The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)

He bared his teeth at me. “Who, me? Nah. Not me. But me and the others looooooved watching the vid file of her falling. We watched it over and over and over again, and we laughed and laughed. The way her legs and arms flailed, and the look on her face…”

He started laughing then, but it was short-lived, as Alex suddenly stepped close and rammed his fist into Baldy’s jaw. There was a sharp, wet snap, and Baldy’s head jerked to one side, blood spurting from his lip. He sat stunned for a second or two, and then gave a surprised, huffing laugh, interrupted only when he spat out a mouthful of blood.

A part of me wanted to stop Alex, but Baldy’s words had set fire to a deep, bitter rage and acrid hatred—and that part of me took pleasure in watching him hurt.

“Gonna have to do better than that, boy,” he chuckled, looking up at my brother and tonguing the area where Alex had split his lip open. His grin broadened, his eyes sparkling with something that looked like madness. “You can’t stop what’s coming, just like you couldn’t stop what happened to your mother.”

Crack. Baldy’s head snapped back as my brother struck him again, this time from the other side. He shook for a second, and then laughter began to erupt from his throat. “Can’t protect Mom… Can’t protect Baby Sister…” he sang tauntingly. “Gonna watch them die, Big Brother. Can promise you that.”

“Shut up!” my brother shouted, and his fist lashed out again, catching Baldy in the nose with a sharp crunch. Blood spurted from the wound, but Baldy continued to chortle, his bound boots slapping the ground. “Tell me who you work for!” Alex shouted.

Smack.

I flinched, the fourth hit feeling like a step too far. “Alex,” I said softly. “Stop.”

But my brother ignored me, driving his fist into Baldy’s stomach again and again. The breath exploded out of him in sharp grunts, and he began to hack and wheeze for air, the laughter dying out.

“Tell me where to find your people!” my brother shouted, his face dark with the promise of violence. I’d never seen him look at anyone like that before, and it was starting to scare me. His arm swung again.

“Alex,” I said more sharply, moving toward him even as another wet crack filled the air. This was spinning out of control. “Stop! I—”

His fist fell again, and then again, and when I put my hand on his shoulder to pull him off, he pushed me back and continued to pummel Baldy, shouting, “Tell me what you did to Scipio! Tell me! Tell me!”

“Quess, Leo!” I yelled, catching my balance from his shove. “Help—”

“LIANA!” came a loud, horrified cry, and it was loud enough to make my brother freeze. My eyes widened as I recognized it, and I whirled to see the youngest member of our makeshift family, Tian, standing there, her blue eyes wide and filled with horror.

But what was worse was the boy standing right next to her, bound up in her lashes. His face was pale, making the freckles on it stand out in stark comparison, and he was staring in abject terror at the man on the chair. I recognized him from my attack in the Attic. I’d been following him, and he’d led me back to his legacy home, where Baldy and at least thirty others lived.

And he’d just seen us beating one of his fellow legacies.





6





I quickly blocked Tian and the young boy’s view and ushered them out of the room, telling Tian to find somewhere to hide for the next hour and then come back with her guest. Tian’s face was tight and nervous as she looked at the boy, whom she awkwardly introduced as Liam, and his face was grim, eyes full of anger and hatred directed at all of us. I couldn’t blame him. We’d attacked someone who must have been tantamount to a family member while he was helpless. We were monsters to him.

Then again, Tian had kidnapped him, so we hadn’t really started off on the right foot to begin with.

Which really sucked. Because while getting Baldy to talk was clearly not happening, persuading the boy to join our side might’ve been a golden opportunity in disguise, and completely possible—had we not been smashing the face of someone he knew. Earning any form of trust now was going to be difficult, and I wouldn’t blame him if he never gave it to us.

Once they were gone, I turned back to Alex and Baldy, and noticed that Quess was already kneeling next to Baldy’s chair, administering first aid. Alex was watching, his eyes dark and brooding, occasionally waggling his curled fingers in a move I recognized all too well; they were hurting from all the punches he’d delivered.

I considered him, wondering what I was supposed to do. On the one hand, Baldy had hit a very sore spot for both of us, and a part of me felt like he deserved what he got. On the other…

I looked down at the blood splatters on the floor around the chair, and my stomach clenched. Baldy had tried to kill me multiple times. First in the Medica when we went to rescue Maddox from Devon Alexander, the former Champion, and then on the catwalk when Leo had been pouring his heart out to me. And then finally in the Attic, when he had cut my throat.

But even with all of that stacked against him, what I had been allowing to go on was unconscionable—not for him, but for me. For my soul or spirit or heart, whatever you wanted to call it. I had felt it even before Tian showed up, but the look on the young man’s face sealed the deal for me. I didn’t want to be the sort of person who could condone torture, no matter who the prisoner was or what they had done. I couldn’t let this happen again, no matter what Baldy had done to me.

I approached my brother slowly, coming up beside him. He made no move to acknowledge me, but I waited for him to, wondering what he was feeling. In a way, I was guilty for his response to this; I’d cut him out, left him with unanswered questions and an anger burning in his heart.

But that didn’t excuse the fact that he had lost control and might’ve beaten Baldy to death in a mindless, uncontrolled rage.

Yet given that was his reaction to Baldy’s claim that he was a failure… Was that the root of Alex’s anger? Our mother had just died, and neither of us had a particularly good relationship with her. In my case, however, things had been shifting toward the end of her life. So when I lost her, it had hit me harder than I thought it would, because I’d been starting to see a possibility for reconciliation, only to have it stolen away from me.

In his case, though, it had been over a year since he’d seen her. Not since our birthday dinner, when they had fought over Alex’s decision to join IT instead of the Knights. She didn’t understand why he didn’t want to be a Knight, and now I wondered if my brother wasn’t questioning that decision himself, thinking that maybe if he had followed a different path, he would’ve been able to keep us safe.

I imagined that stung a lot. And when he’d reached out to me, trying to make sense of everything, I’d blown him off, or forgotten to net him. I’d left him alone to deal with his pain. And though I’d wanted to be alone to process my pain, that didn’t mean he had. He had needed his best friend, his sister, his twin, and I hadn’t been there for him. I’d failed him.

“Alex,” I said hesitantly. “Are you—”

“I’m not sorry,” Alex interrupted abruptly, and I blinked and looked up at him, alarm spreading through me at his words. “This guy deserves much more—and worse—for what he did to you.”