killed her. But if he hadn’t done it, Tony would have hired someone else to do it. It doesn’t even matter because the moment my father set her on his path, she was destined to die in this godawful world.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I was just doing what your father asked because that’s what Tony told me to do.”
I draw back from him, but he clings onto me, so I grab his face with my bound hands. “My father?” Why did he say “my father”?
He nods. “He staged it.”
That can’t be. “I thought… but Tony?”
He shakes his head. “She was in love with this officer, one of the good ones. They were caught compiling evidence to get your father thrown into prison. When Tony saw what she was doing, he told William that they needed to do something to scare her off. Your father was the one who spun this tale of what she was doing and why she had to be killed.”
I stare at him in disbelief. I knew my father was a monster but this? This can’t be true, can it? But then again… why would I believe my monster of a father over Shepherd?
Maybe because I know that if I believe Shepherd, it makes me into an even worse person for what I’ve done to help my father.
“What have we done, Shepherd?” I ask as I drop to my knees. I can’t stand over him, I am no better than he is. No, I’m just as much of a monster. “Shepherd… what the hell have we done?”
“I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to be free of this awful world.”
“Me too.”
But how do you break free when it seems like everyone wants to destroy you?
Age Seventeen
“Your sister is dead because of this man. Because of the toxicity he put into her head,” Father says as I sit in the bathtub, fully clothed. My clothes are drenched as the hot water beats down on me, scalding where it hits my bare skin. For what felt like an hour, I fought to scrub the blood off my fingers. My sister’s blood.
He kneels down next to me.
“Do you think she’d have died if you hadn’t gotten into her head?” he asks, voice calm.
My hands are clean but I can still feel the blood on me. “I… I don’t know.”
He shakes his head. “The answer is no, Killian. You pushed her over the edge. Tony twisted her into a monster, and you gave her the final shove.”
I cup my hands over my ears. “No, no, I didn’t.”
Father yanks my hands down. “But we can keep this from happening again and again. We can save others from becoming like her. We can save others from what Tony will do to them. Do you want to help? It should offer you some reprieve from the guilt of what you’ve done.”
I could save others? Would that make any of this better? Would that fix what I did?
I don’t think it would.
But I could help others.
I nod. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”
He smiles at me and I can’t help but wonder how he can smile when he just lost a child. But when he holds out a hand, I take it and allow him to pull me from the tub.
Twenty-Six
“I was an idiot to think he was actually helping me,” I say to Shepherd.
“Killian… he was manipulating you. He’d been manipulating you since the day you were born. Every hit, every action, every yell was to manipulate you. The death of your sister was the last straw. He managed to manipulate you into thinking it was your fault. But why? Why was he so determined to break you down, Killian?”
It’s been over an hour since we’ve been shoved into this small room. And while Tony thought it would tear us apart, I feel like we’re finally being truthful with each other. That the gap between us brought on by our own lies and insecurities was what was holding us back. Shepherd might have been the one to pull the trigger, but it was my father who killed her. I should have known. It feels stupid that I didn’t, but maybe Shepherd’s right. Maybe I just broke at some point and let my father crawl into my head.
“He… wanted me to help him destroy Tony’s empire.”
“But they were working together. Tony got the guns and your father used his officers to safely move them through the city. So what was he