Page 66 of Tempted to Rebel

Okay, so there are a lot of things I’d love to hear her say, but the most important one is the evergreen I-L-Y.

Ruin finishes sweeping the broken glass into the trash and comes up beside Celia to peer over her head at her phone screen. She’s gone pale while checking her messages. “Who is it?” Ruin asks, sliding onto the couch beside her. Together, they read whatever’s on her screen, Celia’s lips moving as she pieces through the words.

Must be a long fucking message.

Suddenly, she jumps up and loses her grip on the phone. It crashes into my chest, and I have to scramble to catch it before it hits the floor. “Whoa, hey, what’s wrong?—”

“We have to leavenow!” She squeezes around my body and rushes to the car keys hanging up in the kitchen. Once they’re in hand, she fumbles for her purse and slings it over her body so that it rests against her hip. “Come on, let’s go!”

Ruin is already jumping into motion, but it takes me longer to gather my wits. I don’t even have shoes on. “Celia, hold up.” Iknow that I was the one to suggest we get out of the house, butgoddamn.Growling in frustration, I grab one of my shoes from under the kitchen table—where the hell is the other one?—and follow them into the garage. She’s already got the car running with Ruin riding shotgun.

Great, looks likeI’llbe the third wheel.

I snag my missing Converse from the doorway and jump into the backseat. “When am I gonna ride up front?” Slipping on my shoes, I don’t bother hiding my annoyance. I bought her the car—I should get to sit up front one of these days!

“Read the text,” Ruin instructs, unmoved by my plight, “and buckle seatbelt.”

“You buckle your seatbelt,” I grumble under my breath. Flipping the phone over, I squint to read the latest voicemail while Celia backs out of the driveway. It’s from Sara, the chick Celia pays to mind the shop. The message doesn’t make sense, though, the speech-to-text system only picking up pieces of Sara’s voice rather than the whole thing. Another message comes through, this time as a text.

It’s a blurry picture of a woman tied to a chair, a raging inferno blazing behind her back. I read the previous messages as fast as I can, my stomach dropping. Sara isn’t the one sending these messages.

The killer tearing through our city is.

Another text comes through.

HURRY UP IF YOU WANT TO SEE HER ALIVE

Pinpricks of fear skitter down my arms as I lift the phone to my ear. There’s only one way to be sure that it’s our dad sending these messages, and that’s by playing the voicemail.

But… it might not be him. It could be anyone—a prank!—or a butt dial!—seriously,anyonecould have stolen Sara’s phone.I bet it’s a bunch of college kids smoking pot in the science building, having a real laugh about scaring some stranger they’ve never met?—

A gruff, male voice crackles in my ear. He laughs,fucking laughs, as a girl in the background screams. “We miss you, Celia,” the man taunts, breathing heavily into the receiver. “I keep asking Sara when you’re coming back from your vacation, but she won’t stop screaming to answer me. I think she might be broken.” He chuckles again, making my skin crawl. “You shouldn’t have taken so long to come see us.”

“For fuck’s sake.” I pause the voicemail and go back to reading the automated text translation. I can’t stomach another second of that man’s voice crawling in my head.

I’ve been dying to see you again. I have a big surprise… don’t wait…tell my sons…

With a hiss, I slam my fist into the back of the Ruin’s headrest. “Goddammit!” Our bastard fatherdidbreak into Celia’s house. He set up the red roses in the crystal vase—the twin taper candles on the dining room table—the broken glass pane in the back door.

He assaulted our woman and tried to kidnap her. “I’ll never forgive him,” I snarl, slamming Celia’s phone against Ruin’s shoulder. He takes the device from me and reads the message again, remaining silent. If anyone has a reason to hate our father, it’s Ruin.

But if anyone should be scared of him, that’s Ruin, too. The evil bastard has tried to kill him at least a half dozen times—some of which Ruin doesn’t even know about, because Rage and I got in the way. Some of the scars on Rage’s body aren’t from street brawls or collecting bratva debts—they’re from ourfucking father going into a drunken rage and attempting to beat his kids to death.

“We should have emptied a clip in his gut the day he showed back up.” My anger flares bright, burning me up from the inside.

“We did not know where he was hiding.”

I grab my head in my hands. “Fuck! We still don’t know where he’s hiding!”

Celia slams on the breaks and narrowly avoids getting into a wreck. “I knew I should have gone to check on her. This is all my fault.” Her voice is strong but unstable, warbling on her vowels. “Now she’s been taken, and he’s going to—” Her voice cracks this time, and the sound is a dagger straight to my heart.

It won’t be long before she goes into a full-blown panic at this rate.

“Breathe, baby, just breathe.”

“Iambreathing!”

Ooookay, wrong choice of words.

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