Branded (Fall of Angels #1)(30)

I scream. Louder than I ever have.

One of the other men quickly intervenes, and before I know it, he’s slashed Ben’s throat.

My survival instinct kicks in. I run as fast as I can to my parents’ room. My dad’s already sitting straight up in his bed the moment I burst through the door, and scream, “Danny! Ben! They’re dead!”

“What?!” my dad growls, jumping out of bed.

Mom just screams.

I shut the door behind me, locking it. My whole body is shaking. “There are men inside our house!”

Still in his underwear, my dad reaches into his closet and takes out his shotgun. He marches toward me and shoves me aside. He slams open the door and bolts through the hallway to their bedroom. Mom sits on the bed, crying her eyes out, unable to move. After quickly ripping a big hunting knife off the wall, I follow my dad.

But when we enter the twin’s room, the men are long gone.

The window is open, the curtains floating in the wind.

My dad rushes toward it and peers outside, then he points his shotgun at the ground.

BANG!

BANG, BANG!

The shots echo into the night, the sound deafening.

Everything seems to be going in slow motion. As if I’m not really here.

My body feels like it isn’t mine as I tread through the boys’ room. My mind can’t make sense of the scene in front of me.

I don’t know how many times Dad shoots at them, but the longer he goes on, the more he growls. “You’ll pay for this, motherfucking redskins!” he yells out the window.

“Tend to your brothers,” my dad barks at me while he marches out, probably to chase those men in the ski masks. And Brandon. Fuck.

But it’s already too late. I hear the tires screeching. By the time he reaches them, they’ll be long gone.

I drop the knife on a dresser beside the door and run toward Danny. Stab wounds cover his whole body. Blood seeps from the holes.

“Danny? Danny!” I shake him, but it’s no use.

He doesn’t respond. Not to my cries for help. Not to me pushing him or trying to perform CPR.

The life has already left his eyes.

I turn my head, hoping at least Ben is still alive.

I crawl across the blood-stained floor, soaking my own nightgown. My hands tremble as I try to hold his throat together. The penetrative stare he gives me makes my heart stop.

He’s terrified. I can see it. But nothing I can say or do will change what’s about to happen.

He’s trying to talk, but all that comes out are gurgles … and blood.

“Don’t talk,” I say, shaking my head.

I grab his blanket and rip off a piece, trying to apply pressure, but I don’t know what I’m doing, and the blood keeps pouring out.

I know he’s about to die, but I can’t let it happen.

They’re my fucking brothers.

“Hold on,” I say. “Please, hold on. Stay with me,” I beg, but his eyes are already closing. Softly. Like the wind coming in through the window is tipping him over the edge, pulling him toward the darkness. Toward death.

Mom enters at this moment, and she immediately sinks to the floor in front of them. “My babies!” she keeps on yelling over and over while hugging Danny and then moving to Ben.

His gurgling continues for a few minutes, then stops.

Everything stops.

Even me and my mom.

With tears running down my cheeks, I sink to the floor. A wave of sorrow washes over me and takes me away, pulling me into the abyss.

My brothers are dead.

Gone.

Just like that, I became a single child.

Just like that, I lose the brothers I’ve lived with for seventeen years.

All the memories we were supposed to build together in the future, gone. Erased from the planet.

Just like them.

Just as the love I once felt for Brandon Locklear.

He killed my fucking family.

I’ll never forgive him for this.

Never.





Chapter Fifteen





Brandon



Present



“I saw you,” she says with a stone-cold face. “I know you helped those monsters kill my brothers. You’re just as guilty.”

The gravity of her words weighs me down as if I’m being thrown in the deep end with a concrete block attached to my ankle. She’s the one who cast me in. The one who brought me ruin. The one who caused us to destroy ourselves.

It’s not all my fault. It’s not only my sin that brought us here. She’s as much to blame as I am, and I refuse to take the fall for that.

“You don’t know anything,” I say, turning around to face the mirror. I can’t look at her right now. Not without wanting to wrap my hands around her throat and be done with it.

I have to control myself. If I kill her now, it’ll all be for nothing.

I plucked her away from the hotel for a reason. I just have to remember what it was. Because, fuck me, if she isn’t making it difficult for me right now.

“You murdered them,” she says, her words hitting me hard. “I remember everything.”

“Stop,” I say, trying to block out the voices in my head accusing me of being the devil.

“Just because you don’t wanna hear it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” she hisses. “Just because you don’t want it to be true doesn’t make it untrue, Brandon.”