Page 105 of Beautifully Broken Redemption

I followed Cain in a sort of trance, climbing into the passenger side of his SUV. But all I could hear was Kennedy telling me that Anna had been crying. All I could see in my mind was her tear-streaked face. And I’d never felt lower in my life.

42

Anna

I groanedas I struggled to open my eyes. Everything hurt. But the worst of it seemed to emanate from my head. The pulse through my skull felt like daggers.

“Finally waking up? It took you long enough.”

That voice. The timbre of his tone had me jerking upright as if my body recognized danger before my mind could.

Everything came together in flashes. I was in a car. My hatchback. I couldn’t move freely. My right hand was taped to the door handle. Derek.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he said, pointing a gun in my direction. “Don’t even think about it.”

I itched to lash out. A punch. My nails. Whatever I could use. But my mind was still catching up with what my body knew. Trying to put the pieces together.

I looked around. We were parked on the dirt road at the edge of the lake. I could just make out the bench we’d put in place for Chelsea.

“Did you miss me at all, Anna?”

My gaze snapped back to Derek. “Did I miss you?” I only seemed capable of parroting his words.

He leaned against the driver’s side door. “I did everything for you. You think you’d miss that dedication.”

“You set me up to take the fall for you.”

Anger flared in Derek’s eyes, making the brown seem to glow amber in the dark. “You were fifteen. You got off easy. I needed to stay out so you had somewhere to go once you were released. You never understood that. What would’ve happened to you at your parents’ house if I’d been locked up? Did you ever think about that?”

The same thing that always happened to me. My father knocking me around. I’d lived through it for fifteen years. I would’ve made it another two. I would’ve made it to freedom. Instead, that freedom was stolen from me. And I’d lost the only two people I’d cared about: my sister and Derek.

“I loved you,” I whispered. “And you threw me to the wolves.”

He lashed out in a flash, grabbing my hair and yanking it hard. “Watch your fucking mouth. I made a strategic decision. For both of us. But you wouldn’t let me get a word in to explain it to you.”

I didn’t fight the pain. I let it take over. It made me more alert. And I didn’t take my eyes off Derek. How had I not seen? He had the same rage and control issues my father did. Only the anger had never been directed at me before. Maybe because I’d always done what he said. I’d been young and so desperate to get out of the situation I was in. I’d thought I was walking into safety when, really, I was exchanging one prison for another.

“What do you want?” I spoke low, doing everything I could to keep my voice from shaking.

“How about a little respect for once? Some gratitude? That fucking cop took you away before I had a chance to explain myself. I should’ve put a bullet in him then. Maybe I’ll go back and pay him a visit.”

My mouth went dry, and I struggled to swallow. “Why?”

“Why? Because I gave you everything, you ungrateful bitch! And then there you were, spilling your guts to every cop who would listen, trying to get them to come for me.”

Because he was the guilty one. He had been so eager to throw me under the bus to save his sorry self. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him.

He sneered at me. “I thought you were finally going to get what was coming to you. There was something poetic about it. Losing the only people you had left. Your sister. Those two kids.”

And Derek had been determined to make sure I suffered. “Because I didn’t want to take the fall for you?” He’d been willing to send Justin and Lyla to a hell he knew everything about just to make sure I hurt. The wave of rage that crested and roared through me took my breath away.

“You left. I was ready to give you the world when you got out, and you blew me off. Then your bitch of a sister came sniffing around—”

I froze, every muscle in my body tensing. “What?”

Derek smiled, but it was devoid of warmth. In fact, everything about him was empty. He lacked the ability to truly feel where another might be coming from. “I wondered for a while if she’d told you what she was up to. So, I dragged my ass to the middle of nowhere to watch. I stayed out of sight for a good while, just to see what you were doing.”

“The texts.”

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