Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
“You probably should. I’m Caysie’s brother. Different mammies, though.”
Figures. He’s ugly as fuck compared to her.
Cassandra Davenport. Kayden’s wife.
He had a wife.
A wife.
A dead wife, but a wife.
And apparently, he’s richer than me. Way richer.
Even I have heard the Davenport name. He’s one of them—the people who own the imports and exports sector on a national and international scale.
And he has a wife.
Had.
Their wedding video still plays in my head on a loop. The smiles. The happiness. The goddamn soft look in his eyes.
I scratched the screen with my fingers over and over again as if I could erase her, but I couldn’t.
And I can’t.
Because she’s already dead, but she still lives inside him. No matter how much I scratched, I couldn’t remove her from his side.
So I wanted to remove him from my blood, which is why I cut the length of my forearm again.
And again.
And fucking again.
But he’s still there, beneath my skin, while she’s beneath his.
Because he’s made up a whole new life for her, and I’m here to hear where I fit into this fucking circus.
“While I’m sure your family story is to die for, I’m more interested in what you brought me here for.” I stare at Declan. “What do I have to do with the revenge?”
“Ye always this disrespectful, boy?”
“I’m being respectful now, believe me.”
“Ye bring a man to fucking England, of all places, ye have to be thankful I’m even talking to ye.”
“I’m so thankful, I’ll cry,” I say with a poker face. “But if you’re going to waste my time…”
I turn toward my car, my eyes blurring. The ground shifts beneath my feet as my vision crosses. I’m lightheaded.
Must be all the blood loss.
“Your grandfather was there.”
I let go of the handle and slowly face him. “Grandpa?”
“Alexander Carson, yes. He was present in Senator Baltimore’s house the night Caysie was raped and killed.”
I shake my head once. “He would’ve never done something like that.”
“Cause he’s so gentle and loving toward you?”
Because he thinks people like that are subhuman. He wouldn’t indulge in what he calls ‘barbaric’ acts, not after Harper.
“Well, he did, or he was there and covered for it, which is the same according to me and Davenport. We had a list of all the people who were there that night, and we slowly but surely took them out. Boat accidents, strokes, suspicious deaths on foreign soil. You name it. We tortured some of them, too. I thought we were done about a year ago, but apparently, Kayden has been digging deeper, and he confirmed that there was one more man who was wiped from the cameras, but a maid verified that she saw him. Yer dear granddaddy.”
He throws away the toothpick. “He must’ve covered his tracks as soon as the senator died. He’s smart and discreet, but Kayden is just that in love with Caysie, and he wasn’t satisfied with all the people we killed. He just needed more and more. He became obsessed and lifeless; only revenge kept him afloat. I like that about him, ye know. The undying love and unbreakable loyalty. I still hate that he hid Alexander—and you—from me.”
My hand twitches and I stare at him.
It all clicks into place.
Kayden’s reaction to when he thought I wanted to rape Yulian—he thought I was the same as what he thinks Grandpa did.
The way he belittled me during the mock trial for defending the accused.
How he used to say he was giving me a taste of my own medicine.
Did he adopt a new identity and come all the way here to…destroy Grandpa through me?
“Ye figured it out, yeah?” Declan smirks. “Kayden wanted to break you, then kill you. Would hurt yer granddaddy worse than his actual death, since ye’re the apple of his eye.”
“He made me attached to him for revenge as well?” I ask, not recognizing my choked voice.
“Why else? Kayden only ever loved Caysie, ya wee fool.”
Only ever loved Caysie.
Sandra. That’s what he called her.
The woman he loved so much that he went crazy to avenge her death.
The woman he loved so much, he injected himself beneath my skin just so he could get her justice.
I scratch at my wounds, peeling the bandage off and ripping the flesh open, then digging my fingers inside.
I want the blood out.
All of it.
I want him out of my veins.
My skin.
My insides.
I want to throw him up.
Spit him out.
Send him back to his Sandra.
But no matter how much I dig, he’s still there, somewhere I can’t reach.
Beneath the outer layer of my heart, maybe in the beats themselves.
Maybe I need to dig my knife there, see if I can make it stop.
The thumps and the pain.
I just want it to stop.
It’s so loud in my head, the demons screeching so noisily, it’s deafening.
My quiet white room is now splashed with blood from the void and I want the red gone.