Page 226 of Ruin My Life
Her face. Her ghost.
The woman pushes open the door, stepping inside with her phone already clutched in one shaking hand. She flicks on the light—warmth floods the room but never reaches me.
She drops a bucket of cleaning supplies at her feet and rushes toward me, breathless and frantic. “Oh my god—are you okay?”
Her eyes dart to the bruises on my throat. Her hands tremble as she reaches for the zip ties.
I find my voice, raw as it scrapes past my damaged throat.
“Run.”
She freezes. “What?”
“Run.” Sharper now. Desperate. “Please. Youneedto run.”
The door closes behind her with a violentslam, loud enough to make both of us jump.
She spins—just in time to see him.
Connor steps from the kitchen shadows like a nightmare crawling out of a child’s closet, slow and certain, his now mismatching eyes equally dead and bottomless.
“No,” I breathe.
She fumbles with her phone, fingers slipping, screen flickering under her thumb. Too slow.
Connor swings the butt of his gun—crack!
It collides with her skull. She drops like dead weight, folding onto the carpet beside the spilled bucket. Bottles and rags scatter like a cruel joke, bright labels against dingy rug.
She doesn't move.
He stands over her a moment, blank-faced, then lifts his eyes to me. I thrash against the zip ties, the plastic biting deeper, pain blazing up my arms like an inferno.
He steps over her body, slow as a king crossing his court. The gun never wavering.
He points it at her head.
No.
“No!”
My stomach flips. I gag on nothing—just adrenaline and helplessness burning through my veins.
“If you want to save her life,” he growls, voice drained of everything human, “then it’s time to come clean, Brianna.”
He cocks the gun—click.The sound ricochets off the walls like a death sentence.
“Because I’m starting to think,” he says, each word knifing through the room, “this isn’t the right house.”
Chapter Forty-One
Damon
CHAVEZ GRIPS THE STEERING WHEEL WITHone hand, barreling down the highway toward Rhode Island while I hammer away at my laptop, the screen’s cold blue wash flickering across my fingers.
I’m digging. Scraping through digital walls, tearing at firewalls, hunting for something—anything—that could tell me who the hell Connor Vaughn really is.
Lee ran a background check on him when we first hired him. We run one on everyone—standard procedure. Back then, nothing raised a single red flag. His file was clean—just textured enough to look real. A real address in Kings County. A fake juvenile record peppered with petty theft. An invented family tree cluttered with deadbeat cousins and a single mom who “died young.”
