Page 46 of Wicked Ends (Hellions of Hade Harbor #4)

Arianna

I left the beach and walked back into town to my car, still parked outside the rental office, a little while later. I had to get to school, but this morning had felt momentous somehow. Something had shifted inside me, something important.

I wanted to stay. I wanted something beyond just surviving, for the first time in longer than I could remember.

I got into my car and pulled out into the morning traffic. Heading back to the Night Owl after seeing the rental place felt especially cruel. Long-term motel living wasn’t for the faint of heart.

I parked, checking my watch. I got out of the car, trying to work out how long I had to get ready after my impromptu stop. I wasn’t paying attention. Not that paying attention could have changed the fact that I opened my door right into someone. Someone standing right beside my car.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” I rambled, feeling terrible. I got out of the car and turned to see who I’d banged my door into.

I froze, sweat immediately breaking out on my forehead.

Dale Spencer wasn’t a big guy. But what he lacked in size, he made up for in spite and aggression.

His face was as familiar to me as my own.

It was like my thoughts earlier had conjured him, or the simple act of wanting something for myself for once had brought about a universal correction.

I’d forgotten for one precious second that I didn’t get to dream.

I didn’t get to hope. It was time for a reminder, it seemed, and fate had sent the worst one.

Sadly, he wasn’t a ghost from my nightmares, but a living, breathing man.

That night hadn’t killed him after all. I’d never been so disappointed.

“Long time no see, Arianna.” His voice was ripped straight from my worst memories.

It was a shock to see my brother after months.

The time apart hadn’t been kind to him. He appeared haggard, his face red and mottled, his eyes bloodshot.

I’d seen Dale drink more and more over the years growing up, but it seemed like it was really catching up with him now.

He looked haunted, and hunted, and most of all, pissed off.

Of course he was.

After all, I’d beat him at his own game… and now, I supposed, he was here to even that score.

I took a step back, but there was nowhere to go. I opened my mouth to scream, but it never left me. Dale sank a hand into my hair and jerked my head to the side, banging my head off the car roof. Stars exploded behind my eyes.

“You left me for dead, Arianna. Time for me to return the favor.”

We were alone in the parking lot. There was no one to ask for help, no one to stand up to the worst bully and abuser I’d ever met.

He grabbed my bag from my hand and rummaged through it, searching for my key. Gripping it, he took my arm so hard I had no chance to pull it back, and dragged me across the lot to the rooms. Mine was right ahead of us.

I should scream, but every time I tried, he shook me so hard I bit my tongue and my teeth rattled.

“Don’t get any ideas, sis. Just do what you always do—what you’re told.”

Dale got the door open fast somehow, pushing me inside and then following, breathing hard. He locked the door behind him and turned, shoving his hands through his greasy hair.

“All this fucking bother because of you.”

I backed up, hands pressing into the rough carpet, casting about for my phone. Would he let me make a call? Of course not, but I had to try. I’d spent my life letting this guy order me around, and I was tired of not fighting.

“Where is the money, Arianna?” Dale asked.

I spied my phone. I lunged for it as he strode toward me. The tip of his boot raced toward my face, and then the lights went out.

“Auntie Arianna,” the whispered voice of my niece reached me through the phone.

I sat up, blinking in the darkness of my room. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mommy. She had a fight with Daddy… she’s — she won’t get up.”

“I’m coming. I’m on my way.” Fear coated my mouth, clogging my throat.

I flew out of bed and dragged clothes on. My brother and his family lived a few streets over. I was there in less than five minutes, running down the street and up the porch and rushing through the front doors.

It was too soon. We were almost all ready to go. The inheritance money that I’d found out was coming to me wasn’t in my account yet… it would be by tomorrow morning. We’d planned to go tomorrow evening, when Dale went to the bar with his friends. This was too soon.

“Hello?” I tensed in fear that my brother might still be home.

“Auntie Arianna?” a lone, small voice called from the top of the stairs.

I bounded up them, fear forgotten. I gathered Lulu into a tight hug and then pulled back to look at her. Her eye was darkening, bruised.

“What happened?”

“I spilled my water glass. I should have drunk it faster. Daddy’s always telling me to just drink it, but I didn’t, and it went on Daddy’s newspaper…”

Tears ran down her little round cheeks. I could just imagine what had happened next.

Why they’d been sitting and eating dinner after ten p.m. with a seven-year-old kid, I had no idea, except that Dale liked the family to wait for him to get home to eat.

The bastard got off on starving his daughter for hours until he decided to show up at home.

“Where’s your mom?”

“In her room.”

I hugged her tight. “Wait here, I’ll go and get her.”

I walked along the hall with stress filling every inch of me. This was a moment I’d been dreading for far too long. That one night, it would go too far. One night, one moment, and the time to help would be over forever.

I reached the bedroom and went inside. Claire’s feet stuck out around the end of the bed, unmoving.

Stealing myself, I advanced. I couldn’t let this happen again. We had been so close.

I reached her. She was lying with her face down, her body splayed.

I crouched next to her and drew her hair back from her face.

“Claire, it’s me, Arianna.”

She was quiet for a terrifying second, and it felt like the world stopped turning.

“I’m okay.”

Her quiet grunt brought tears to my eyes.

“I lost it for a second… I’m awake now, but I think my arm is broken, and maybe some ribs.”

“I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“No. No ambulance. You know what happened last time… Dale’s buddies at the police department told him all about it, and he was worse than ever.”

I held my tongue. I had nothing I could say to that, because it was true.

We lived in a corrupt little town where the sheriff’s department covered for the good old boys time and again.

Even though my brother had retired early from being a cop, officially because he wanted to start his own PI business, unofficially because he’d been drunk on the job one too many times, they still considered him one of their own.

“I’ll drive you then, the next city over.” I got my hands under her and lifted her carefully.

She nodded, wincing as she clutched her hand to her chest.

My brother had been abusing his wife since the moment she’d gotten pregnant.

I’d been eighteen, about to finish high school, and still living with him.

It had only gotten worse once Lulu was born, but everyone had been trapped by then.

By the town and its corrupt cops who would ignore Dale’s wife’s plight, by the vulnerability of having a baby to care for and a husband who controlled all the money, by the way people looked the other way at the sight of a mother pushing a stroller with two black eyes.

A quiet sob sounded, and Lulu was there, eyes frozen with horror at the sight of the blood running freely down her mother’s face.

“It’s okay, baby, everything is okay.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dale’s voice sent my blood to ice.

I spun around, but I wasn’t quick enough. My brother’s slap sent me and Claire flying to the floor.

“Daddy!” Lulu screamed, her eyes huge and haunted.

“Get out of here!” he barked at her and advanced on me. “You stupid bitch, always causing trouble. I found out today that you’ve been trying to get Grandma’s money without me.”

My grandma had left me a large amount of money, something just for me, held in a trust until my twenty-fourth birthday.

I had been waiting patiently for the time to collect it to come around.

The money was what kept us from running.

I couldn’t get Claire and Lulu somewhere safe and far from here without money.

It was impossible. Then, with my twenty-fourth birthday rushing toward us, Dale had found out.

I had no idea how he had, but he had. I suspected the lawyer handling the inheritance.

My birthday had come and gone, and with Dale demanding the money, I’d done the only thing I could have — tied the money up in endless paperwork.

Over the ensuing months, he slowly forgot to check daily if the money was freed from its administrative chains.

Claire and I decided to go as soon as the money was given to me, and that would have been tomorrow.

Tomorrow. We’d come so close.

“She left it to me,” I spat at him. I needed that money. Without it, there was no fresh start for Claire and Lulu. There was no future for any of us.

“I don’t care! It’s mine. It should be mine. I had to put up with both those old fucks for far too long.”

“Why should it? You hated them — it was obvious!” I managed to get out, years of anger and resentment boiling over.

“Is that right?” Dale raged, slapping me hard enough to send my vision dark.

I staggered, falling into the wall. My head spun.

“You’re as stupid as they were. So fucking stupid they didn’t have their car serviced on time. Do you know how easy it is to fake a brake failure?”

I stared at Dale in horror, my vision clearing.

“You,” I started, the horrible accident that had claimed my beloved grandparents returning to me in a sickening slideshow of bent metal and identifying bodies in a small, cold room.

“You hurt them?” I couldn’t process it. Despite knowing how awful Dale was.

Despite knowing how he was capable of violence, I’d never suspected him.

“Hurt them? I killed them. It was my time to get what I was owed, and those stupid fucks just wouldn’t die.”

Tears fell from my eyes, blurring my vision.

I could hear Claire moving around. Through the swimming tears, I caught a glimpse of her rushing over the carpet toward Dale holding a heavy lamp in her unbroken arm.

She swung it at him, but he easily dodged it and knocked her to the floor.

Then, he was on her, straddling her waist, his meaty hands finding her neck and pressing.

Claire coughed, her breath cutting off.

“Mommy!” Lulu screamed.

“You should just die, bitch, all of you should, and I can finally live happily ever after with my inheritance.” Dale’s hands were like iron around Claire’s neck.

Dale killed my grandparents, the only family I’d ever known. He’d taken everything from me.

Stars and black spots danced in front of my vision.

I had so many regrets at that moment. I had barely lived in his shadow.

I’d let fear of him control me for so long, I had nothing to call my own.

No boyfriend, no friends anymore, no job…

nothing. I should have run away as soon as I was old enough, but I’d stayed, for Claire and Lulu…

I’d stayed too long, and now, we would all pay the price.

Claire’s knitting needles were lying on the bedside table. I didn’t think. My mind was empty. One second I was watching Dale strangle his wife, their child screaming herself to hysteria in the corner. The next I had a knitting needle in my hand and I was driving it into Dale’s back.

Dale grunted in surprise, and his hands loosened. Claire desperately dragged air into her lungs. Coughing, she rolled away. Dale slumped to the side, trying to pull the knitting needle free from his back.

“You — you think you can kill me?” He laughed.

But he’d forgotten that I had the other needle. The other one went in his neck. I stabbed him as hard as I could.

Lulu screamed, the sound breaking through the fog in my head.

“Take my hand,” a voice said. Claire.

Everything was swimming still, and I was dizzy. She’d recovered enough to stand. Her throat was bruised, her arm hung limply at her side, and she looked half dead. But she held her good hand out to me.

“We’re leaving.”

Dale was rolling around on the floor with a spreading pool of blood under him. It was soaking into the carpet. Was he going to die? How long did he have?

“Arianna, it was him or us. You saved us,” Claire said, her voice stronger than anything I’d ever heard before.

I swallowed a knot of fear and pain and nodded.

Lulu was lingering at the door, crying softly.

Claire pushed her hair back and wiped her bloody hands on her slacks.

Her arm hung strangely at her side. She had to be in a lot of pain, but she was so strong, standing there over the body of her abusive husband, finally back in control.

She turned to the doorway and pulled Lulu into a hug.

“What do we do now?” Lulu asked in a muffled voice that sounded so young, it broke my heart.

“We leave, honey. We’re already gone,” her mother said, and she was finally right.

We were already gone.