He'll have to break all the rules to keep her, but first she has to break just one and let him in...
It's taken four years, but Anna Fray has finally put the past behind her. Mostly. She fills her days working in a bar and her nights watching bad ro...
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The sickening crack echoed through the room, reverberating off the walls. The wind howling beyond did nothing to disguise the noise.
It was a log popping on ravenous flames. A twig snapping on a crisp autumn morning. A candy cane rendered in two to be shared with a friend. It was a sound that, in any other time and place, would pass by unnoticed.
But not this time, not this place. Here it brought the acerbic taste of bile bouncing up my throat as my stomach twisted and roiled.
I gagged on the scream caught in my throat and double over to brace my hands on my knees. My gaze fixated on the floor, tracing the cracks and counting the flecks of debris, anything to block out the image of R's head whipping to the side and his body lolling limply in the chair.
"What?" I gasped as I snapped my head up. "What the fuck, Olivia?" she loitered behind R, her arms crossed as if what just happened was no more than swatting a fly.
"He was a piece of shit, Anna. He deserved what he got."
I pushed off my knees, throwing myself up to my full height. "No... I told you I didn't want this."
Olivia ran an aggravated hand through her curls. "For Chaos sake, forget about him. He hurt you and now he can't anymore. Isn't that enough? Didn't it feel good having him helpless in front of you? After everything he did?"
"I never wanted him dead. Not really."
The door to the Centre rattled in its frame as the wind battered against it. The big bad wolf, desperate to get in for a taste of fresh meat before the body grew cold.
"For the love of Fate. What the hell is wrong with you? He's the reason your friends and family abandoned you. He stole your childhood, your innocence, from you. He raped you, and you're honestly upset that he's dead?"
My blood stilled. In that moment of calm, every instinct I'd had about Olivia, every moment I'd felt my skin itch in her presence, crystallised.
"I never told you any of that. I never said he raped me. I've never told anyone about that."
And I never would. Not when I'd battled so long to block it from my memory.
Olivia rolled her eyes. "You didn't have to. They're all the same."
Thunder grumbled above us as my eyes narrowed on her bored expression. "No, it's more than that... How did you know that?"
She stepped around R, slowly walking towards me. Mr R's vacant eyes stared, as if following Olivia's movements.
His warning was frozen in time, a death mask, an imprint of his final thoughts. His final breath echoed in my head.
Ru..
Ru...
Run.
"Who is Katie?" My veins turned to ice as R's final moments replayed in my head and realisation descended.
