Page 113 of Beautiful Ruins
Dust settled on his wild hair and bloodshot eyes. “Sades—fuck.” His hands were everywhere, frantic but soft, terrified but gentle as he inspected my arms, my legs, my face. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. Once. Twice. “I’m not. I’m really not.” I pointed to my father’s lifeless body. “Dad . . . he’s dead.”
We both knew that to be true, but just saying the words out loud made it real. And that made all the difference. Dad was gone. And I hated that I felt both heartbreak and relief.
Rowan’s face darkened, his jaw clenching as he processed my words. “Jesus, Sades . . .” He looked over at the body again, dragging a hand through his hair. “Your dad’s the reason you’re in this mess. You know that, right? He’s the one who put you in danger.”
I grabbed his arm, desperate to make him understand, nails digging in. “No, Ro. It was all a ploy. Dad . . . he set this up to lure Snake out. And it worked. Before he died, Dad shot Snake.”
Rowan’s eyebrows shot up, disbelief warring with a glimmer of hope. “Snake’s dead?”
I shook my head, my voice trembling. “I . . . I don’t know. It all happened so fast. Dad fired, and Snake went down, but then he was gone. There was blood, Rowan. A lot of it. But I don’t know where he is now.”
Rowan’s grip on my shoulders tightened, his eyes scanning the shadows around us. “If he’s wounded, he can’t have gone far. And Nicky?”
I sniffed and lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. He took off when the gunfire started.”
“Sounds about right. Fucking coward.” Rowan blew out a breath and scrubbed his hands over his face like he could scrub the nightmare off with it. “Okay,” he said, brushing my hair back from my forehead. “We need to move.” He cupped my cheeks, his touch firm and grounding, his eyes darting between mine. “Can you walk?”
I nodded, the movement small and incomplete, just enough to convince myself that I could still move. “Wait,” Isaid, grabbing his wrist as he started to pull away. “How did you know? About my father? About what he did to Mum?”
Rowan’s eyes softened slightly, a storm of emotions swirling in their depths. He hesitated, his jaw clenching as if wrestling with whether to tell me the truth. “Iron,” he finally said. “He gave me a USB. It had—Christ, Sadie. There was a video.” He dragged a hand down his face, voice cracking. “Logan filmed it. Iron. Snake. My old man. Yours. They were all there.”
My stomach tightened, and I cupped a hand over my mouth, the images of my best friend witnessing something like that, shattering what little strength I had left, like I could feel his eyes watching it all, the camera shaking in his hands.
“Logan?” A soft sob bubbled out of me. “He . . . he recorded it?”
Rowan nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah, baby, he did. It was at Hollow Creek Farm. I’m so sorry, Sades.”
The world tilted. A breeze slipped through a cracked window, stirring the dust. Memories of Logan’s haunted eyes while he hung there flooded back, hitting me like a freight train.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head, more out of disbelief than anything else. “No, that can’t be right. Logan wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t . . .”
But even as the words left my mouth, I knew the truth. The pieces fell into place, a terrible puzzle finally taking shape from the chaos. That’s what Logan had wanted to tell me that night. He was going to tell me the truth about my mother’s death.
My forehead fell against Rowan’s collarbone, and he held me, letting the emotions crash over me like a torrential downpour.
There was no anger towards Logan. How could I have beenmad at him? The guilt he would have felt in those last months must have been excruciating, enough that he couldn’t see any other way out. The worst part? In all the wreckage, my mother had done the most damage. She brought it on herself, and then she buried Logan right there with her. She’d made him carry the weight of her sins. And it crushed him.
It was her I couldn’t forgive—not Logan.
“Ro,” I mumbled against his chest, my voice barely audible. “There’s more.” I swallowed hard, the words sticking in my throat as I pulled away, swiping my wrist under my nose. “Before . . . before my father died, he told me something. About Logan.”
Rowan stilled, bracing for a second blow. “What about him?”
“Logan wasn’t working for the club.” The words tumbled out, each one a weight lifting from my chest. “He was working for my mother.”
Rowan’s face went slack, and his hands fell away from me. “No. No way.” He stared at me like I’d spoken another language. “That’s bullshit, Sadie. The messages to my old man. I thought . . .” He frowned. “Fuck.”
I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, my fingers trembling as they closed around the worn leather. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ro.” I pulled out the small, battered diary and held it out to him. “Dad said it’s all in here,” I said, lifting a shoulder. “He gave it to me—right before . . . I think he’d been trying to help Logan.”
His eyes narrowed as he took it and turned it over in his calloused hands. “What is it?” he said, his voice rough.
“It’s my mother’s diary. The truth. About Logan, about why he was really working for my mother. He wanted to help your dad, Ro. He was trying to save him and apparently my mother promised to help.”
Rowan’s jaw clenched as he flipped open the cover, his eyes scanning the first page. I saw the moment realisation hit him, his face paling as he read.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, exhaling sharply. He shoved the diary back into my hands as though the words themselves had burned him. “It doesn’t change where the blame belongs, Sades.” He sniffed. “That’s on my old man. No matter how you look at it, Logan made choices for him. I can’t forgive him. Not yet, not after what he did. But we’ll get to that. Right now, we need to move. Bear and Scout are waiting outside by the van.”
