Page 72 of The Reaper
“We all owed you that much. We wanted to do it for you.”
I took a moment to compose myself, then it started to sink in.
“You did that for me?” Tyler looked up and nodded gravely.
“We had to. We hadn’t done enough before. We all wanted to fix this for you. You’re our brother.”
“Thank you,” was all I could think to say. I knew I had a lot of grovelling to do. I’d lost my mind and blamed my brothers. I’d been a dick, and I needed to put that right.
I glanced over my shoulder into the darkness of the room where Leah was sleeping.
“What if she wakes up?” I asked myself, but a smaller voice behind Tyler spoke up and answered me.
“I’ll be here.” I saw Liv standing in the doorway in her pyjamas, her arms folded over her chest and a look of concern etched onto her face. “I’ll watch the door, and if she wakes up and comes out, I’ll keep her up here with me.”
I knew I could trust Liv. I’d always known. Why had I been such a dick earlier?
I started to speak. “Liv, I’m so sorry for––”
But she held her hand up to stop me and smiled.
“Family means never having to say sorry, Dev. I think that’s from Lilo and Stitch.” She gave a humourless chuckle. “But you get what I’m saying. You don’t need to say anything, just go down there and show this fucker that he can’t play with you anymore. Give him hell.”
Nodding, I grabbed a T-shirt from the chair behind my door and pulled it on, then slid my feet into my Nikes.
“I’ll do more than that. He’ll wish he was in hell when I get hold of him. Hell will be a fucking walk in the park.” I closed the door behind me, the lock clicking quietly into place, and headed for the stairs.
Tyler followed me down, and when we came to the ground floor and turned the corner towards the chapel, I saw Adam and the others standing, waiting at the door. They looked up as they saw me approaching, but the triumph I expected to see on their faces wasn’t there.
“Devon, mate, I think you’ll want to take care of this one yourself,” Adam stated, with regret laced heavily in his tone.
“Are you sure it’s him?” I asked.
Adam took something out of his pocket, and when he handed it to me, I saw it was a Polaroid, like the one left on the back door earlier. This time, the image was of Leah and me dancing on the grass, my arms wrapped around her as she looked up at me and smiled. On the back, in the same lettering it said, leave. I didn’t need any more proof.
“We’ll be out here if you need us,” Adam stated. “All you have to do is shout and we’ll be by your side. We’re here for you. But trust me, I think you need to see this for yourself.”
Hearing him say that made the nervous energy inside me flicker with apprehension. What the hell was I going to find behind those doors? Was it really my dead stepfather? Or some long-forgotten friend of his? What if it was my own family? The twist in my gut made me want to double over, but I had to stay strong. What the fuck was I about to walk into?
Without speaking, I moved past them and gripped the door handle.
“You’ve got this,” Colton said, patting me on the back. “Whatever happens, remember that. You are stronger than him. He can’t beat you down anymore. You’re the one in control now.”
I swallowed, unable to form words, and pushed the handle down, walking into the chapel and shutting the door behind me.
In the corner, I could see a dark figure slumped into the chair, tied to it with ropes and chained with handcuffs. He had his hood up and I stepped forward, to get a better look and finally find out who it was. When he lifted his head and the moon’s glow shone through the stained-glass windows of the chapel, I felt every muscle in my body freeze. My breath caught in my throat, and my brain screamed, refusing to believe what was right in front of my face.
“You?” I croaked, feeling like the walls of my whole life were crumbling around me. Devastation that I was petrified I’d never come back from clamped around my soul. It was like hell’s deathly grip had its hold on me, and I was powerless to it, ready to be dragged down and kept locked in its depths forever.
How was I ever going to recover from this?
“Me,” he stated, lifting his chin defiantly. “It was all me.”
ChapterThirty-Four
DEVON
From the moment I’d received that first letter, even when my mum had told me about the stranger on the street, watching her, saluting her as he walked away, I never thought that it would bring me to this.
