Page 90 of Beautiful Ruins
I almost laughed. It was so easy in this town to make things disappear. People included.
“I’m sure you will,” Rowan said, his voice flat. “Now, I think it’s time you left.” He stepped back, his arm tightening around my waist, anchoring me to his side. Then he motioned to the door.
Dad nodded and moved across the living room, pausing with his hand on the door handle. “Before I go, the funeral for Nash’s family is tomorrow. I know you want answers about your mother’s death, so I was thinking afterwards—if you want the truth—you can come over. Rowan, too.” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just gave me one last look. It was pathetic, like a dog left out in the rain. “Bye, Sades.”
I gripped Rowan’s hand. “Bye, Dad.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ROWAN
Scout’s footsteps were anything but subtle as he trampled over fallen leaves. A shotgun could’ve gone off in the distance and still would’ve been quieter than the kid trying to sneak around.
Not that it mattered much. There wasn’t a soul around for kilometres. Just the three of us, the buzz of cicadas, and a mistake we had to clean up before it came back and threatened Sadie again.
Marcus’s blood ran a deep, dark red in the moonlight—almost black. It coated his lips and teeth, dripping down his chin with a sickening sound that made the silence heavier.
One thing I knew for sure, no-one was going to miss this arsehole.
Scout did a quick sweep of the tree line, stopping to crouch by some low-lying bush, eyes darting around like he expected the forest to spit out the devil himself. He was a great lookout, almost too twitchy, but that’s why he was there. If anyone came to see what all the screaming was about, he’d spot them coming.
Bear hovered over Marcus, a silent wall of muscle that wouldn’t hesitate to rip a heart out if needed. He crossed his arms over his chest, clenching his hands under his armpits. I’d witnessed plenty of instances where those same hands had broken many bones.
Then there was the waste of oxygen, Marcus. He lay sprawled out in the dirt, face a fucking mess thanks to Bear. All tied up, jumpy like an animal in a trap. He was a slippery bastard, but the three of us had finally managed to get him secured.
“Should’ve left when you had the chance,” I said, lighting a cigarette, my knuckles still raw from the struggle. I took a drag, letting the smoke sting my lungs. It helped burn something other than the guilt in my chest. “What happens next is all on you, dickhead.”
It took everything I had not to slice him open and strangle him with his own intestines. I liked to think I had more restraint than that, but with Sadie, not much about myself made sense any longer.
I wanted to kill him right then and there. But I knew if I lost control too soon, it wouldn’t be just Marcus I was destroying. I was closer to the edge than I cared to admit. But I held on.
Marcus coughed, blood and spit mixing with the mud. It stuck to his clammy skin like paste. “I didn’t—” He wheezed. I’d have loved to watch him choke on his own tongue, and for a blinding second, I was tempted to yank it out of his mouth and slice it off myself. His eyes darted to Bear, then to Scout, who was making his way back to us. “You really going to kill me? Over that bitch?” Fuck, he even had the nerve to laugh, a sickly gurgle in his throat, like calling my woman a bitch was going to make me untie him and set him free. “Do you even know who I am?” The prick thought his name carried weightin this town, even as he lay there trussed up like a busted-up pig.
My jaw tightened, and I stepped closer, blowing a lung full of smoke in the arsehole’s face. “Thatbitchis my old lady. So, yes, I will kill you over her. In fact, I’ll kill you for her.” I let my words sink into his thick skull as I gripped onto his hair, yanking his head back. “And I don’t give a shit who you are. By the time we’re finished with you, you won’t be recognisable, anyway.” And Sadie wouldn’t ever have to worry about him again.
I told myself I wasn’t like Marcus. That I wasn’t going to let anger dictate my every move. The truth was, I wasn’t any different. Just in a different skin, wearing a better excuse. We both used violence to get what we wanted, the only difference is he’d laid his hands on what was mine and that was never going to fly.
Nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge, he huffed out breath after breath. I shoved at his face and stepped back, needing distance, before I sliced that smug expression right off his fucking face. I’d seen that look in plenty of men before him. I knew what it meant—he thought he could turn the tables if he just found the right angle, the right crack. But I didn’t sway easily.
“People will come looking for me,” he said, trying for tough but barely keeping it together.
“That won’t be a problem.” Bear knelt beside Marcus and snatched his phone from his back pocket. “Didn’t know you had holiday plans, Marcus,” he said, tapping away on the screen. “Already tired of us small-town folk?” He held the phone up in front of Marcus’s face, the screen bright in the dark, a half-written message about an unexpected trip out of town signing his death sentence even as he sat bleeding out.
Marcus blinked, confusion written all over his face. Hestruggled against his bindings, desperate and defeated. “What . . . what are you doing?” His words came out more like a whimper than a question. “You can’t be serious.”
I knelt in front of him, close enough to smell the pungent scent of his fear mixed with sweat and dirt. “We’re just making sure no-one will miss you for a while.” I traded a glance with Bear. He was good at that—making problems look like they’d solved themselves. Making people disappear. “And if they do,” I said, lifting a shoulder, “they’ll think you don’t want to be found.”
Marcus’s eyes flicked between the three of us, like a wild beast deciding which one of us was going to move first. “Listen, just let me go,” he pleaded, the words rushing out in an avalanche of desperation. “I swear I’ll never step foot inside this town again.” He struggled against the ropes rubbing against the raw flesh of his wrists, wincing.
Begging was no use. He still couldn’t quite wrap his head around the fact this was happening to him. The arsehole must have thought he was untouchable. As if his brain hadn’t caught up to the situation yet, the piss-poor hand he’d been dealt.
The ember flared at the end of my cigarette, lighting the shadows on Marcus’s face. I let the smoke curl between us. When it had burned down to the filter, I flicked it into the bush, and tilted my head, assessing Marcus.
He wasn’t much older than I was, maybe a couple years give or take. But the lines on his face said he’d lived hard and fast, probably chewed through more than he could handle. More than he could back up. It seemed fitting, him ending this way. There he was, tied up in a desolate patch of the bush, about to meet his maker.
I stood up, breaking our little moment. “You made a huge mistake putting your hands on Sadie—again. Only this time there was someone else there to witness it. You fucked up.”
Marcus laughed, a hacking sound that came out as more of a choke. Blood and saliva dropped onto my boots, and I clenched my teeth.
