hand. He was driving you closer to him so he could control this empire you’ve built while making it seem like he was protecting you. Instead, he was punching you where he knew it would hurt every fucking time. She’s in a gray house off Lincoln Street. I don’t remember the address, but I know it’s the third one on the right. Now let us go.”
Tony shakes his head and rage fills me. “I have to make sure she’s really there first.”
“Let us go!” I yell, desperate to get away.
He grabs my arm, yanking me up as he drags me into the hallway before taking me back to that godforsaken room that apparently has a new lock on the door. He shoves me inside and sticks a knife in my hands. “Whoever’s alive when I get back can leave as long as you’re telling me the fucking truth. I mean… can you really love the man who killed your sweet sister?”
Shepherd is shoved in after me as I realize why he kept asking if I could still love him no matter what he’d done.
Because he killed my sister.
He turns to me, unable to meet my eyes. “It’s meaningless for me to say anything, but I’m sorry. You can take that knife and kill me, and I swear I won’t stop you,” Shepherd says and there’s so much fucking emotion in his words. A shake to them that makes me want to comfort him. A devastation that makes me want to scream or sob or cry or something.
I look down at my bound hands and the switchblade knife I’m still holding between them.
This man, so desperate to change, begging to change after he killed the one family member who meant anything to me.
“I will do anything you want, Killian. I will kill them all. I’ll let you fuck me, I’ll do anything. I didn’t know she was innocent. I didn’t know anything about her. So please, let me do anything for you. Use me, I don’t care, just don’t leave me.”
And I think my heart breaks even more that this man is so willing to give it all up for someone like me. I turn to him and see that he’s on his knees. He’s been twisted and turned into a killer. He’s killed more people than even my father who is a monster. But he’s the only person who has made me happy in so fucking long. And it kills me that the happy man I’ve spent the last month with has been reduced to this.
But he killed my sister.
I walk over to him, knife in my hands until I’m standing before him, looking down at him.
“Whatever you want, I’ll do it,” he says as he looks up at me. And I know he’s telling the truth. No one has ever been willing to give up so much for me. My own sister promised to never leave me alone to the darkness that my father created and still, she left me. She knew about the abuse, she promised that when she was old enough she’d take me away, but instead, she left me. But this man… this man has stuck by my side from the beginning. Was it guilt over my sister that led him to protect me?
I loop my arms over his neck and pull him toward me as I drop the knife onto the ground. The sound of it clattering fills the quiet room.
Shepherd desperately grabs onto my pants as he buries his face against my thighs, shoulders shaking. He’s so desperate, yet still ready to throw it all away, to do the things he despises to keep me from hating him. I always thought I needed him. And I do. I need him so fucking much. But I never realized how much he needed me. How desperate he was for someone who didn’t force him onto his back or force him to kill anyone.
Because, if I’m being honest, we’re all fucking monsters here. Every last one of us. But there are only two of us who are seeking a change, desperately fighting and looking for a way out of this hell even as we continually get beaten back down again and again.
And as I hold on to him, I feel tears on my cheeks. A part of me is relieved that I didn’t guilt my sister into dying and another part of me feels like my chest has been ripped open knowing that the man I love