Reveal (Wicked Ways #2)(46)

Her complexion is pale, her eyes are wide with worry, and everything about her seems to be on edge and rushed.

“Sam?” I ask, much calmer now even though my pulse is racing and unease is tickling at the base of my neck. Tears I don’t understand well in my eyes.

“Here.” She pushes a suitcase at me, refusing to meet my eyes or answer my questions. “Grab whatever you want to take with you.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.”

My hands still, and my suitcase falls on its side at her words. “What do you mean?”

“We’re leaving, Vaughn. This town. This house. Him. We’re leaving.” Our eyes lock for the first time since she stormed in here.

I find it hard to swallow as fear of the unknown future stretches out before us at the same time hope tries to bubble its way up in the crevices the fear of living in this house has created within me. And even though I know this is a good thing—us leaving—it’s still terrifying.

“Yes, Vaughn. Everything I told you we were going to do—leave here, make a life for ourselves—we’re going to do it right now. So I need you to pack, okay?” Without waiting for me to comply, she begins shoving her own clothes from her dresser into her suitcase in one big scoop of items after another.

Stunned, a little off kilter, and still watching her, I kneel down to open my suitcase, but my hand hits something odd. When I look down, a gasp falls from my lips as I stare at the bag she’d dropped on the floor with a thud after she came in here.

It’s jewelry. Lots of jewelry—it’s my uncle’s Rolexes and diamond cuff links and rings, when he never wears rings—and cash. A thick stack of bills folded inside his money clip. I stare at the pile, my fingers coiling back as if the items in the bag that I now notice is a pillowcase will burn them.

“It’s our payoff.” She keeps her head down as she flits around the room and slides a bin out from beneath the bed to grab her vast collection of journals where they’re hidden beneath the winter clothes we’ve stored them in.

“I don’t under—”

“Pack. Please, pack,” she urges. “All of that is what Uncle James is giving us if we leave and never come back.”

“But . . .” The word dies on my lips as our gazes hold, and the look in hers tells me not to question. Not to ask. And to believe her lie that we’re not stealing these items so we have something to pawn and live off.

Holy shit. This is real.

I just nod but don’t move, frozen by the change swirling through the room like a hurricane.

“We have to go, Vaughn.”

I look at her, my eyes blinking, as I try to process everything and the urgency with which she’s requiring me to do it.

And then I see it.

The blood. Little specks on her shirt. On her cheek.

“Sam. Your shirt. There’s blood. Are you okay? What did he do to you? Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?” Tears flood my eyes as my own hysteria amps up with each and every syllable.

She looks down at her shirt and blinks slowly as time feels like it passes in slow motion. In automatic reflex, she closes one hand around the key on the chain around her neck as she stares at the little dots of blood speckled on it.

When she looks back at me this time, there is more determination than ever before in her expression. In her eyes. In everything about her.

“Yes. He did. He hurt me again, and it’s the last time I’ll ever allow him to. That’s why we’re leaving.” She steps forward and grabs both of my cheeks in her hands and looks into my eyes. “I know this is scary, Vee. I know it’s the middle of the night and I’m worrying you, but Uncle James is, uh . . . passed out on his bed, and this is our chance to leave and never look back. We’ll get a place of our own. We’ll never have to see him again. I’ll take care of you. I promise you, I’ll take care of you.”

I nod. It’s all I can do as I imagine a life where my sister doesn’t have to tiptoe into our room late at night, scrub herself raw in the shower, and then climb into bed, where she lies to me and tells me she’s okay.

I’ll do anything she wants me to so long as she never has to do that again.

“Okay. I’ll pack.”

Toot. Toot.

Another train this time. Maybe we’ll be on the next one.

Toot. Toot.



I startle awake and bolt to an upright seated position in bed. It takes a moment for me to make out my surroundings—with my breath labored and my heart racing.

Ryker’s.

I’m at Ryker’s place.

Not the mansion in Greenwich.

“Hey, you okay?” Ryker’s sleep-drugged voice rasps through the silence, and his hand rubs lazily up and down the line of my back.

“Yes. Yeah.”

“Bad dream?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“C’mere.” He hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. My immediate reaction is to fight against him for some reason, to keep some distance and gain some space to allow my mind to settle at the memory and the little details of that night I haven’t thought of in years.

But I don’t.

I lie back down and allow Ryker to wrap his arms around me so that the heat of his body seeps into the chill of mine.

“You sure you’re okay?”