Page 72 of Fear Me, Love Me

As much as she hated me, I feel a trickle of sadness for my stepmother. “What kind of maniac are you?”

Dad rounds on me with a flushed face and reddened eyes. “You fucked that man and plotted to steal my son, and you call me a maniac? You’re as crazy as your bitch of a mother was, Vivienne.”

“My mother was sick and neglectful, but she was never cruel,” I cry. “It should have been you who died on a dirty floor, not her.” Bile rises up the back of my throat hearing him talk about Mom. She was about as far from Mother of the Year as you could get, but in her lucid moments, she cried and told me I deserved better, and that I was a good daughter. That she loved me. She was hopelessly lost to her addiction, and I was too young to know how to help her, but she still loved me.

Dad, though? He’s twisted. He’s beyond help. I wish I’d never wasted one second trying to win his approval. There’s hatred in my eyes as I look at him. He’s finished and he knows it. He’s never going to get out of here alive.

“I’ll kill you as well,” Dad snarls. “You don’t deserve to be happy with that piece of shit. You don’t deserve to be happy at all.”

I don’t flinch or try to flee when Dad reaches for me and wraps both hands around my throat. I take a long look at my father’s face, committing to memory every single detail of this moment in case I’m foolish enough to feel guilty about it later. His fingers tighten and it’s hard to breathe. Spots begin dancing at the edges of my vision.

“Vivienne.” Tyrant sounds panicked. He’s come around the corner and seen me with my father’s hands wrapped around my throat, and there’s a murderous roar as he races toward us, but it’s not necessary. I’m done begging for Dad’s life, and I don’t need Tyrant to kill him for me either.

I reach into my sleeve, rip off the knife that’s taped to my forearm, and I drive it into the side of my father’s neck.

His eyes widen. He makes a choking sound. I yank the knife out and blood sprays all over a statue of a satyr playing the pan pipes.

Dad’s grip on my throat loosens. He steps back from me and clamps a hand over the spurting wound and then looks at his palm, unable to believe what he’s seeing. “You stabbed me?”

I lift Tyrant’s shirt and show my father all the scars that cover my ribs and stomach. “Do you see these?”

“You fuckingstabbedme?” Color is rapidly bleeding from his complexion. His eyelashes flutter, and I think he’s going to faint from blood loss any second. “Help me, Vivienne. You can’t let me die like this.”

“You want me to help you, even though you never helped me?” I speak loudly and clearly so he can understand me in his last moments. “These scars? They’re my love for Tyrant. My love for Barlow. Their love for me. You’re not standing in my way any longer and telling me what I do and don’t deserve. I deserveeverything. And you deserve to die.”

Dad stares at me with wide, glazed eyes. Then he crumples to the ground, his knees hitting hard before toppling forward and lying there motionless as blood soaks the grass.

26

Vivienne

Atall, strong figure sweeps in and wraps his arms around me. “Angel, are you all right?”

Tyrant touches my bloody hands. Feels me all over for injuries. Strokes and then kisses the red marks on my throat. I look at the bloodied knife in my hand and throw it aside. Dad’s dead, and so is Samantha. Lucas is already dead, and Julia will be punished.

Am I all right?

Yes, for the first time in my life, I am. All the invisible ropes holding back my happiness have been torn away. I take Tyrant’s face in my sticky, bloody hands. “You were right, Tyrant. You knew they were terrible people from the beginning, but I still protected them.”

Tyrant glares at me, his eyes blazing. “Say that again.”

“Say what?” Then I realize what he means. “You were right, Tyrant.”

“Yes, I was fucking right,” he seethes. “Owen Stone couldn’t get his shit together for his wife and his newborn son, and you hurt for years because of him. I learned everything I needed to know about that asshole the first night I met him. I should have put a bullet in him then.” He breathes hard through his nose, looking furious. Then his anger recedes. “But I’m happy you killed him instead. Stuck him in the throat with the knife you hurt yourself with because of him. That’s my kind of justice.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around him. “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize the truth.”

Tyrant is silent for a long time. Finally he says, “You’re fiercely protective of people, angel. That’s what I love about you. But I do love hearing you say I was right.”

“I protected the wrong people. I don’t think I believed I deserved any better than the way they were treating me. Maybe there were signs that Julia was my enemy as well, and I just didn’t see them.”

He takes my face in his hands and narrows his eyes at me. “And now?”

“I’m glad Dad’s dead. It felt good to kill him after everything he’d done. I wanted him to know why, so I showed him my scars.”

“That’s my brave girl,” Tyrant murmurs, and kisses me. Then he seizes my hand and walks me through his labyrinth. “Come with me. There’s one more thing for us to deal with before we can have some peace.”

We return to the center of the labyrinth where Tyrant left Julia tied to a bench. He uses his knife to cut through her bonds and then stands back.

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