Page 142 of Reaper and Ruin
Her eyes narrowed. “He loved me! That’s what you do for someone you love, Violet! You do things to make them happy! To make sure they stay!” A tear dripped down her face, and her voice softened just a little. “I just wanted him to stay.”
I would have felt sorry for her if the things she’d done hadn’t been so horrific. I understood what it felt like to be unloved. To feel like you had nobody in your life who cared. Nobody who wanted to stick around and stand by your side.
But Francine was sick and twisted and just as much to blame for the deaths of countless women as the men she’d claimed to love were.
“You took them from me. Paul. Then Travis. You took them both,” Francine whispered. “You owe me, Violet. You owe me a family.”
“I owe you nothing.”
She laughed. “And yet your men are out there, dying one by one trying to save you. I warned them not to try to come in here, but they didn’t listen. That’s the universe, Violet. That’s the universe punishing you because you stole what was mine.”
Bile rose in my throat. I could hear the shouts and the thumps and the pain all around but could see none of it. Their voices drifted in and out between the red-hot rage building inside me.
“Stop this,” I said in a voice that shocked even me. It was low. Sharp. Deadly.
There were none of the insecurities that normally plagued me. None of the quiet timidness that had characterized my entire life and every conversation I’d ever had.
I was a fully grown woman with children who needed her, and three men I would fight to the death for.
Because that’s exactly what they were doing for me right now.
I cracked open the lid on the bleach. “Stop the games. Stop the traps. Stop it all.”
The voice sounded like it didn’t come from me at all. Even Nyah let go of me and took half a step backward.
But my gaze was only for Francine. She and I locked eyes and didn’t turn away.
“Or what, Violet? What the hell are you going to do down there with your bottle of bleach? You aren’t going to reach me from your hole.” Her smile was so evil it chilled my bones. “A hole where you’ll stay until I have a baby of my own.”
I lifted the bleach to hover just over my lips. “I can’t reach you. But I don’t need to. What you want is inside me. But if I’m dead from swallowing down a bottle of bleach, then the baby is too.”
I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to end my life or that of the baby I so desperately wanted.
But no baby of mine was going to be raised by the woman sitting above me. A woman who would kill me the moment she got what she wanted.
So it wasn’t a bluff, and she knew it. I would rather die in this hole and take my baby with me than live and watch her snatch it from my arms.
I’d already lost too many people. I wouldn’t lose any more.
I tilted the bottle up.
Francine threw herself over the edge and into the hole with us.
Nyah screamed as we broke Francine’s fall. Pain jolted through my neck and shoulders, the sharpness of it loosening my fingers. The bottle of bleach hit the dirt, splashing over our legs and rolling away, the acrid stench burning my nostrils.
It took a good few seconds for me to even register what had happened and to think through the pain that radiated through my body from having a fully grown person land on top of me when I was already injured. The chemical smell clogged the air, making it hard to breathe.
Nyah’s shouts, my name a short, sharp blast from her lips, jolted me out of it. “Violet!”
She grabbed for Francine’s gun, the two of them fighting for control, Francine taller and stronger, Nyah weakened from so long in the hole.
The gun went off with an ear-splitting explosion that rang in my ears, only adding to the pain in my body.
Nyah and Francine both stared at me with wide eyes.
And for a moment, I had no idea why.
It wasn’t me who’d pulled the trigger.
