Restitution (The Edge of Darkness, #3)

by Leigh Rivers

I’ll take me, Bernadette and her shitty husband out with one of my home-made bombs.

If I don’t end it all soon, it’ll keep going, and I’m so fucking tired.

I’m not going to kill the only person that’s kept me alive this long. If it wasn’t for her, I would have ended it years ago. Ever since I found out what her cunt of a brother did to her, to our daughter, I’ve done everything to keep myself in line, to not lose myself, so I can be strong enough to ruin him.

It’s her, or me, and I know who the fuck I choose.

“Kill him,” Bernadette snarls in my ear. Everything goes quiet at those two words. Kill him. Kill your brother. Kill the brother you beat up and left behind. The brother who lost everything the same night Stacey did.

“I swear, if I hear this girl’s name one more time, I’ll go there and kill the bitch myself.”

“For once in your life, stop fucking talking, Bernadette.”

Milo seems lost, and Hopper keeps searching the grounds. Either for me or Stacey. I hope the latter takes them when I die.

A nearly four-year-old should be cuddling up to me and Stacey in bed right now while we read her a bedtime story. She’d fall asleep on my chest, and I’d carry her to her own bed, only for her to sneak back in when me and her mother are sleeping.

Staring at myself in the cracked mirror, I’m disgusted with who I’ve become. A murderer. A sex slave. A scarred, sick, mentally deranged motherfucker who can’t go a day without drugs. When I reach for my gun, I don’t stop to think before putting the barrel to my head and pulling the trigger.

“I don’t know what’s happening with you, but if you need to do this assignment for your freedom, I’m willing to let you do it. I…” Her voice breaks, and so does my heart. “I don’t have anything to live for, but you do.”

Stacey Rhodes. My girl. My anchor that sank to the bottom of the ocean without me.

“I’m not sitting around here any longer. I’m going to find them both and make it fucking painful. You” – he points at Cassie – “get out of my sight before I blow your fucking brains out.”

How did we all get here? Why? One glorious minute, I’m on a flight back from Greece with Kade’s hand gripping my thigh, ready to tell the world he’s mine, and now we’re here. Hiding in my family lodge, unsure where my abusive brother is, waiting for Luciella, and Kade just shot me and beat his brother up.

“How old are you?” Tobias asks. “Twenty-two,” she replies. “Why?” “It took you twenty-two years to realise your parents are a pair of assholes who deserve to die?”

“Tobias. Behave.” “With all due respect, sweetheart, I behave for no one when it comes to our children.”

“For the record, with everything you’ve gone through in your life, I think you’re strong. I just wanted you to know that.”

Maybe it’s idiotic to think this’ll work, but if giving up my life means Kade gets his freedom, then I’ll do it. I have nothing. No real family. No job. No reason to keep going, but look at what Kade has. He has everything.

The one who shot at her. The ex-boyfriend who would burn the world down for her. The piece of shit who could never fall out of love with her.

“If that’s Bernadette, tell her that her days are limited. When they find the old bitch, she won’t last a day. That evil, vile, disgusting rapist of a woman.”

“She’s feisty. I understand her appeal to you before. Pretty, spunky, with a little bit of attitude,” Bernadette says. “Well, give us a show then, Kade. Shoot her. Shoot the slut who cheated on you with your brother.”

“I tried to tell you before you ran off and left me on my knees on your bedroom floor. You won’t silence me again. You wouldn’t listen before, but I’m fucking talking now. I was raped. I was raped by my own stepbrother and all his friends. Jason was drugged, and he was raped too! And you…” She covers her mouth and steps back once. “You left me when I needed you. My dad died, and I was alone and scared.”

“I’m so sorry, Stacey. I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I didn’t realise you were being abused at home. He was hitting you, controlling you, and I had no idea. He—” I swallow. “That motherfucker took our daughter from us, and I left. And then I walked away from you a year ago. I’m just so fucking sorry, and I have no idea how to make it up to you.”

“If you were still in love with me, we wouldn’t have just spent years in hell, Kade. If you were in love with me, you would have stayed by my side when I tried to tell you the truth a year ago. You don’t love me – I’m just someone you used to have in your life when it was normal, so you hold on to the thought of me.”

“Our girl is dead, and so is our relationship.”

“We have no future together, but you can have one. Love isn’t enough to fix us. Even your kind of love.”

“The first time I saw you, I was yours. I’ll always be yours, Freckles. Our girl will be proud of the woman you’ve become. You’ll both always be my girls.”

“Kade!” Cassie yells. “Oh my God! I missed you so much! Tell them we’re getting married and to stop bullying me! Oh and get your filthy hands off him, you whore!”

Cassie comes running straight for us, but I roll my eyes and put a bullet in her skull before she can reach me.

Cassie’s body drops to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Gone. Dead. Good-fucking-bye.

“It’s you and me, son,” Tobias says, low enough that it’s a whisper, but I’m close enough to hear. “You’re not doing this by yourself anymore. I’m here. I’m not letting you do this alone. You and me, you hear me?” Kade doesn’t reply. Tobias shakes him. “Do you fucking hear me?” “All I can hear is you asking for death,” Kade replies.

Barry crouches down to Cassie’s corpse and checks her pulse. “She’s dead.” Tobias frowns like a child just kicked his shin. “Of course she’s dead. Are your eyes working? Her brain is splattered on the ground, you fucking idiot.” Barry mutters to himself then looks up at Kade’s dad. “I was just stating a fact.” “A useless fact,” he counters. “Any others? You want to tell me the sky is blue while you’re at it?”

“That was risky,” he says. “What if he really did kill you?” I shrug. All I can do is shrug.

“Don’t ever do that again, do you understand?” “I was trying to help him.” “By risking your life?” “He said that if he completed the contra⁠—” “I don’t give a fuck, Stacey. If you ever sneak away from me and risk getting yourself killed, I’ll kill you myself.”

Is that my fault too? If I’d just spoken up about my abuse, would we be in this position? Would my baby girl be here?

It doesn’t matter though, because as soon as Jason reaches the top, he’s yelling out for help. When we rush upstairs, Kade is seizing on the floor.

My stepbrothers are here.

“Do you really need to keep hitting me? What are you getting out of being violent?” “Joy,” Tobias replies, crossing his arms. “I like watching you bleed. I’ll enjoy it a whole lot more when I kill you.”

“What did you just say?” “Your daughter moans like a fucking angel.”

“I thought she was your daughter? Man, you are all a bunch of inbred fucks.

“Christopher Fields,” he says in a quiet tone. “Where is he?” My breathing halts. “Why?” “Is he here?” Slowly, in the darkness, I pull my PJs back on. “He’s tied up in the basement. We wanted you to get⁠—” He’s out the door before I can finish, obviously fuelled by adrenaline.

“Wake up, motherfucker.”

“You have no fucking idea how long I’ve waited for this. Do you know who I am?” He points at himself. “I’m the father of the child you killed.”

“How does it feel? Huh? How does it feel to be helpless? To not be able to control your pain? To receive and not give.” He pushes the blade further, and Tobias chuckles while Kyle turns away. “This, right here, is for my daughter, you piece of shit.”

“You see her?” He grabs his head with one hand, his fingers and thumb at his temples, and turns him to look at me. “This will be the last time you see her.” Chris must think that means figuratively as he laughs through his pain, but Tobias moves behind him and pries his eyeball open. I quickly turn away as Kade hammers a nail into it.

Tink, tink, tink...

Chris is thrashing again as Tobias holds his wrist to the wood, and Kade saws off four of his fingers.

“I won’t kill you,” he tells him in a bored tone. “I want you to live and know you can never see her beauty or touch her perfection. I want you to be helpless and unable to walk.”

“I’ll leave your hearing, so I can tell you when I win her back, so you can hear her moaning my fucking name. When I marry her. When she births my fucking children. And guess what? I’ll have all of that. You won’t. Because Stacey Rhodes has been mine since the day I fucking met her.”

Tobias grunts and grabs Barry by the collar to pull him out, but he shrugs him off and scowls. “I’m able to take myself out, you barbaric wanker.”

I’ve always been his. Not Chris’s, not the men he made rape me – two of whom are still walking around freely. Though Tobias has already said he’ll deal with them if his son doesn’t.