Page 104 of Reaper and Ruin
I wouldn’t stop him.
“I was so mad. I’d spent all night with two crying kids, terrified Travis or his friends would get into the room. I was so sick of feeling helpless and small. So I snuck out the back door and stopped the cops on their way out. Told them our foster parents were lying. Told them whatever that girl had said was true, even though I hadn’t actually seen it with my own eyes. I believed her.”
“Let me guess,” Whip ground out through gritted teeth. “They didn’t believe you.”
“Actually, they did. The girl was the daughter of a cop, so they really wanted to nail Travis and his friends to the wall. They were so close to eighteen, they tried them as adults. They got ten years each, but I don’t know how much of it they served.” I swallowed thickly. “I don’t even know that he really did hurt that girl. I was scared of him and just wanted him out of the house. I didn’t know he even knew about my role in it, but obviously he did.”
All three of them looked at me.
Levi gripped me tighter. “What he did to you was more than enough to warrant talking to the cops. If they put your complaint together with that other girl’s then he got what he deserved.”
“That explains why he’s on the list then,” Whip said. “Grayson must suspect him of reoffending since he’s been released.”
I should have felt good that my suspicions about Travis were being backed up by someone else. But instead I just felt stupidand brainwashed. My foster parents had spent the next two years bitching about him being put in jail. He suddenly became the golden child who had never done any wrong, even though they’d beat the shit out of him as much as they had the rest of us when he’d actually been in the house. But they swore to CPS that Travis had been wrongly accused. That he was innocent, and because nobody gave a shit about poor kids in the foster system, we’d been left there with them. Somewhere along the line, I think I’d started to believe Travis wasn’t that bad either. That he wasn’t dangerous.
Or maybe that was just what my brain had tried to convince me when he’d walked back into my life a few months ago.
I’d been numb. I’d convinced myself he was a pest but that he wasn’t the biggest danger in my life, so he wasn’t worth wasting thought on.
How wrong I’d been.
“He knows what I did,” I whispered to them. “I should have just gotten him the money when he asked for it. Maybe none of this would have happened.”
Whip shook his head. “This was happening before he wanted money, Vi. Paying him off wouldn’t have gotten rid of him.”
“Why didn’t he just kill me in that warehouse? He could have. Many times.”
Levi cleared his throat. “He’s getting off on tormenting you. It’s a game in his mind, pushing you just far enough that you’re close to breaking only to back off so he can do it all again. Sending us all letters. Heightening the panic of everyone around you so you never get a break from it.”
“It’s working. God, I feel so stupid!” Another long-forgotten memory rose to the surface, and I felt so sick I had to clutch my stomach. “He used to make traps. I saw him and his friends one day out in the woods, digging a hole and sharpening sticks to make a pit for someone or something to fall into. I ran backhome before they could see me, and they came back pretty soon after, so I think I convinced myself they lost interest and gave up. But I never went back into the woods to check. I was too scared I would accidentally fall into their trap myself.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I had nightmares for weeks after, of being forced into the woods and falling into a black hole of nothingness where I just fell and fell, the anticipation of landing on those sharpened sticks always there but never actually happening.” I stared at them in horror. “I’d forgotten so much of this.”
“You hadn’t forgotten,” Whip said quietly. “You’d repressed it. Compartmentalized it, and who could blame you? You were barely more than a child and not equipped to deal with anything like this. You had no one to protect you.” He rubbed my arm. “I’m no Grayson, but maybe it’s only now you feel safe enough to let it out.”
Which seemed crazy because I was hardly safe with Travis out there, clearly still wanting my head on a spike. And yet there was truth in his words.
For the first time in my life, I had a family. Not just one friend who served as my crutch, but a real support system. Three men who loved me and proved it every single day in the way they touched me, cared for me, protected me. A brother who had already proven once he would kill even his best friend for me if I asked him to. A sister-in-law. Nieces and nephews. Friends in Bliss and Nyah.
I wasn’t the girl who sat scared in her apartment every night, living vicariously through doctors on a TV show. I wasn’t the woman clinging to her one and only friend, knowing that at some point, he was going to meet someone and leave her.
Toby had never held me back, but the way I’d clung to him had. I’d trauma bonded to him in high school and then spent ten years holding on to that, too scared to walk alone because I’d spent my childhood with no one and I didn’t want to go back.
I still didn’t. Nobody wanted to be alone.
I still had a long way to go, but where I was felt healthy.
Whip and Levi and X all clung to me in the same way I held on to them. I wasn’t dragging them down.
We were all holding each other afloat. Supporting each other.
“So, what now?” X asked. “Other than killing Violet’s foster parents, killing the CPS workers who left you with them, killing Travis…” He cracked his knuckles. “It’s a good thing I put my lucky killing socks on this morning!”
Levi glanced at him. “Do you really—” He shook his head. “You know what? Never mind.”
Whip ignored them and focused on me. “Do you have any idea where he’s staying?”
“No. None. Probably nowhere nice, if he truly is broke.”
“Maybe at a friend’s place?” Levi asked.
