Page 162 of Endless Anger
“Left isLucy,” he says, chuckling to himself. He points to one, and we start walking again. “We used to have family trivia nights, and that’s what Lachlan and Logan would say whenever Luce answered something wrong. The opposite of right was Lucy to them.”
The corners of my mouth twitch. “I remember.”
He nods. “I never did like the teasing, but I suppose I was always a bit more sensitive about things when it came to my firstborn. Her mum made me the man I am today, but that little girl… My entire perspective shifted the first time she opened her beautiful eyes and looked at me. It was like seeing myself in a mirror, but I wanted so much more for her than I ever got.”
A pebble goes flying as we wind our way through the tunnel.
“Lachlan and Logan, they’re attached to their mum, but Lucy needed me more, I think. She was soft and pure, and where her siblings could take the ribbing and the teasing and got along with everyone, Lucy was so terribly human that I was afraid she’d break as soon as she stepped foot outside the house. And the problem was she didn’t really seem to gethowto be human or the fact that it made her so very special to feel and love so deeply. Vulnerability is something that gets people killed in this world, but she never questioned hers.”
I feel his eyes on me but remain silent.That’s what I love about her too.
“It was my job to protect her,” he says with a sigh. “But a few weeks after she was born, Elena Anderson brought her infant son to meet the newest addition to the Aplana brat pack.”
A reluctant snort huffs out of me. “That the official name?”
“Don’t tell your mum or my wife I used it, but that Mafia don uncle of yours actually coined it when he realized there were going to be a lot of spoiled kids on the island.”
My mother’s younger sister, Stella, and her husband have two kids we see only sporadically throughout the year, since they’re much younger than the rest of us and in school across the country.
“Anyway, Elena brings this ruddy-faced babe to meet my daughter and asks Cora if she can put him in the crib. Just for a second. Lucy was wailing, and Cora and I were exhausted, so she agreed.” Alistair pauses. “Thesecondyou touched the mattress, Lucy went silent. We all had to check and make sure she was still breathing—her eyes were open, staring blankly upward, but she looked so peaceful. You were holding onto her onesie, watching her, and I realized that day that I would never stand a chance. You two are connected at the soul, and I’ve always secretly despised you for that. I used to feel like I was intruding on a bond with my own child, but now, I’m…really goddamn grateful, I suppose, that she’s always had you.”
My chest tightens, and I feel a little woozy. Digging my nails into my palms, I suck in a deep breath, push the anger down for a moment, and exhale. “Iloveher.”
He laughs. “Obviously. You tell her that yet?”
I shake my head.
“Well, don’t wait. She deserves to hear it, lad.”
And at that exact moment, we hear it—not her, and not a love confession, but the bloodcurdling screams of someone being tortured or maimed.
Male screams.
My heart drops into my stomach, bile pushing into my throat.
“Christ. Is that…”
Foxe.
We move toward the noise, the cramp in my neck spreading to my shoulders and beyond. My stomach flips, the sound obliterating all the negative space around us, shattering it like glass.
It becomes louder for several minutes and then suddenly stops.
Like a flame snuffed out.
Rage pulses behind my eyes, fueling my steps. It’s the only thing I cling to as silence fills the cave again, bathing us in its implications.
Alistair tenses beside me, nudging my arm with his elbow. “Up ahead, you see that light?”
I nod, sticking to the wall as much as I can manage, and then peer around the entrance to the cavern, clinging to the dirty stone. A long floodlight casts warm shadows around a room filled with bloodshed: a corpse on the ground, mutilated beyond recognition. Another spot across from it is soaked in red, leading to footprints that I hate are so fucking familiar.
They walk right out of the room.
He isn’t in here.
A dark-haired man crouches toward the back in front of a girl with mostly obsidian hair, save for the two crimson streaks framing her face.
I stare for longer than I should, soaking in the sight of her.
