Page 88 of Pretty Broken Things

Again they refuse. Sin shows remarkable restraint, for him at least, and pops off a shot next to the first guy’s leg. Normally he’d just have shot him in the leg. I guess he’s growing as a person.

The first guy starts talking, as they usually do when Sin gets trigger happy. “He had a car around back. When Tessa helped the bitch get away, Jesse dragged her out back, not without a struggle though. The cunt stabbed him in the shoulder with a long metal needle.”

The only thought in my head is that he has her again. All she’s wanted for days is to go back home, but she stayed out of loyalty to a bunch of people who turned their backs on her. She’s facing the perpetrator of the worst horrors she’s ever experienced, and for that we’ve treated her like shit. We don’t deserve her.

Before I think it through I cock my arm back and clock one of the guys on the jaw. “Those are our women. You looked at them and laid hands on them. Give me more or I let him put a bullet in both of you.”

It isn’t enough. I want to beat them to a bloody pulp, but Sin reins me in. I’m not sure what it means when I’ve got less control than a trained killer.

Sin smirks and rubs his jaw where I hit him a few weeks ago during a misunderstanding. “Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it? He’s got a lot of frustration to work out. I can leave him here with you, let him blow off some steam and come back for you.”

The rest of the story comes spilling out. Damien Blackthorne has Tessa in a warehouse down by the docks. They never planned on letting her go. I think somewhere I knew that, but instead of insisting she go back to Seattle, I said nothing. I knew she’d stay if I didn’t give her my blessing to go, and selfishly I wanted to keep her next to me.

Now she’s in the hands of probably the most dangerous man in America, all because I’m a dumbass who can’t get over my own shit. I’ve punished her for years for abandoning me, yet here she is by my side every time I need her. This can’t be the way it ends. She’s already broken by the things Jesse has already done to her, I don’t know if she’ll survive a sadistic monster like Damien.

I close my eyes for a second and pray for the first time in perhaps my entire life. For once I try to be unselfish. I don’t pray for her to come back to me, just that she gets a second chance to finally live her life free from the toxic bullshit I’ve given her and packaged as love.

Sin takes a break in threatening the goons to take a call. I overhear the caller tell him more men broke in to their safe house and took Raven and Lucien’s birth mother, Natalie.

Lucien, Raven, and Ted burst into the room, taking my focus away from pulverizing Jesse’s idiot partners. Lucien drops another bomb on us, and I think my heart stops for a moment. Damien called him and threatened to kill Tessa if we don’t give him Raven. Sin will never agree to make the exchange, which I understand, but Tessa shouldn’t be sacrificed without a fight.

Raven tries to argue against Sin and her brother. I guess she and Tessa did truly form a bond, because Tessa sacrificed herself for Raven without thought, and now at least one other person besides Shane and I know the real Tessa. The one I hid from them to both keep her to myself and keep her at a distance.

Lucien turns to look at me, and I see pity in his eyes. “We don’t know that she’s even still alive. I’m sorry, Ford, but with Damien it’s possible she’s already dead.”

I shake my head. I don’t care what the odds are, I will never give up until I either save her, or retrieve her body. Even then I’m not sure how I’ll let her go. I’ve been such an idiot, but if I get a second chance I’m going to make it up to her.

“He has our mother, Luce,” Raven says, trying to persuade him.

Lucien can’t be budged. “Yeah, but he doesn’t have you.”

“You sure about that?” Damien says from the doorway.

His soldiers force Shane, Amber, and Jen into the room with us. Damien looks like he’s having too much fun with this. The way he speaks to Lucien it’s as if this is another layer of his son’s training to take over for him as king of the criminals one day.

“Bring in the others,” he shouts.

Holbrook drags Tessa and Natalie in with him. He’s been cagey lately, but I’d never have guessed he was dirty. It was naive of me to think there are people out there who value ethics, morals, and loyalty. You’d think a kid from the Park would know that everyone has a price, and being family doesn’t mean shit.

Sin and Damien go head to head. It’s like they’re playing verbal chess the way each of them twists words to get an advantage over the other. Damien might be the boss of this underground world, but Sin is a product of it. His instincts are honed from a life of violence. Thanks to the abuse Damien put him through, he can use anything as a weapon to kill, even words.

It starts to become more clear what Sin is up to when Damien turns on the guy Jesse was working for. Sin’s taunting has Damien enraged enough for once he pulls the trigger himself, shooting him right between the eyes. I think to myself that this is it, the moment Holbrook will reveal he’s not really betraying us, and arrest Damien for murder. But he just stands there watching.

Jesse pisses himself. I guess he only likes violence when he’s dishing it out, not when he’s receiving it. Damien lowers the gun. “You aren’t worth the bullet.”

Sin realizes sooner that Holbrook is useless to us. Jesse’s death has been inevitable from the moment he tried to blackmail Raven. Sin proves he doesn’t need a weapon to kill. He taunts his former father-in-law by telling him Jesse can’t be trusted. In Damien’s world Jesse knows too much, and if he can’t be trusted he can’t be allowed to live. Without further prompting, Damien raises his gun and rapidly shoots Jesse and both of his friends.

Unfortunately, this makes Damien decide that Tessa and Natalie are also a risk to him. He points his gun at Natalie. Holbrook jumps in front of her, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe he hasn’t turned on us after all. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m holding on to the slimmest of threads of hope.

Holbrook convinces Damien that he’s got too much blood on his hands already, and it could cause him problems.

Damien holsters his gun, agreeing with him. “Holbrook,” he says, “time for you to prove your loyalty.”

I watch in horror as Holbrook nods, pulls out his gun and quickly shoots Natalie and Tessa right in the heart. I watch the girl I love fall to the ground. She’s so still. Those beautiful chocolate eyes are closed and will never reveal her secrets to me ever again.

I’m shaking. As hard as I try to hold it together my body is vibrating with rage, sorrow, and unending guilt. This can’t be how it ends. There has to be more to our story. Stupidly I think, she’s leaving me again. I’m so pissed at her. She’s laying there bleeding, and I’m mad at her for dying.

What an asshole I am. The woman I loved has been here in front of me, begging me to see her, to love her again, and my pride pushed her away. Now I can never apologize, never beg for her to forgive me.

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