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“That I can understand. You know what? I’m glad that bastard is six feet under.”
Her voice is small when she says, “Me too.” Her eyes meet mine, and she stuns me into next week when she adds, “Because I’m the one who killed him.”
CHAPTER 11
SAPPHIRE
Sin blinks, tilting his head to the side as if he misheard me. “Huh?”
“You heard me,” I say. “I’m the one who finished him off.”
His frown deepens. “No fuckin’ way.”
I stand straighter. “One night he beat Reaper so bad, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take walking on eggshells for the rest of our lives. He controlled everything, and we had no other family. We were stuck. Two teenagers with nowhere else to go.” I’ve never told this story to a living soul. “So yeah, I did something terrible, and I don’t regret it.”
Nobody is more surprised than me that I just blurted it all out.
His tone is grave when he asks, “How did you do it?”
I puff out my cheeks. I’ve never told this to a living soul. “Sleeping pills.”
“Holy shit.”
“I slipped extra into his booze. That, as well as the opioids he was on, sealed the deal. He never saw it coming. I never meant to actually kill him,” I say. “I only meant to shut him the hell up so we could get some peace. He was used to taking them… just not several of them mixed with the other shit.” The silence hangs between us until I nudge him. “Say something.”
“You’re a fuckin’ badass.”
“That’s all you have to say? Aren’t you going to tell me what a bad person I am for taking a life? That’s as bad as it gets.”
He shakes his head. Clearly I’m profoundly mistaken. “Not for someone who made the decision they weren’t going to take the abuse anymore, and you didn’t intend to kill him.”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“No. He was a prick.”
I bite my lip, unsure whether I’m going too far with my next confession. “If Reaper knew what that asshole tried to do to me when he was drunk, he would’ve killed him a lot sooner,” I mutter.
He tips my chin up with his two fingers. “Did he ever lay a hand on you?”
I shake my head. “Reaper took the brunt of it. I fought him off. I didn’t tell Reap because back then, he would’ve killed him with his bare hands, and frankly I didn’t want the only person I cared about to go to jail.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. Fuck, man, I had no idea.”
I shrug. “He got what was coming to him, that’s what matters.”
“And Reap doesn’t know?”
I shake my head. “Maybe he had his suspicions, but he never asked outright. I was fifteen. The cops were well aware of his reign of terror. They knew our house well. They ruled it as an accidental overdose. Somehow, CPS never investigated enough to take us away before things escalated. Dad knew people in high places and bought them off. People owed him because he had dirt on everyone, being a dealer himself. Why he wanted us around I’ll never know. The sick bastard just couldn’t bear to be alone.”
Something about my confession feels as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. It’s a secret I’ve kept all these years.
“You got away with it.”
“Nobody would ever believe a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl with good grades, albeit a bad upbringing, would do something so heinous. I didn’t get into trouble with the law until much later.”
“Heinous would be hacking him to pieces.”
“Trust me, I thought about doing a lot worse,” I say. “The weird thing was, I didn’t even feel remorse for it. What does that make me?”
