Page 140 of Crave
Can’t?
Orfuckingwon’t?
Theo shoved her forward, standing over her. “You fucking can’t? YOU FUCKING CAN’T? Our brother almost died tonight. You get that right? He almost died and we have a goddamn cartel coming for us. Now is not the time for can’t, little sister. Now is the time for answers and they’d better come hard and fast.”
He sucked in a hard breath. His eyes incensed and glinting, like he wanted to say something else. Something like.
Come hard and fast like you did, you lying fucking bitch.
She jerked and trembled, cowering as Theo’s roar rebounded against the tiles of the bathroom. My fucking heart was hammering, pounding against the confines of my chest.
“You…don’t get out of this,” Theo’s rage simmered dark and savage. “You don’t get to stutter and fucking shake. Answer his goddamn question. Answer it or I swear to God I’ll unleash a hell on you that you won’t be prepared for.”
He lifted his gaze to Gabe.
“Family or fucking not.”
She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut like any fucking moment she was about to wake up from this goddamn nightmare. One where she was forcing for once to tell the truth.
Gabe finally spoke.
“I’d start talking,” he murmured, tone dangerously calm, like the one fucking brother she’d always had to protect her was slipping away.
She turned toward him like she might find some kind of salvation, but Gabe wasn’t going to save her.
None of us were.
I felt it before I saw it—the way her body locked up, the way her fingers twitched, like she was fighting herself.
She wanted to keep lying.
She wanted to bury the truth all over again.
What the fuck kind of battle raged in her goddamn head? I needed to understand. To pry whatever sick motherfucker was in there out of her mind and erase his fucking touch from her memory.
“Tell him,” Gabe snarled. “Tell all of us.”
Angelica’s breath was shaky, her shoulders trembling.
I watched it happen. The exact moment she broke.
She stopped fighting.
She sagged forward, as if the truth was a weight she couldn’t hold anymore.
And when she finally spoke—when the words finally ripped from her throat—it felt like they tore the air from my lungs.
“I saw them die,” she whispered. “Is that what you want to hear?I. Saw. Our. Parents. Die.”
The world stopped.
Her voice was thin, barely a sound, but it might as well have been a gunshot.
Theo stopped pacing.
Jude straightened.
And Gabe…
