Page 58 of Ruin My Life (Blood & Betrayal #1)

Damon

C HAVEZ GRIPS THE STEERING WHEEL WITH one hand, barreling down the highway toward Rhode Island while I hammer away at my laptop, the screen’s cold blue wash flickering across my fingers.

I’m digging. Scraping through digital walls, tearing at firewalls, hunting for something— anything —that could tell me who the hell Connor Vaughn really is.

Lee ran a background check on him when we first hired him.

We run one on everyone—standard procedure.

Back then, nothing raised a single red flag.

His file was clean—just textured enough to look real.

A real address in Kings County. A fake juvenile record peppered with petty theft.

An invented family tree cluttered with deadbeat cousins and a single mom who “died young.”

At first glance? Flawed, but in a way that fit.

But now that I know where to look, the fractures are glaring.

He never lived at that house. None of that family ever existed. There’s no trace of him before the carefully curated breadcrumbs he let us find.

No school enrolment. No hospital visits.

No history in Kings County—just a ghost wearing borrowed skin.

I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste copper, glaring at the screen like it might flinch and spill its secrets if I just stare hard enough .

I wish Lee were here. Or Brie. They’re better at this. Faster. Sharper in the code. They’d have found everything it’s taken me this long to scrape together in under sixty seconds.

I’m good with a computer—had to be to build a security company from dirt and blood—but I’m not surgical like them. Not merciless in the right ways.

“What’s our ETA?” I ask, not looking up from my screen.

“Thirty minutes to Point Judith,” Chavez replies. “How long’s the ferry to Block Island?”

“Too long,” I rasp, the words tearing from my throat like shrapnel.

Time bleeds out between my knuckles. Every second we’re not there is a second he could be breaking her apart. A second my mother might already be gone.

I filled Chavez in on everything during the drive. No reason not to. No more secrets. My mother’s life is on the line, and whatever I thought I needed to protect before doesn’t fucking matter now.

I still trust him. I trust all of them.

Even after this betrayal. Even though Connor’s turned that trust into a fucking weapon.

It feels like my chest is splitting open. I still can’t process it—can’t wrap my head around why . We’ve known each other for two years. Worked side by side. Fought for the same cause. Protected the same people.

Or so I thought.

How long has he been planning this?

Was any of it real?

Every conversation we had. Every mission. Every drink shared at The Speakeasy. Was it all theatre? Was I just the next mark?

If he wanted revenge, why not kill me outright? He’s had chances. Dozens . He could’ve ended me a hundred ways and I’d never have seen it coming.

But he didn’t.

He never aimed to kill. He wanted to mutilate. To gut me alive by gutting the people I love .

He said Isabella was his sister—but Isabella never once mentioned a brother. She used to say she was meeting an “old friend” for coffee sometimes, which I clocked as a little strange since I knew most of her friends by name.

But I never questioned it. She was warm, open—except, apparently, when she wasn’t.

We talked about her family. If he’d come up, I’d remember. I’d have reached out after she died. I called her parents. Sent flowers. Helped arrange parts of the funeral, even when they told me not to.

If he was family, I’d have known.

I glare at the screen, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ache.

But he doesn’t give a damn about any of that, does he?

This was never about closure. This is retribution. Slow, merciless retribution—making me watch everyone I care about bleed for sins I never got to repent for.

So I switch tactics.

I start digging into Isabella instead—her records, her parents, any link that might unravel this mess.

Because Connor Vaughn doesn’t exist.

But maybe he isn’t the only one who lied.

Maybe I didn’t know Isabella Harrison and her family as well as I thought.

They were always well-off, from what I remember—and the records back it up.

They owned a townhouse in Cobble Hill before relocating out of New York.

Old money. Successful careers on the stock exchange.

Polished and private. The kind of people who didn’t like questions. Who didn’t like people like me.

I met Isabella by chance at a bar near her campus.

She was in City Tech’s art program—kind, fiery, too damn smart for her own good.

Her parents hated me from the jump. And why wouldn’t they?

I was a broke punk running with the Songbirds.

No future. No plan. Just a teenage obsession to keep my mother alive and a half-rotted mattress in a shoebox apartment to crash on at the end of every night.

But Isabella… she made me think about the possibility of a future for the very first time .

Not necessarily a future with her in it—we were too different, even then. But she made me want one.

And when things started to sour with Xander—when I saw just how deep the rot in the gang went—her voice was the only thing I could still hear through the noise.

When she was killed, her parents blamed me. Rightly so.

If she’d never met me, she wouldn’t have been a target. If she hadn’t loved me, maybe she’d still be breathing.

They held a funeral, and I went—but I didn’t dare get close. I stood under the trees by the cemetery’s iron fence, half in the shade, watching them lower her into the earth. Watching her parents weep beside that polished mahogany box.

There were so many people. Friends. Professors. Family. Too many faces to register.

But I remember how wrong I felt there—like a stain bleeding through their perfect, grieving world.

Except… I wasn’t the only one lurking at the edges.

There was another figure. A man. Distant but fixed in place.

He stood near a stone angel, half-eclipsed in shadow. Black suit. Long black hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Hands buried in his pockets. Still. Just watching.

I didn’t see his face. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t see it—didn’t clock it as important. At the time, I just thought how much his hair looked like Isabella’s. Thought it was my grief conjuring ghosts.

Connor used to have long hair. Before he shaved it off out of he blue six months ago.

Could that have been him?

Standing there the whole time?

Watching me watch her go into the ground?

I switch tracks again—digging into Isabella’s parents this time. Looking for a brother. A son. Anything.

But there’s nothing. Not at first. Not without Lee or Brie to carve open the locked files. I’m fast, but not fast enough. And I don’t have the time to brute-force firewalls when we’re this close .

Still, I keep digging. Pushing. Scraping.

Then—

I find something.

A single record. Buried deep under legal filings and dry administrative statements.

It’s a court document—A lawyer's summary.

“This statement confirms the irreconcilable estrangement of one Conrad Harrison from the Harrison family.”

Conrad . Not Connor.

Conrad Harrison—Isabella’s older brother, according to the dates on the document.

Everything freezes. My breath, my pulse, the ache ripping through my chest.

With his real name, I find more.

There’s a buried police report from when he was seventeen. Accused of assaulting multiple housekeepers employed by the Harrisons. No charges filed. No trial. Just hush money and a quiet erasure.

They paid them off. Cut him out. Scrubbed him clean to keep their name polished.

There’s nothing else in the system. No footprint. Like he never existed.

But knowing Isabella, she would’ve kept seeing him.

She was mercy made human—always convinced people could change. Always handing out second chances no one deserved.

If she was the only one who stayed…

The only family he had left…

Then when she died—because of me —he placed his blame. And that blame curdled into a plan. Slow. Patient. Perfect. He already knew who I was. Knew how to get close. How to hurt me.

It all clicks into place. Too damn perfectly.

He never wanted to kill me.

He wanted to dismantle me. Piece by piece.

And now—he’s about to take the last piece I have left.

A mother for a sister. An eye for an eye .

He earned my trust. Burrowed into my world. Infected my routines, my habits, my life.

He learned how to navigate The King’s Eye. Had access to the framework. Got so close I forgot to keep my walls up—let him peel them away, one careful layer at a time.

I remember the night I finally told him.

A few months into working together—after too many drinks and a long night patching a security breach—he opened up first. Said he had no family left.

Said his sister died, and he never really recovered from it.

Claimed she was the reason he took my offer in the first place—so he could funnel all that rage into purpose.

So I admitted it too.

Told him the only person I had left was my mom. That I couldn’t see her, not while the Songbirds still had eyes in the city. That keeping her hidden was the only way to keep her safe.

He listened like a friend would. Nodded. Said he understood. I didn’t realize he was stockpiling that confession like ammunition.

He must’ve spent over a year digging—trying to find her. But Connor—Conrad—never went to some fancy school. He’s smart, but self-taught. There are limits when you learn alone. My personal network was locked down, stacked in layers of encryption. He couldn’t crack it.

So he found Brie.

She wasn’t taking freelance work anymore. The Black Rose had gone quiet. So he forced her hand—motivated her the only way a monster like him knows how.

He broke her.

Murdered her family.

Assaulted her.

Left her for dead.

All so her grief—her trauma —would cut deep enough to twist her into doing his dirty work for him.

He didn’t train her to be his weapon.

He shattered her into one .

But he never saw what would come next. Never predicted how I’d feel about her. How fast she’d matter. How I’d change my rules for her.

We threw a wrench in his perfect plan. Made him pivot. Now he’s spiraling. Killing innocent women just to get my attention. Baiting the hunter with fresh blood. And when I left her with Lee, he offered to stand watch.

To protect the very girl he ruined.

Fuck.

I need to find her.

He’s probably threatened her life. Promised to kill her if she didn’t lead him to my mother. And part of me prays— begs —she didn’t. That she’d never risk Rebecka.

But I can’t blame her either.

Not after what he’s done. Not under these circumstances.

And I trust her enough to believe she’s at least trying to buy me time.

Because Brie is smart. The smartest girl I’ve ever met.

And she’s strong. Stronger than most.

But Connor is trained. Unstable. And he has a gun.

“Damon,” Chavez says, snapping me back to reality.

I turn to him. We’re skimming the shoreline now. Just ten more minutes until the ferry docks—then we move.

“Whatever happens,” Chavez says, his voice low, steady, ironclad, “we’ll handle it together.”

I nod. “We will.”

But the words feel like a lie on my tongue.

Because the truth is—I don’t know if I’ll survive this if Connor wins.

If I lose her … I won’t recover.

I’ve only had her for a heartbeat in the grand scheme of my fucked-up life. But that doesn’t matter. She’s carved her way under my skin, into my veins, buried herself in my goddamn soul.

She’s more than important—she’s everything . The only thing in years that’s made this existence feel worth the fight.

And if it comes down to it?

I’ll tear this island apart to get to her .

I’ll drain the ocean dry if I have to.

And I’ll watch the rest of the world burn if it means she’s safe.