Page 136 of Dead Girls Don’t Forget

The loan had been real, but the terms were engineered to be impossible. Thomas hadn’t come for money. He had come for the land. My family’s farm sat on prime territory he’d been trying to consolidate for years. With no surviving heirs to fight the claim, he’d taken the farm before my mother and sister were even cold in the ground.

The system had handed him exactly what he wanted.

I read the final file in silence. When I looked up, something inside me had changed. The grief was still there, but it had hardened into something sharper. Colder. Hungrier.

“I want them dead,” I said.

Brian didn’t look surprised. He didn’t lecture me about justice or healing or how revenge wouldn’t bring my family back. He simply watched me.

“I can arrange it,” he said.

“No.” My voice was steady. “I want to do it myself. I want them to see my face. I want them to know exactly who I am before they die.”

The room fell quiet. Brian studied me for a long time, measuring the girl in front of him.

“Then you have a lot to learn,” he finally said. “And you’re going to need to be very patient.”

"Learn what?"

"Everything. How to fight. How to plan. How to get to people who think they're untouchable." He leaned back. "There will always be someone bigger and meaner. But if you work hard, I can teach you how to take any one of them apart."

I met his eyes. “Teach me.”

Chapter 38: I Am With You

Jackson POV

Harper looked up at me with exhausted eyes and whispered, “That’s the truth, Jackson. That’s who I really am. That’s what your father took from me.”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

I swallowed against the tightness in my throat and pressed my lips to her forehead, breathing her in. She smelled like skin, antiseptic, and deep exhaustion.

“Thank you for surviving,” I said. The words came out rough.

She didn't answer. Her breathing had already settled into a slow, even rhythm and her injured arm rested between us in its sling. She looked impossibly small under the blankets, bruised and battered, so damn fragile it made something deep in my chest ache.

My wolf hovered just beneath my skin, restless and watchful. A low growl rumbled through my mind. Mine. Hurt. Protect.

I lay there in the dark, one hand slowly stroking her back, forcing myself to stay calm while a storm raged beneath the surface.

My father had done this to her. His pack. His choices. Everything she had survived, every scar and every broken piece, traced back to him. The weight pressed down until it was hard to breathe.

I waited a few more minutes, until I was certain she was deeply asleep. Only then did I carefully shift her arm off my chest and ease out of the bed. She stirred once, a small sound of protest, but settled again when I tucked the blanket higher around her shoulders.

I left the door ajar and stood in the hallway for several seconds, listening. Then I started pacing.

The moment I was alone it all crashed over me.

Thomas Black had done that. Not some faceless monster. My own father had destroyed a thirteen-year-old girl and her family. He had taken everything, then burned what was left.

I paced faster. My hands clenched and unclenched at my sides. My wolf clawed at my chest, feeding me one violent image after another. He wanted to hunt. He wanted blood.

I had always known my father was cruel. I remembered the screaming fights between my parents. The sound of breaking glass. My mother disappearing into her room for days with pills and alcohol. The brief hope when she got pregnant with my sister, followed by two funerals in one week. My father had barely reacted.

I’d known that cruelty in my own body too. As a kid, I learned exactly how far I could push before his hand became a fist. I learned not to cry afterward because tears only made him angrier. By seventeen I had finally grown big enough that the next time he swung, I caught his wrist.

He never hit me again.