In the meantime …
Yes, baby, you can handle it,
and you are nothing less than
b e a u t i f u l .
I HAD THREE HOURS.
Initially, I’d come here with one goal in mind. But I’d been putting it off. Mia had become a distraction. Or perhaps a savior, depending on how you look at it.
Either way, I couldn’t waste another day.
It was mid-evening, and everyone should be in their rooms. For fifteen minutes, I’d been standing before a mirror in an empty bathroom on the third floor with my conscience left somewhere on the second—wherever Mia was at the moment. Hopefully, in her room, but she had a habit of wandering, getting herself into trouble.
Haden Charles felt no remorse. Absolutely none. Haden walked these halls as if he owned the rights to every swirl in the marble laid out before him. He went on with his life as if nothing ever happened. But something had happened. Haden Charles was one of the five men who’d taken the life of my sister, Livy. I’d watched and studied the bloke for the last seven months. He didn’t cower to himself after murdering my sister. Haden woke up, ate breakfast, went to class, played cards in the garden, living as if Livy never existed, as if he had not taken part in her death.
While staring into my own eyes in the mirror, my heart hardened with every passing second. Anger filled the places where my baby sister used to, and the feeling was colder, heavier, and rougher around the edges. Anger consumed me, threatened me, taunted me. This anger fucking changed me, already long forgotten the man I used to be. All I knew was this rage, forgotten what it was like without it.
Then I found Livy in my eyes. “Let it go,” her voice chanted inside my head. But I couldn’t let it go. The monster inside me was hungry, the whisperings of “tick-tock” growing louder, drowning out Livy’s sweet voice.
Tick-tock.
The bag resting beside my boot over the dirty bathroom floor contained everything I needed to get the job done. Over a year, I’d been planning. Haden had a mum, a dad in prison, a little sister, and a Golden Retriever named Poncho. Nothing I did was half-arsed, fully aware of the life I was about to take from this world—from a family.
But he had a little fucking sister. He should have known better. And God? I’d given him over a year to make things right. Either God turned a blind eye … or God was waiting for me to do his bidding.
Pushing off the sink, I straightened my back before swooping up the black duffel in my fist.
Tick-tock.
My clothes blended in the dark halls. Black shirt, black jeans, black boots. Black soul. Each step I took toward the second wing, my heart warned me, but Karma sang its sweet song over and over again, and there was only one way I could sedate the monster.
It had to be tonight.
Jerry had this wing, but once a week, he smashed Rhonda in her office at the Nurse’s station behind locked doors. The only reason I knew this was because he was a bit gobby in the break room, which Rhonda didn’t deserve. But I didn’t come here to make friends.
With Jerry busy, and halls empty, I didn’t have much time.
I had swiped a generic guard badge from the Dean’s office, one linked to no one’s name, and scanned the card to Haden’s door, sucked in a deep breath, and pushed open.
Haden Charles didn’t expect death to knock, did he?
“What the fuck?” Haden shouted, sitting up from his bed. His dark and confused eyes roamed over my black attire, trying to place me and piece together my intrusion at once. But before Haden had a chance to stand, I bombarded the bloke, digging my knee into his chest and wrapping my fingers around his throat.
“Three questions, and you will be honest with me,” I commanded into his ear as he fought against me. He was no match for my size, the monster inside, and the adrenaline jetting through my veins. “I’ll know if you’re lying.” Haden’s eyes bulged as he tried twisting out of my grasp. Knowing how much air supply to leave, I tightened my grip. The junkie had been here at Dolor for three years for shooting up and dealing. Most students were in for two, but lucky for me, these fellas couldn’t pass a class. Haden was twenty now, hardly a boy any longer. Men had to take responsibility for their actions. “Olivia. Did you rape her?”
Haden violently shook his head and tried to reach for my face, his turning blue, but I was far enough where he couldn’t reach me. I was no stranger to death, and this wasn’t my first rodeo. My arms were in a deadlock, but I let up a little for him to speak, and he gasped for air. “Who the fuck is Olivia?”
“Livy,” I growled. “Answer me.”
“Everyone fucked that slapper,” Haden spit with humor in his eyes, proving, once again, how he viewed women. “I’d hardly consider it rape when she laid there and took it. Like a champ, too.”
The monster inside me bared his teeth, and I should have snapped his neck right then and there. It wouldn’t have taken much effort, considering I already had him by the throat. But I had more questions for him and needed more answers. Releasing one hand, I shoved it into my pocket and flicked open the pocket knife, hovering the sharp point over the bloke’s bulging eye. “Did you kill her?” Surprisingly, my voice stayed calm, my words explicit, but I couldn’t mask the slight tremor in my knife-holding hand. Haden’s movements stilled under my grasp, and fear materialized from his watering eyes beneath the tip of the blade. The plan wasn’t to use the knife on him. Only a means to get the answers I needed to justify what I was about to do. “The fucking truth.”
“I’m not a rat,” he croaked in a husky breath.
“Did you hang my baby sister?” The grief and heartache threatened to show, jeopardizing my patience. My hand trembled around the tight grip of the knife, ready to carve Livy’s name into his face so, dead or alive, he would never forget what he’d done—so everyone would know what he’d done.
“Drew!” Haden rushed out with a shocking revelation in his eyes. “Drew was the one.”
The monster inside me laughed at his audacity. Tommy, Livy’s boyfriend, had killed Drew, and Haden knew it would be easier to throw the one person under the bus who wasn’t here to defend his name. “Let’s try this again.” I already knew the names. When I’d visited Tommy in jail, he ran me off a list of the five boys who gang-raped her. Drew, Haden, Chad, William, and Lionel. But I needed Haden’s confession. I wanted to hear him say it. “Did you murder Livy?”
Haden squeezed his eyes closed before he opened them and locked his dark gaze on me. “You want me to tell you how I watched Lionel and Drew suffocate her? How her freckled face turned blue, and arms went limp? How I helped lift her body so Lionel could pull the sheet around her neck? How she was already dead before she was flying? Do you think I’d honestly admit to something like that? You’d have to fucking kill me before my arse is going to that hell of a prison.”
His sorry excuse for a confession clouded my vision and put me into a transient shock. Unwarranted images of my baby sister fighting for her life while being man-handled by five blokes twice her size appeared behind my closed eyes.
After dragging in a steady breath, I opened them again. “Last question, Haden,” my voice wavered, and it took everything not to drive the blade into his eye, “are you sorry for what you did?”