Page 82 of Conflicted Lies

My gaze alone enforces that as I’m conscious of onlookers. “You need to calm down, Lucas. You need to trust me.”

“Trust you?! My sister is dead!” he shouts. “You’re covering for her too, aren’t you?!” He points at me. “You’re in on it! You’re all in on it!”

My fingers curl into his shirt to restrain all my violent thoughts. He’s absolutely fucking cracked. But is he really that far from the truth? His actions might discredit him, but his words hit home for me.

“You need to be careful with these families,” I remind him. “Remember what happened to your friends?” I say even quieter. If he goes further down this road, there will be no coming back. I’m on a tightrope myself, but someone like Lucas has no fucking chance. He’s never stuck his neck out. Never spoken or lashed out, and if he does this time, it’ll cost him his life.

“What’s happening here?!” The chief steps out of his office, and we look around the room as onlookers gawk at us. I release Lucas and take a step back.

Fuck me.Does it already look like I’m choosing her over my own? But everyone in this room knows well enough how quickly people disappear when trying to interfere with these families. I didn’t mind playing with them a little at the beginning, but there are deadly consequences in these games. Ones that Lucas will not survive.

“Nothing, sir,” I say, giving Lucas a pointed look.

He falls quiet and sits back in his chair, scowling at me.

Fuck. Being here wasn’t a good idea either.

Everything is falling apart around me. And I’m not so sure I can control where the pieces will land anymore.

Fuck.

She well and truly has poisoned me from the inside out.

CHAPTER41

Hope

It’s midnight. And after finally finishing my piece, I made my way to the diner for pancakes and coffee. I don’t know how long I’ve sat re-reading the same line in my book over and over again because my mind keeps trying to make sense of today’s events.

It’s strange how much changed today. A weight that I’ve been carrying since noticing these curious thoughts and impulsive demands has finally been lifted. The stress had grown over the years, to the point of maddening, as I’ve kept it to myself. The only sense of release was when I started sharing my glass statues with Braxton. Perhaps, as Anya said, I have an ego. I didn’t think I’d get caught, and I liked the idea of playing with him.

I felt invincible but also drawn to show someone—anyone—the real me.

No, not anyone. I wanted Braxton to see me for what I really am.

I’m not even sure how this snowballed so much. I thought I’d never tell a soul, but it quickly became a part of me that so desperately wanted to be seen. Acknowledged. To know how bad I’d truly become.

I thought the first life I took was by accident, but in hindsight, it was the beginning of my darkest desires and impulses. I was twenty, out drinking with a few friends from college. The guy began groping me, and I told him to stop. Even after having five drinks, I knew I didn’t want him touching me. But he chose not to hear my voice when I told him no. Instead, he decided my body was his to do whatever he wanted with it. Something dark twisted in my stomach as I considered letting him have his way, just so I could get out of there sooner. He was twice my size, after all. But another part of me beckoned, telling me it would protect me, and other women like me, from men like him.

When he pushed me behind a building and held a pocket knife to my throat, I felt a sense of irony instead of fear. My father taught me from an early age how to disarm someone. Knives were my father’s specialty, and I watched him use them. I studied him. He might’ve not killed in front of me often, but I saw the way he cut the skin off my apples, and I realized that human flesh and other items weren’t so different.

Before I knew what I was doing, I’d disarmed the guy and held the knife to his throat. He immediately put his hands up, feigning surrender as he began to laugh, treating me like a joke. My emotions were high, and adrenaline was rushing through me so fast I couldn’t think clearly. But I recalled everything my mother and aunt embodied in me about being a powerful woman. Controlling my own destiny and not allowing any man ever to takewhat was not meant for him.

His laughing became hysterical, and he took two steps back, bending over with wild amusement as if the shift in power was so hilarious. Maybe he was on drugs. Maybe he was drunk. But it didn’t make it okay. And I certainly wasn’t to be made fun of when he tried to force himself on me.

By the time he managed to get his laughing under control, his expression had twisted viciously, and he stepped forward to take the knife from me as if I were a child acting out. My hand moved of its own accord so fast that before I could stop it, it sliced across his throat in one swift movement. His eyes grew wide in shock, hands flying to his neck. I guess to stop the bleeding. The thing is, when you cut someone’s throat and neck, blood kind of goes everywhere. It splattered across my clothes, and I stepped back, inconvenienced by how messy his life spilled out of him. I pocketed the knife and watched, mesmerized, as he grappled with the realization that there was no coming back from this. That I was his undoing. His Grim Reaper.

He dropped to his knees, one hand stretching out to me, silently begging for mercy. But there was a power and thrill in seeing a man on his knees like that. Being the justice and silencer of vermin who would never touch a woman again. I just stood there, watching him, not making a move to help him.

I found it all very fascinating. The way his blood poured out of his neck and down his white shirt and eventually made its way onto the dirty cement. I wondered if that was the reason why my family was so bad. I wondered if they got the same high.

A pool of blood gathered at my feet, and when he finally dropped his hand from his throat, his body went limp, his eyes still wide in disbelief. What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could save him; he was already dead. There was literally no point in me even trying. But most importantly,I didn’t want to.

The music from the club was loud, and I could hear people yelling and cheering over it while I stood there looking down at my first kill.

Nothing is ever as satisfying as the first.

That was one of my favorite nights.

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