Dread sinks into my gut again, but before I have time to let my imagination run wild, he starts talking again.
“About a month later I came home late from work one night and the house was dark. It was late enough that it was dark outside, but not so late that Paula should have been in bed. Her car was in the driveway, so she had to be home. The house should not have been dark. A sick feeling came over me. I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Oh, God,” I murmur, covering my face with my hands.
“When I opened the door, I was hit by the smell. It wasn’t a sickening stench, but it smelled off. The house was hot. The air had been turned off, and Paula never turned the air off. She liked it cold. The heat was why it already smelled, though. Someone wanted the house to smell when I walked in. They wanted me to know what I was going to find before I found it. I turned on the light and walked up the stairs, and right at the top, lying face-down on the hardwood floor… Paula. Her eyes were open. Cloudy. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. She’d been brutalized before they killed her.”
“Oh, Sin…” I have no idea what to say, and I’m terrified to hear the rest. Terrified.
“I ran upstairs. Paula had obviously been dead for hours, but I didn’t know… I didn’t know if Ellie was okay, or if they took her. Then I opened her bedroom door…” He stops, bowing his head and massaging his temples. “They killed her, too.”
I’m sick to my stomach, tears burning behind my eyes. I need air, I need to get away from this horror, but I can’t. He needs to finish.
“I lost my fucking mind. They left their calling card in her room for me to find. I guess they didn’t know Ellie wasn’t mine. It probably made more sense to them to think she was—that after Paula cheated, she stayed with me because she was pregnant.” Shaking his head, he says, “Anyway, it was retaliation. Paula and Ellie were dead because I killed the asshole she cheated with. At first I thought they only left me alive because I wasn’t home—the three coffins—but it didn’t take long before I realized what they did to me was worse than death. They took everything I loved and made me survive it.” He shakes his head, looking down. “I had to have retribution, but I couldn’t take them on myself. I took it to the Morellis. Rafe helped, he convinced Ben we could squash them. We did. We took them all out. I got my revenge. Didn’t matter though. Didn’t bring my family back.”
I can’t hold back tears any longer. Burying myself in his side, I wrap my arms around him and hug him. “I’m so sorry, Sin. I don’t… I have no words.”
He pushes my hair back over my shoulder, tips my head up so I’m looking at him, and shakes his head as he brushes away my tears. “Don’t cry for me. It was my fault.”
“No, it was not. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Paula’s. She was your wife. She didn’t have to cheat.”
“And I didn’t have to kill the bastard,” he reasons. “But I did.”
37
Laurel
The idea of him taking responsibility for this atrocity, carrying that on his shoulders for all these years, hurts my heart. He said he hasn’t kissed anyone in a long time—did he mean since Paula? Did he ever move on from this, or did he just stop living when they died? Maybe if he blames himself, he thinks he deserves that.
“Sin, you can’t blame yourself. What happened was not your fault.”
“My actions had consequences. Her actions had consequences. Before that, our inaction had consequences. We both knew we weren’t happy, but we didn’t fix it. It was a chain of consequences, it wasn’t just one thing, but mine is the transgression that resulted in their deaths. Mine.”
I shake my head, climbing on his lap and wrapping myself around him. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. That’s horrifying. I literally don’t know what to say. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It literally breaks my heart that you had to go through that, especially alone. I wish I had known you then. I wish I could have been there for you.”
“You were a kid,” he points out. “That would’ve been weird.”
“I don’t care,” I mutter. “I could have still been a shoulder to cry on.”
“I would not have cried on your 15-year-old shoulder.”
All I want to do is comfort him, and I can’t find the words to do it. Instead, I press tender kisses along his jawline, caressing the other side of his face with my free hand. I want to wrap him up in my love and protect him from the pain of his past. I want to rewind to the times I may have said unknowingly hurtful things and shove all the words back inside my mouth.
There’s one in particular I need to
take back. Leaning back just enough to meet his gaze, I tell him, “You’re not a monster. I’m so sorry I said that to you. I didn’t know… but I shouldn’t have said it anyway. My feelings were just hurt, and—”
Sin cuts me off with his finger against my lips, shaking his head at me. “You don’t have to apologize. I was a dick. I deserved your wrath.” Running his fingers through my hair and regarding me curiously, he says, “This is not the response I expected to that story.”
“What did you expect?” I ask. “For me to run away from your house screaming?”
“I don’t know, less affection, more caution. I just told you I cuffed my wife to the wall and made her watch me bludgeon her lover to death.”
“In your defense, she shouldn’t have had a lover for you to bludgeon to death,” I point out.
He stares at me. “Laurel.”
Sighing, I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you. I know who you are, Sin. I know the violence you’re capable of. I didn’t expect you to be a big loving teddy bear 100% of the time.”