Page 109 of Beautiful Ruins
SADIE
There was nothing but darkness, an all-consuming void that filled my mind. It swallowed me whole, my version of being buried alive in a coffin of silence.
Even time seemed to stretch and dissolve as I lay there, caught between consciousness and the vague echo of a world I was quickly losing my grip on.
Then slowly, new sensations began to creep in, dull and distant at first. I thought I’d imagined them, but as they grew louder, they scraped against the inside of my skull.
The sound of dripping water finally broke through the fog in my head, and my eyes flew open. Cold concrete pressed against my skin, but my brain couldn’t place where I was. My surroundings were a blur, spinning and unfocused.
“Rowan . . .” I murmured, his name barely a whisper.
Perhaps I imagined speaking, but my lips cracked and stung from the slight movement. Panic clawed its way back into me, urging me to fight, but my body was a heavy, useless thing.
I willed my arms to lift, to do something. Twitch a finger, if nothing else. But my muscles wouldn’t obey. Neitherwould my lungs as I sucked in the air, stale and thick with dust.
Where was I? The question echoed through me, but I couldn’t hold on long enough to make sense of it.
A scream clawed at my throat, raw and panicked. But it barely scraped past my lips, more breath than sound. I drifted in and out, gasping for air I couldn’t quite catch, until finally, my senses began to settle.
Was Rowan already too late? Was I already dead?
Wherever I was, it was nothing but darkness. It was the kind that felt alive, wrapping itself around me, pushing against my skin.
My head pounded in time with my heart rate, relentless and brutal, and I blinked against the void I seemed to have found myself in. If I had to guess how long I’d been out of it, it had to be hours, the sun now long gone.
I shivered, and a low, detached voice echoed through the room.
“Sadie?”
I blinked rapidly, squinting into the darkness. “Dad?”
As the word left my mouth, bile climbed my throat. It wasn’t a dream. It was true—my father had drugged me.
A light flicked on above me, revealing rusted beams and peeling paint on the walls. I threw an arm up to shield my eyes.
“What . . .” My voice caught in my dry throat, and I coughed, more dust and mildew filling my lungs. “What are you going to do to me?”
Dad rushed in, breathless and frantic—like he hadn’t been the one to drug me and dump me in an abandoned warehouse. The light swayed overhead, one single bulb there to witness what was coming. Dust motes floated like ash as the scent of wet stone and old metal filled my nostrils.
Dad stopped in front of me, his expression every bitthe concerned father, even though it was his betrayal that had landed me there. “Sades, please,” he murmured, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I didn’t have a choice. You’ll understand . . . once it’s all over.”
I swallowed hard, desperation clawing at my chest as whatever fragile hope I had left in me finally shattered. My mind scrambled to make sense of it, to reconcile the man in front of me with the one I wanted to hold on to. I wanted to beg him to be the dad I remembered, the one who made pancakes and cleaned my scraped knees.
But that man was dead. Or maybe he’d never existed.
A choked sob pressed against the silence. “Why would you do this?” I couldn’t hide the raw pain.
Dad placed his hands on his hips in that way he always did when he was about to lecture me. It was supposed to make him seem more authoritative, but all it did now was make him a fraud.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, exasperation leaking out, as though I was the one making things difficult.
“Not what I think?” The heat of the words burned my throat. My hands fisted the dirt beneath me. It was the only thing keeping me together. “I don’t believe anything out of your mouth. Not anymore. Rowan told me what you did, Dad. What you did to Mum. How could you do that? How could you kill her?” I needed to say it out loud, needed to hear the betrayal made real.
Dad’s shoulders slumped forward, the fight seeping out of him. “You don’t know,” he said, his voice a low growl, “what she had done.”
“What could have been so bad that it warranted her own husband murdering her?” Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot and unrelenting. “Tell me, Dad. What did she do?” My voice broke, the sound so small and fractured against the cold walls.
He ran a hand through his hair, decades of exhaustion creeping in. “She was cheating on me, Sadie.” He swallowed hard. “That man she was with,” he said, words faltering for a moment, “he . . . was part of a rival motorcycle club. She was selling us out so they could take over.” The room tilted. The cold no longer existed as fire built in my chest. “She wanted the Ridge Riders gone, but only so another club—even worse—could take over.”
