Isolate and sabotage.
His whole intent was to take Sebastian from me. To leave me the most vulnerable I could be.
Little did he know I would fight him to the death.
Shivers shook through my entire body, and I tried to swallow around the rock in my throat as I reached down and picked up one of the pictures that lay face down on the floor.
My hand shot to my mouth to cover a cry.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Mark, Austin, Donny, and my mother.
A deep, guttural cry suddenly ricocheted off the walls in the small closet, one that meshed with the devastated sadness of mine.
I jerked to look over my shoulder.
Austin.
He clutched both sides of the doorframe, holding himself up, spirit and body crumpled and broken. Confession barely decipherable, he looked at me as if he were begging me to see him. “It’s my fault. It was always my fault.”
I scrambled to face him, pushing all the way up onto my knees, my words jumbled as they poured from my mouth. I held out the journal. “Austin…what is this? Tell me what you know.”
He winced as if the sight of it caused him physical pain. “We knew, Shea. Mark and I…we knew. Donny told us what Martin had them do to you.”
They knew.
Austin shook his head and laughed a spiteful sound. “There’s never any fucking proof, right, Shea? Assholes can just keep hurting and hurting and hurting and there’s never any proof. But Mark didn’t care. He said he was going to the cops anyway. And then Mark was gone… He was gone, Shea,” he said with all the implication he could summon.
Oh my God. Martin. He did this to Mark.
Everything spun and dizziness swelled.
Austin kept crying, words tumbling from him like a confession that had been held in for far too long. “Baz found all this shit Mark had kept…demanded to know what the hell I knew. I couldn’t keep it from him any longer, Shea. I couldn’t. I’m so fucking sorry. So sorry.”
I gulped over the reality of what Sebastian had found. Of what he had learned. My last secret. The one I’d kept to protect him.
I staggered onto unsteady feet, unable to process everything he was trying to tell me. My focus would only latch onto one thing. I shoved one of the pictures at him. “When…when was this picture taken?”
“I don’t know…maybe a year and a half ago. Not long before Mark died.”
Between the heavy, stale air, the disorganized chaos of the room, and the catastrophic discovery, I felt bile rise in my throat. My skin cold and clammy.
I took a desperate step forward.
“Where is she?”
THE HEELS OF CHLOE Lynn’s high-heeled boots clicked on the tile floor where she paced in annoyance, arms crossed over her chest, dressed in designer skinny jeans and a flowy blouse. Her mother looked poised and ready to conquer the world, while Shea knew she looked absolutely horrible, her eyes stained red and cheeks chapped from crying.
“Please, Momma, I need your help.”
She’d hidden it for as long as she could.
Four months, and there was no longer any hidin’.
Shea met the force of her mother’s disgusted glare. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Beneath it Shea wanted to cower and shrink, but she refused to be that girl for one day longer. No longer would she bow and submit.
But that didn’t mean fear wasn’t trembling through her bones.
“What is it exactly you want me to do, Delaney?”
Shea cringed, voice ragged. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why? It’s about time you accepted who you are.”
“What if that’s not who I want to be?”