Page 23 of Vows of Ruin

“This is insane,” I whisper, turning toward Liam. My voice wavers, but I don’t back down from his gaze. “I remember my arm being in a cast… I don’t remember the stairs. But in the hospital, when I was six, I remember that.”

My voice drops, cracking open.

“They never told me why. Just that I was sick. But she didn’t tell me. Of course she wouldn’t”

Liam’s face is carved from stone, but his eyes, they’re soft, stormy.

“She hid it,” I say, “Because she always did. Vivian Ashford would rather erase a child than admit something was wrong in her perfect fucking house.”

Liam steps closer, his voice a low rumble. “That’s not on you. None of it. Whatever happened, you were a child.”

“I know,” I breathe, but it still feels like a bruise forming in my ribs.

The garden is too quiet. The sun is sinking behind the trees like judgment. My throat tightens.

“It was him,” I say suddenly. “Sebastian. It had to be. He hurt me. And back then…”

My lips press into a thin line before I force the words out.

“Back then, my father still liked me. He and Benjamin—they would’ve made her—get rid of him?”

Liam’s expression doesn’t change, but something in him sharpens, like he’s cataloging every detail, every bruise I never knew I had. His jaw ticks, and I can feel the shift in him, the weight of the man who never lets anything hurt what’s his.

He doesn’t say I’m sorry. He doesn’t say it’s over. And that… that’s enough. For now.

Chapter Eleven

Reaper

The steam still clings to my skin as I step out of the bathroom, dragging a towel over my hair. Wrenley’s still in there, humming softly under the hot spray, rinsing away what the day carved into her bones. I barely get a few feet into the bedroom before Torque walks in, a manila folder clutched in one hand and a haunted look etched across his face.

“Liam,” Fuck, he never calls me that, this is bad. “You’re going to want to see this.”

Before I can answer, Wrenley steps into the room completely naked, running a towel through her hair, completely unfazed that were not alone. Torque’s head jerks up instantly, gaze fixed on the ceiling like it personally offended him. “Shit—sorry.”

Wrenley doesn’t flinch. Just grabs one of my shirts from the dresser and shrugs it on, giving him a crooked smile. “It’s fine. We’re a little past modesty around here, aren’t we?”

The mood has shifted. Whatever’s in that folder, it’s heavy. Wrenley sees it too. She pads across the room barefoot, standing next to me. Torque sets the folder down on the bed like it might explode.

“It’s worse than we thought,” he says.

Wrenley sits, legs tucked beneath her, already flipping the cover open. Elias has been digging. Everything he could find on Sebastian, every scrap, record, detail they’d tried to bury.

Vivian had him locked away for most of his life. A private mental hospital, padded with bribes. A high-functioning sociopath, diagnosed early, Anti-social personality disorder, in black-and-white across the top of the psychiatric evaluation. Cold. Calculated. Charming. Dangerous.

It’s the notes that make my skin crawl. From therapists and doctors. One report dated the year Wrenley turned five, warning that Sebastian had developed “an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on his younger sister,” and that “under no circumstances should he be allowed unsupervised access to her.”

Wrenley’s fingers tremble as she turns the page.

The next documents are payment records. Quarterly deposits from Vivian Ashford’s private accounts to the hospital. Until about a year ago. When Wrenley put a bullet in her mother.

“He was released the same week,” Torque says. His voice is hollow. “Quiet. No fanfare. No family retrieval. Just… walked out.”

My jaw tightens.

“The planning, the packages, the notes, the greenhouse.” Wrenley says quietly looking at me. At Torque. Her eyes harden.

“He’s been fascinated with me since before we knew he existed. My entire life.”