, raw as it scrapes past my damaged throat.

“ Run .”

She freezes. “What?”

“Run.” Sharper now. Desperate. “Please. You need

to run .”

The door closes behind her with a violent slam , loud enough to make both of us jump.

She spins—just in time to see him .

Connor steps from the kitchen shadows like a nightmare crawling out of a child’s closet, slow and certain, his now mismatching eyes equally dead and bottomless.

“No,” I breathe.

She fumbles with her phone, fingers slipping, screen flickering under her thumb. Too slow.

Connor swings the butt of his gun— crack!

It collides with her skull. She drops like dead weight, folding onto the carpet beside the spilled bucket. Bottles and rags scatter like a cruel joke, bright labels against dingy rug.

She doesn't move.

He stands over her a moment, blank-faced, then lifts his eyes to me. I thrash against the zip ties, the plastic biting deeper, pain blazing up my arms like an inferno.

He steps over her body, slow as a king crossing his court. The gun never wavering.

He points it at her head.

No.

“ No! ”

My stomach flips. I gag on nothing—just adrenaline and helplessness burning through my veins.

“If you want to save her life,” he growls, voice drained of everything human, “then it’s time to come clean, Brianna.”

He cocks the gun— click. The sound ricochets off the walls like a death sentence.

“Because I’m starting to think,” he says, each word knifing through the room, “this isn’t the right house.”