Page 78 of These Monstrous Ties

Because he had stopped.

I have to give him that.

But it’s the lies. The bullshit.

Oh God.

I vomit again, bile coming up, my stomach convulsing as my mind refuses to think about what he must have felt when he figured it out.

And then he lied, to cover his tracks He had convinced me Lucifer hadn’t given a fuck about me. But I wasn’t the only victim that night. Lucifer had been forced to watch. He had the scars to prove he’d tried to help me. Tried to stop it.

But Jeremiah had used me. He had had no intention to save me that night, he just wanted to get to the Unsaints

What kind of monster was my brother?

I sink to my knees in the ditch, inches away from my own sickness.

I cradle my head in my hands, silent sobs wracking my body. No sounds come from my lips, no tears from my eyes. Just silent grief, engulfing me.

I throw my head back, tilt my chin up, my eyes squeezed closed.

And I scream.

I scream as loud and as long as I can. I don’t give a damn that someone might hear. I don’t even give a damn that Jeremiah might hear me. That Nicolas might. Kristof. Trey. I hope they do. I hope they think I’m being torn apart by a wild animal. I hope they think I’m dying.

I feel like I am.

The scream echoes in the vast, wild fields around me, and I scream until my throat is sore and all that comes out is another choked sob.

Slowly, I start to come to my senses. If Jeremiah does find me out here, he won’t leave without me. We might both die at one another’s hands, but he won’t leave without me. Not again.

I get to my feet. My legs tremble, but I make it back to the driver’s side of the car, crawl into the seat, shut and lock the doors.

I rest. For one minute. I count to sixty, my head back against the seat. My eyes closed. I give myself one more minute to pull my shit together. When I snap my eyes open, do up my seatbelt, and put the BMW in drive, it’s done.

The scars Jeremiah left behind, those emotional, gut-wrenching wounds…I know they won’t ever leave. But the self-pity has to go. Because Jeremiah needs to learn a fucking lesson.

As much as I hate Nicolas, I was glad we had that little game between us. ‘Yes/No’ had been useful, not in learning anything about Lucifer or Julie or the kid. But in learning about my brother. His feelings for Brooklin. Mayhem’s sister. He had put his heart on his sleeve in front of Nicolas. He’d done it in front of other people, too, for Lucifer to know that burning down Brooklin’s house would get to my brother.

Now I know, too.

Now I’m going to get to my brother.

I’m going to pay him back for what he had done to me and make him feel like I did. Like I wished I’d never fucking been born. Like I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.

He had wanted me to kill Lucifer on Halloween night. He wanted Lucifer and the Unsaints to suffer, and he wanted me to end him so he couldn’t tell me the truth about that night. But Lucifer had been looking for me all along.

Now he’d found me.

And now, he was going to help me fuck Jeremiah and the Order of Rain up.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Present

The next morning,I wake up feeling as if I have a hangover, even though I hadn’t touched a drink the night before. The thought of consuming alcohol again, of getting to where I had been that night Jeremiah found me in Raven Park…it makes me feel sick.

But everything makes me feel sick.