Page 102 of Beautiful Ruins
I scrubbed my hands over my face. I must have heard wrong.
The video blurred again. I couldn’t tell if the blur came from the camera. Or from me. My head was spinning with the sound of Sadie’s father’s name exploding in my skull. I leaned closer to the screen just as John appeared, stepping up beside Iron.
“John?” Patricia’s voice wavered, trembling as much as the camera in Logan’s hand. “What have you done?”
Some part of me wanted to turn it off, but Icouldn’t. I could only watch as all the truth bled through the screen and begged me to drown in it.
“Me?” John took a step toward her, toward the man who was fucking his wife. The betrayal was written all over his face, like a tattoo of grief and guilt and every sin he’d buried. He jabbed a finger in the air. “What haveyoudone?” His hands shook, violence barely contained. I didn’t know if it was anger or something else, didn’t know if anything made sense anymore. “Cheating on me with this piece of shit.” His voice grew louder, but no-one stepped in. They all just watched on with quiet amusement as he moved closer. “Betraying everything I’ve bled to keep buried—your investigation, the mayor, the drugs, all of it. You cracked the dam wide open, Patricia. And now you’re going to know what the other end of defeat looks like.”
“Jesus Christ, John,” Patricia said, scoffing. “Look at you.” She pinned all of them with a panicked glare. “You’re as corrupt as they come. I’m the one trying to save this town, not you.” The words were more for herself than for anyone else. It didn’t matter. They fell on deaf ears, anyway. “You want Sadie growing up in this? With a father who just fucking stands by?”
John laughed, the sound hollow as it echoed through the laptop speakers. “You don’t evenlookat our daughter. Not anymore. Too busy fucking your boyfriend to notice she even exists.” He didn’t care that they were all watching, didn’t have a conscience to gnaw at him like Patricia thought he did. “When was the last time you had a conversation with her, Patricia?”
She stumbled back like the words had knocked the air from her lungs. Her hand flew to her mouth as tears spilled over. Sadie was so much like her mother—beautiful, stubborn, and always getting herself into situations that could have gotten her killed.
“This isn’t just about me,” she whispered. “It’s for her. Foryou, John. I’m trying to protect our daughter—don’t you see that?”
My head spun. Her words hadn’t mattered. Not to John. Not to any of them. They had seen her as another obstacle that needed to be dealt with, the only way they knew how.
John shook his head, his expression cold and unforgiving. “No Patricia, you’re doing this for yourself,” he said, his voice sharp with accusation. “You don’t think I know what you’ve been doing? You want the Ridge Riders gone, so this piece of shit”—he waved a hand at the man beside her—“can swoop on in and take their place. I won’t let that happen. It ends now.”
In an instant, he stepped back, distancing himself from the stain of it all, and Snake stepped forward. Another Rider, one I didn’t recognise, joined him, holding a gun to Patricia’s lover’s head. That arsehole didn’t even flinch, didn’t even try to protect her.
My hands fisted on the desk, my heart lodging in my throat.
“You sure you want to do this, John?” Iron said, glancing over his shoulder like he couldn’t believe how far John was willing to go.
“Get it over with,” John muttered, already turning his back as he shook his head.
“Fuck. Oh god—fuck.” Logan’s muffled sob cut through the noise in my head.
That is the reason he had killed himself. He’d witnessed his best friend’s mother’s murder. And her father had been the reason.
“As you wish,” Iron said, waving a dismissive hand.
The words echoed in my mind like a death sentence.
Almost simultaneously, the gunshots rang out, the sound like a thunderclap inside my skull. The laptop vibrated on the desk, the screen glowing with the aftermath. Patricia cried out,then her body slumped to the ground, followed by the man behind her.
“Fuck!” I slammed the laptop shut, and pushed away from the desk, heart racing.
My breathing came out in short, sharp pants as I paced, tugging at my hair like it could somehow erase what I’d just witnessed.
How the fuck was I supposed to tell Sadie her father had her mother murdered, then made it look like a fucking accident?
I bent over, hands on my knees as I sucked in warm air, the walls closing in on me. “Oh, God. What—what the fuck.” I swallowed down the bile rising into my throat.
Christ. John had killed his wife. But worse—Logan knew. My brother fuckingknewand said nothing.
My entire body locked up.
Sadie.
She was with John.
I’d failed her again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
