Page 77 of Sorrow

“Let you go? Let... you... go?!” Hayes screams. It’s louder than I’ve ever heard his voice before, and the boom of it makes me flinch. He slams Ricky’s head down hard enough to break his nose, and then lifts him back up by his hair. “Look at her!”

A chill runs down my spine as I step closer, prepared to do whatever I have to.I’ve come this far, there’s no way I’m letting him leave here alive.

“I’m looking at her! I’m looking!”

“Say her fucking name.”

“S-S-S-Sam-mara,” he stutters out. “Please!”

“Samara Sarro,” he growls. “And she’s the last person you’ll ever fucking see.”

He grips Ricky’s chin with one hand and uses his other to twist in one quick, solid motion, the crunch of his neck reaching my ears a second before he falls face down, unmoving.

The last of The Sons is dead.

The still-pounding thrum of music from the garage makes this all feel like a dream, or some weird, twisted party game. I keep expecting the lights to come up, the music to dim, and the three dead men in this hallway to stand up and applaud — but none of that happens.

They’re really dead.

AndIkilled them.

33

Hayes

She looks like she’s five seconds away from either screaming bloody murder or running away to hide. She’s covered in blood, eyes frozen wide like none of this has quite settled into her brain yet, and the bruises on her neck make me want to kill every single one of them again.

Especially because I didn’t get to kill them all this time.

No. My beautiful hurricane never needed a hero, because this was inside of her all along.

She’s a survivor.

With my hands raised like I’m approaching a feral animal, I slowly take a step toward her. “Hey, baby. Are you with me?”

For a moment I’m worried she’s going to remember all the times I made her life aliving hell and slit my throat next, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I still need to hold her.

The knife in her hand glints in the low light, making me pause. “Stop. Just stop,” she rushes out. “What the f—? What the fuck just happened?”

“You lived,” I say simply. “Everything else was just collateral. They came to take you from this world, and you fought them. You survived them.”

Finally, the music stops. The battery in my speaker must’ve finally died. The sudden silence makes her jerk, bloody knife twitching. “I shouldn’t have had to. I told you. I told you both to just turn them in, and what— what the fuck? Do you have any idea how long it’s gonna take to get the blood out?”

The almost desperate pitch of her voice tips me off that she’s not talking about the carpet. She’s talking abouther.Her heart, her mind, her soul. Her hands. She was forced to take their lives because we did nothing.

Fuck.

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know exactly which part I’m talking about, but I wish I could fix it all. “I don’t know why they came tonight, but we had a plan.”

Not a good one, but who am I to tell Boo how to handle his vendetta?

“It’s just — you’re just —” She cuts herself off with a bloodcurdling, angry scream, spinning and hurling that knife against the garage door.

It bounces off and hits the floor.

“Fuck!” she screams, catching sight of the mess she made of Holt. He’s so bloody I can’t tell exactly what she did to him, but it’s enough to make her double over and throw up all over his body.

Jesus. Now I know why they say to never drive a woman crazy. I think I’m scared of her.

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