Page 72 of Reclaim (Deadly Hearts 3)

“Don’t test me, Ruby. You are in deep, deep shit.”

Mutinously clamping my lips shut, I face forward.

Rex sighs. “How did you come across him?”

I debate whether to come completely clean. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Scrape up Boomer’s ashes, bring him back from the dead and kill him again?

“Let me preface this by saying, he is dead. I killed him.”

He hisses, not happy with that at all.

“He abducted me, tortured me, but I managed to escape and kill him on my way out. But he said he was doing it as payback for something you and Mom did to his brother.”

“Rob,” he mutters.

“What did you do?” My tone is light, nervous. Rex’s demeanor has gone scarily dark. Black almost.

“You don’t need to know.”

“Yeah, actually, I do. I was abducted and tortured by him.” I leave out the rape by Smith. No good will come from it.

Grimacing, he breathes out heavily through his nose. “Rob was your mom’s family doctor for a long time. He was also a pedophile, but no one knew about it. He targeted your mom from a really young age, it was why she was sent away to Europe for school and University. When we had you, he ramped up his obsession with her and he took her and held her prisoner for some time. To this day, we still don’t know everything he did to her. She used her wits to escape him and when he came after her, I killed him.”

My heart hammers in my chest. “Oh,” I bleat.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck!

I never knew.

My mom has been through shit just like me and I never knew. God, I feel like such a useless daughter right now, it brings tears to my eyes for her.

“And you’re telling me, Boomer came after you because of what I did?”

I nod.

“Jesus,” he yells. “Why didn’t you say anything before now? How long ago was this?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“When you stopped answering Cassie’s calls.”

“Yep. I just didn’t know how to act, what to say.”

“You sure he’s dead?”

“Please,” I scoff and chuck the envelope back at him, “You’ve seen what I can do on more than one occasion.”

“I know,” he says and reaches out to stroke my hair. “You are so brave.”

“Fuck,” I mutter, the tears falling down my cheeks. I rapidly brush them away “Stop it.”

We sit in silence for a while, each contemplating the other’s words. My phone ringing away in my handbag is ignored at first, but when it becomes apparent whoever it is, isn’t going to give up, I huff and pull it out.

“Cassie?” Rex asks.

---