Page 30 of To the Grave

She shoved past Wolf and Otis and ran up the stairs.

Chapter 22

Daisy

Ipaced my room, sobs mingling with the furious huff of my breath. I wanted to scream, to rage, to run.

I marched to my closet and pulled out my big suitcase, the one I’d used to bring all my stuff from my dad’s to the house at the top of the falls when I’d first moved in with the Beasts. Then I tore clothes off their hangers and stuffed them in the suitcase without bothering to fold them.

I wasn’t paying attention to what I grabbed. It didn’t matter. I grabbed them in handfuls, the ones Jace had made me wear when we first became roommates and the ones from my other life.

My old life.

Sometime in the past nine months my two worlds had collided, the old Daisy — virgin, priss, rich girl — forever mingling with the new one: sex addict, fighter, and okay, still rich if I ever agreed to go back to my dad’s.

Except I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t want to run to Cassie’s this time either.

Jace wasalive.

The reality of it hit me like a freight train, like it had in the kitchen. Except then it had been because the pain of the last three months had washed over me all at once, a flood of memory and loss and grief that had almost undone me, like being on the precipice of death and watching my life flash before my eyes.

The memory of my pain and the new realization that it had all been for nothing…

That the three men Ilovedhad done that to me…

It hadhurt.

Now it was anger that stopped me in my tracks. It took my breath away and I bent over at the waist like I had in high school when it seemed like everyone else could run the mile without breaking a sweat even though I’d felt like I was going to keel over from a heart attack.

My suitcase was overflowing, pieces of silk and cotton and satin and lace spilling out of the top. I straightened and forced myself to breathe, forced myself to think, and this time the question wasn’t how they could do it to me but why.

It almost didn’t matter — no explanation could make it forgivable — but I still wanted to know.

Because I’dsuffered.

And the three men who had caused my suffering were in the kitchen.

I flung open my bedroom door and marched down the stairs. The grandfather clock struck three a.m. — a portent of doom if I’d ever heard one — right as I hit the kitchen.

They’d turned on the light, Wolf leaning against the counter while Otis and Jace sat at the kitchen table. Wolf was mid-sentence but closed his mouth when he saw me.

I folded my arms over my chest and looked from Otis to Wolf to Jace. “Start talking.”

Chapter 23

Daisy

“Your mom and Mac are part of this,” Otis said. “We knew that when we found the pictures of them in the outbuilding at the compound.”

“What are you talking about?”

We were sitting around the table, eyeing each other warily. The Beasts were probably afraid I was going to lose my shit again, and they were right to think so, because all my trust in them had dissipated when I’d realized they’d been lying to me for almost three months.

It felt like we were enemies again. Or if not enemies, definitely not on the same side, because whatever they’d been up to, I hadn’t been a part of it.

“Their relationship is mixed up in the other stuff somehow,” Wolf said. “We don’t know how yet, but it all feels… connected.”

I didn’t see what my mom — who’d been dead for a decade — could possibly have to do with girls that were going missing now, but that wasn’t where I wanted to start anyway.

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