Page 109 of Ruthless God

I pace the floor as my hands shake like leaves.

Jameson places his hand on my shoulder, and I push it away. “May I say something? I know it’s going to get me punched in the face.”

I cock my eyebrow at him.

“Your sister.”

“What about her?”

He doesn’t say anything but rubs the back of his neck, then he finally says, “I’m in love with Bailey.”

That catches me off guard. I suspected he had feelings for her in the past, but I’ll never approve of him. I’m her brother, I get a say so in whether she takes part in an arranged marriageor not, and the answer is no. I don’t want her to ever feel like she has to do that again. This time, I have a second chance of making everything right. To give her freedom. To give her what she wants.

“What are you saying? Because you love her, you think I’m going to hand her over to you for you to marry?”

“Yes, and you should. I’ll protect her and take care of her, get her the help she needs. She should have been engaged to me. I’ll protect her. If your father had taken my father’s offer, then I could have kept her safe.”

I push him. “Stay the fuck away from my sister, Jameson. I mean it. I know what you’re into. I know what you like, and she’s already been broken. I don’t need someone else trying to break her as well.”

He shoves me. “You can’t keep me away from her.”

“I’m going to ignore your last statement to save our friendship, but if you go anywhere near Bailey, I’ll slit your throat and watch the life leave your eyes.”

I walk to Lyrical’s room, pulling up a chair next to her bed. The sounds of the machines beep and I place my palm in her cold hand, squeezing tight, but she doesn’t squeeze back.

Snow

After I leave Lyrical’s room, I go straight to Bailey’s and plant a kiss on her forehead. I’m so pissed off that I need to drive to the mansion on campus. Once I make it to the basement, I find Carter there, chained, naked, bruises and cuts all over his body. Keanu carves into his skin with a knife, and I place my hand on his shoulders, so he leaves the room.

I cross my feet over the other and I don’t know who I hate more, him or my father. He used my wife’s dreams against her so he can sell or kill her, then on top of that, the motherfucker was Bailey’s boyfriend, keeping her locked up like an animal, and he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do to her.

I piece it all together. It makes sense now.

His face is blank, no emotions on display.

Grabbing the knife from my ankle, I place it on his neck, drawing blood, itching to slice his skin like I’m carving a turkey.

“What did you do to my sister?” I demand.

He eyes me a second too long then closes them, before laughing. “I treated her like all the other whores we had downthere in the basement. We used them, fucked them, then we sold her body; they do what they want to the girls and bring them back, but your sister was my favorite. At one point I did love her. She knows how to suck d—”

I slam my fist into his stomach, shutting him up.

“Why was my father at the mansion?”

He takes several moments to catch his breath before answering. “He’s the one who told me to pimp Bailey out and sell her, so I got her hooked on any kind of drugs to keep her high. I told her she was pretty, made it seem like her family hated her, until she tried to leave me. He was the one who told me to start dating her because she was rebellious against her arranged marriage to Tim.

“Your sister came to him, wanting out of the arranged marriage, and she threatened to run away so he told me to groom her, keep her drugged, make her a slut for my dick and then sell her.

“Your father is behind the girls being sold in the basement. He wanted to start his own ring to traffic girls and since I used to be part of the mafia, he paid me a large amount to find girls for it.

“When your father told me Lyrical came to you about someone else having something to do with the car accident, that’s when he told me to get her next, so I sent Samuel to kill her.”

It takes every ounce of my being to not slice him into two. I shove forward, nicking his neck, blood dripping down his flesh.

“The car accident was your father’s idea. He’s the one who had me drug both of them at the football party, and Drake pulled over the girls, pretending to be a policeman. He took Bailey out of the car, replaced your sister’s body with someone else and pulled Lyrical out. He rolled the car into a tree, set Lyrical’s unconscious body next to the tree, then he set the caron fire. Revi knew his daughter was a junkie. He knew that if he blamed you for the car accident that you would want to take your revenge out on Lyrical. He didn’t want Lyrical dead because of revenge for your sister, he wanted her dead because he knew Lyrical realized the accident was staged. The body that was in the car belonged to one of the girls we sold—she looked like Bailey.

I remember going to the morgue, looking at a burned body—a dead body that wasn’t my sister’s. I feel like shit, like the walls are caving in. Lyrical thought that it was a setup. She knew and I made her believe that she made it up in her head, that she was hallucinating. She doesn’t remember taking Molly because she didn’t. She was drugged. No one believed her. When I checked through footage of the car accident, there was none, and I thought it was strange. Clemon checked with the NHPD and the medical records, but it turns out it was all forged. Lyrical was in the crossfire of it all, and I need to apologize to her. I did choose my revenge over her—instead of taking it a step further and investigating it, I believed what I thought were facts. It makes sense how my father had pictures of Bailey in the basement. They staged June’s death because he was the perfect setup. My father needed me to believe that Lyrical was making it up so I would kill her and go to jail.

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