Page 118 of Vendetta Crown

Daria nods immediately, already turning to leave.

"What's happening?" Vera asks, her voice low.

I shake my head slightly. "Just keep the girls away. Please."

I hold Mikayla as her body shakes with sobs. There are no words I can offer that would ease her pain.

I know that better than anyone.

Empty promises would only mock her grief.

"She's gone," Mikayla chokes out between gasps. "She's gone, she's gone, she's gone."

I tighten my arms around her, letting her collapse against me. Her tears soak through my shirt, hot and relentless.

Another scream tears from her throat, raw and ragged as if someone is pulling it out from deep within her soul.

I don't try to quiet her. I remember how that scream needs to escape, how holding it in feels like dying. So I rock her gently, one hand stroking her hair, the other firm against her back, anchoring her to this moment, to me, to something solid while her world shatters.

"I can't—" she gasps. "I can't breathe."

"Yes, you can," I whisper against her hair. "You're breathing right now. Just keep doing that."

Her body convulses with another wave of sobs. I hold on tighter.

"He—" Mikayla's words break apart, her breath hitching so violently I worry she might pass out. "He told me just before he did it..."

She tries again, her voice trembling so hard I have to lean closer to hear.

"Look what your uncle made me do."

Time seems to freeze around us as my vision narrows to a pinpoint.

Those words. Those awful words, the same one that he painted on my parents' living room wall in their blood.

My ears ring. For a moment, I'm back there, staring at crimson letters dripping down the walls.

That monster did to Mikayla what he did to me.

Mikayla's body convulses with another wave of sobs.

"I was so mad at her today," she chokes out between gasps. "When she first arrived, I wouldn't even look at her. I was so angry for all the things she's done." Her voice breaks. "I didn't even say goodbye to her when she left this afternoon."

"But you were still with her before she left," I say firmly, wiping tears from her face even as mine fall freely. "That matters more than anything else in the world right now."

Mikayla's eyes, so swollen and red, search mine. "But I… I didn't—" Her body shakes with another sob. "I didn't even tell her I loved her."

"She knew," I whisper, pulling her close again. "Trust me, Mikayla. She knew."

"You don't understand," she cries, her words muffled against my shoulder. "She tried to hug me, and I turned away. If I had known?—"

"Listen to me, sweetie," I say, cradling her face in my hands. "What matters is that you were there. You still spent time with her today."

The weight of my own memories crushes down on me. The stupid arguments with my mom the morning before she died. The eye roll I gave my dad when he told me to be home in time for dinner. The way I teased my little brother for putting on mismatched socks.

"She loved you enough to come and see the three of you one final time," I continue, my voice thick with tears. "No matter what happened between you, that never changed."

Mikayla collapses against me, her entire body heaving with grief. I can feel the toxic mix of guilt and self-loathing that I know too well radiating from her. It's a poisonous voice whispering that this is somehow something that she could have prevented. That somehow, what that bastard did isherfault.

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