Page 32 of Twisted Empire

My wrought-iron bedframe looked almost the same as it always had, just blacker. And everything else was burnt black too, drifts of cinders rolling across the floor like dusty hills. My throat closed up.

All the nights I’d lain on that bed daydreaming about boys… most often Logan. All the assignments I’d completed sitting at the desk that was now nothing but dead embers. The posters I’d left on the walls, a little childish—a band I’d loved in tenth grade, an inspirational poster I’d gotten in junior high that was maybe a little saccharine—butmine.

Gone. All of it gone.

I dragged my gaze away and ventured farther down the hall. The door at the end opened up to what had once been Dad’s office.

Mom had started using it herself, but she’d kept the big oak desk and the bookshelves lining every possible inch of wall, most of them still packed with his old texts and reference manuals. “You’ll want your pick of them someday when you get that medical degree,” she’d used to say to me.

Now every scrap of paper had been eaten up in the flames.

In the back of my mind, I could see the desk where it had once stood, with the trinket box I’d held on to perched by the corner. Dad leaning back in his chair behind it, smiling at me when I’d darted in to ask him a question. Motioning me over to show me some video or computer-generated model he’d brought up on his laptop. Hugging me close while he explained the concepts with perfect patience.

I blinked hard and pulled myself away. My fingers had turned black from touching the walls for balance. I couldn’t even wipe at my eyes without smudging my face.

An ache filled my chest, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. No way to deny or reverse the damage in front of me.

I turned around and headed back to the staircase, Beckett following suit and glancing at me over his shoulder to make sure I kept coming.

My heart was so heavy that it seemed to drag me down the steps. I found the Vigil guys standing in the living room when I reached the front hall, all their expressions grim. Slade motioned me over and pulled me into an embrace.

“It was a big price to pay,” he said in an unusually rough voice. “You shouldn’t have been the one who had to pay it.”

“It was Logan’s house too,” I said, turning my head against Slade’s chest to study my stepbrother.

His mouth stayed tense and slanted, but he shrugged. “I lived here for less than two years. I liked the place, but I know I don’t have anywhere near the same kind of connection to it that you do. I’m so sorry, Maddie.”

Dexter held up his phone. “I took pictures in case there’s anything we need for evidence—or for remembrance’s sake—later.”

I shot him a tight smile. “Thank you.”

As I eased away from Slade and took in the devastation around me again, a stronger swell of grief and melancholy swept over me.

Had our quest to find Dad’s killer really been worth it when I’d ended up losing all this? It’d been Mom and Holand’s home as well. All the trappings that’d propped up so many memories, all the security and comfort this home had offered… So much we could never get back. And even if we could see justice done and Doom’s Seed punished for his crimes, that wouldn’t bring the house or Dad back.

Those thoughts ran through my head, and a spurt of anger flared up inside my chest. This was all that asshole’s fault. He’d stolen Dad from us, and then he’d hurt Mom, and now he’d destroyed our home as well.

How much more would he get away with if wedidn’tkeep fighting him?

If it hadn’t been my life he was messing up, it would have been someone else’s. No doubt it already was hundreds of other people’s at the same time, with all his malicious business practices. And lots of those people weren’t in any position to fight back themselves.

We’d set out on this crusade because it was right and because we could. Neither of those facts had changed.

Backing down and giving up was exactly what Doom’s Seed would have hoped would happen when I was faced with his latest vicious act.

My jaw set. I was never going to give him the satisfaction.

His reign of terror had to end, and we were the ones closest to doing it. So we had to see it through before he destroyed even more lives.

I looked around at each of the guys, squaring my shoulders. “It doesn’t matter how much I lost. We aren’t backing down. All this means is that we need to get on with stopping Doom’s Seed once and for all.”

CHAPTERFOURTEEN

Madelyn

Dexter moved around the mansion’s kitchen like a storm. He’d sent Slade on a shopping trip to gather all the ingredients he needed to make some kind of elaborate meal for us. I knew, though, that the meal was mainly for me—to get my spirits up after what I’d just witnessed.

I wanted the gesture to work, but I was so wiped out.Images from the burned house kept wavering through my mind.

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