Page 149 of Ruin My Life
I should’ve died that day…
IwishI had.
Connor’s voice cuts through the silence, harsh and urgent. “We need to go. Now.”
He raises his gun and shoots out the lens of a security camera mounted by the stairs. One that I missed on my way in. One of the others takes out their phone to call for cleanup, their words a blur of static in my ears.
None of it matters.
This was supposed to be it—the last thing I had to do. ThereasonI survived.
But it’s not really the reason.
They let me live on purpose.
It was never some miracle that left me here on earth to avenge my family. It was all planned from the very beginning.
“Brie...”
Damon’s voice reaches me through the fog.
I look up, and he’s not light.
He’s shadow. He’s gravity.
He’s the consequence of everything I’ve become.
I betrayed him. And forthis?
He should kill me. Iwanthim to.
But he doesn’t lift his gun.
He walks toward me, kneels in the blood, and scoops me into his arms like I’m not the girl who just set fire to everything he built.
Like I’m not the stray bullet that just started the war.
He holds me close.
And I don’t fight it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Damon
ISHOULD KILL HER.
Not because she hacked me. Not because she lied. Not even because she’s made herself the Songbirds’ top fucking priority now.
I should kill her to spare her from what they’ll do when they catch her.
Because theywillcatch her. Torture her. Break her slowly—methodically.
I’ve seen what they do to people who make them bleed. Iwasone of them, back before I walked away from the prison they dressed up as loyalty and called family.
All of that was rattling in my head when we pulled up to Oil-Pan Motors. Every step up that rusted stairwell, I was torn in two.
Save her. Kill her. Save her. Kill her.
