Page 279 of Chaos Kills

“Why’d you have to do that, Bay?” Judah rebukes, then snatches up her wrist and holds it over her head. “Why does everyone not want me?”

“I did,” I mutter, as if he can hear me. The dejection in his tone is nothing I’ve ever heard before, and it’s as though he had forgotten what he was living for.

“You wanna kill me now?”

I notice something in Bay’s hand. “You wanted to hurt me first. Just let me go, Judah. We’ll chalk this up as a bad?—”

“Chalk it up?” he carps out incredulously through a haughty tone. “No one pulls a knife or gun on me and lives to tell about it. Why did you do that?”

Judah makes a go for what has to be a weapon, but she’s quicker this time. I see her thrust it forward and Judah’s hiss of pain, which causes him to lose the upper hand

“Don’t do this, Bay,” he warns, as if she started this.

She kicks at his gut and makes contact, but he captures her ankles and yanks hard, getting her to fall back on her spine again.

But being Bay Astor means she’s not going to go down that easily—ever.

She nails my brother with her free leg in his chest, and that’s when Judah explodes.

“No one is going to use you!” he roars out as Bay scrambles back and gets to her feet. Judah does the same, and it’s a face-off of who’s going to come out of this alive. “No one can have you but me, Bay. We were meant for so much more than this. I can’t protect you if you choose him.”

“I need to go home.” A broken sob fills the air, over the crickets and the slight breeze that waves around the branches of the trees.

“You can’t,” Judah replies, taking another step in her direction. “You can’t leave.”

“I have—” He rushes her, and that’s when she has no choice.

Her blade penetrates my brother, and his palm falls to his hip, but Bay doesn’t stop.

I can hear the broken cries leave her lips the moment my brother falls to his knees, and the next scream from her lips shakes me to my core.

“Judah! Why did you— I wanted to go home!”

He shakes his head. “You were meant…for so much more. You’re in…so much danger, Bay. I can…keep…you safe.”

Did he want to keep Emilio away from her and saw this as the only way out from her destroying us?

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she wails, then begins looking around. “Judah, I’m going to go get help.”

“No,” he says flatly. “They won’t make it. I guess I was wrong.”

“Put pressure on it. Judah, let me?—”

“I didn’t want to kill you, Bay…but you’ll either ruin us all or be ruined. I’d rather save you from that.”

She already did.

And I helped.

I dropped her in the middle of a fucking ocean and tried to erase her from the Earth. I had her sisters ripped from her out of spite for taking my brother away.

“What are you fuckin’ talking about?” Bay rants. “You’re drunk.”

“And you’re too fucking…dangerous.” He releases a strangled exhale. “Matteo will either break you…or kill you. I would’ve possibly—” He bows forward, holding on to his side as he does and taking my heart with him. I’m watching my brother die in front of my eyes, and I wasn’t ready for this. I saw a video—something similar before, but this…a combination of Bay and Judah so desperate for two different things, I’m barely breathing from my guilt. “My brother…he’s young…tell him…”

I drop the laptop, not able to connect at this moment anymore. It’s all my fault—what I’ve done to Bay—but my brother tried to take her from me as I did.

Ozzy’s dark attire shows up in my peripheral, wordless and adamant I finish the video. That I need to see the truth, all of it because I have hell to pay for my sins in every sense of the word.

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