Page 23 of Bound By Threads
I can feel it too — an ugly mix of rage and sorrow, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Don’t do that,” Elijah says, his voice barely audible. “They said she must have drowned. They’re still searching, but...” he stops himself. “She’s gone, and yes, we made her life hell, but it’s because we were told to. I never stopped caring.”
I scoff before I can stop myself. “Could’ve fooled me. You liked seeing her hurt.”
“Because she left us!” he roars, his fists clenching at his side. “She left us and never told us why. All we got after was silence, and it killed me because I couldn’t fix it, and now she’s gone. I liked hurting her because she hurt us, I didn’t want her fucking dead.”
“Exactly, she’s gone. There’s nothing to fix anymore, so we need to focus on the plan.”
I glance at Crew, hoping to see he understands, but he’s pacing, his fists clenches at his sides, jaw set. His movements are jerky, like he’s trying to keep himself together, but it’s all too much. I know he’s hurting, but he needs to be on my side.
“You need to snap out of it, Crew,” I say, the words coming out sharper than I intend. “We don’t have the luxury of caring about a girl who stopped caring about us. We need to stick to the plan.”
Crew looks up at me, eyes wild, and for a moment, I wonder if I’ve pushed him too far. “I can’t,” he says, “I won’t. I’m a monster who tortured her daily, and I liked it. I enjoyed watching how her face crumpled when we threw those words at her, and I liked how she flinched when we covered her in juice and blood. We did this, all of this. She’s gone because of us.”
The guilt in his eyes is suffocating. Unable to take it anymore, I turn back to Elijah, desperate for them to help me. “Elijah.” I can’t stop now. I can’t let this be the end of it, not after everything we’ve done to get here. “We finish what we started,” I say, meeting their eyes, already hating myself for what I’m about to say next.
“For her.”
Chapter13
Elijah
One month later
“9-1-1, where’s your emergency?”The woman’s voice echoes down the line, calm and professional.
My fingers tighten around the phone, the weight of it cold in my grasp. I can’t look away from my father’s body, sprawled out in front of me, blood pooling around him like an ever-expanding dark lake. The icy void inside me is relentless, gnawing at my chest, but it’s the surge of rage that cuts through it. Hatred for the man who helped create me.
“I need to report a murder,” I say, my voice steady but empty, a cold emptiness where warmth should be.
Her.
Where she should be.
I hear the click of keys as she processes my words, but it doesn’t matter. “Who is the victim?” she asks, her voice unwavering, just as it’s trained to be.
“My father.”
“And do you know who did it?”
“Yes...” I pause, my foot nudging his body to make sure his lungs are no longer breathing air and his heart no longer beats. She waits for my answer; the silence is deafening. “I did.”
I rattle off our address, my hand shaking slightly, before I hang up the phone without waiting for her to ask more.
* * *
I’m engulfedby a flurry of flashing blue lights that cut through the darkness and reflect off every surface.
“Get down on your knees!” a voice shouts. “Hands in the air!”
I freeze, the guns trained on me as if they’re waiting for a mistake. One wrong move, one split-second hesitation, and I’m dead. The thought crosses my mind — would it be so bad? To be done with it all?
Would I see her again?
I lower myself to my knees slowly, hands rising above my head. The chill of the concrete below me stabs through my clothes, but it’s nothing compared to the coldness that settled in my soul the day I was told she was dead.
I take a deep breath when the familiar stabbing pain threatens to pull me under, that happens whenever I think of her.
