Echo (Bleeding Hearts #1)(61)

I whimpered and shook my head as he picked up the photos of the mangled body parts and thrust them into my face, demanding that I look at them.

“I want you to really understand,” he said. “I want you to digest it all.”

A bloody tutu skirt and the haunted expression of a lifeless little girl stared back at me from the glossy photo.

“I listened to her choke on her own blood for thirty minutes,” he said calmly. “Do you know how long thirty minutes is, Brighton?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had never seen him this way, and it was breaking my f*cking heart.

“Thirty minutes of her crying for me to help her. I had to tear the flesh off of my chest to reach her.”

A sob escaped me, and I closed my eyes and begged him to stop. To put the pictures away.

“Do you know why?” he continued ruthlessly. “Why I watched her die a slow and painful death? Why I sat with the lifeless faces of my brother and my mom while I waited for an ambulance that wasn’t coming? Or why my father willingly ate the barrel of a gun six months later?”

“It wasn’t Brayden,” I said weakly. “He would never do that.”

“Wouldn’t he?” he asked. “Because he was in the car that night. And if I recall correctly, he was also the one to walk down the embankment and hold the barrel of a 45 against my skull.”

I blinked up at him through bleary eyes, shaking my head uncertainly.

“Oh, Brighton,” he barked out a strange laugh. “You poor, dense little girl. All these years you’ve lived with the real monster and you didn’t even know it.”

“No,” I denied his accusation. “He would never do that!”

“I know you’d like to believe that,” he replied. “But it’s in his blood, Brighton. It’s in your blood too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Frank Gallo was your father,” he explained. “Otherwise known as the low-level scum who did the dirty work for the Chicago crime family.”

I blinked up at him, trying to digest his words while he waited patiently. I’d known my father was Italian, but my mother only ever referred to him as Frankie. But when she did, it was the only time I’d ever seen a shadow of fear pass over her face. Just like when Brayden started hanging out with his new friends. I didn’t think we had anything to worry about, but she did. And suddenly, I understood why. It was a possibility my mind had never even considered before, but Ryland sounded so certain.

“You think Frankie asked Brayden to do this?” I rasped.

“Yes,” he sneered. “The one and only.”

“But he must have forced him,” I argued. “Brayden would never take part in something like that by choice.”

“Wouldn’t he?” he snapped. “What about the code, Brighton? Family and honor. That’s how it goes, right?”

His words chilled me. Because it was the very thing Brayden had mentioned before he went away. He said he would do this. For his family and for his honor.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought… I thought…”

“Well you thought wrong,” he growled, pulling himself back up to his full height as he looked down at me with pity. “Because Brayden told me himself.”

“Ryland…” I sobbed. “I’m sorry…”

“You put up a valiant fight,” he said cruelly. “But you can see now that none of it matters.”

“I don’t understand,” I cried. “If you hate my family so much, why are you paying my mother?”

A cold smile fell over his face, and for the first time since we’d started the conversation, he looked at peace.

“Think about it, baby girl. Think really hard. You’ve been playing the game, but you can’t tell me you haven’t given a single thought as to how it would end?”

The harshness in his tone unsettled a startling reality for me. One I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen sooner. How Norma-Jean’s addiction had spiraled further and further out of control over the last five years.

“You… you’re trying to…”

The words wouldn’t come out. I was the last person to advocate for my mother, but that didn’t mean I wanted her dead. And the thought that Ryland had been slowly poisoning her over the years sickened me on a level I couldn’t even comprehend myself.

“Yes,” he spat. “I’m waiting for her to die. I’m funding her descent into hell, and at this rate, it should be any day now. And once that’s done and Brayden has felt the pain I have felt, he will die too.”

The sympathy I had for him only a moment ago vanished somewhere during that statement, and I stood up on wobbly legs, staring him straight in the eyes.

“You did all of this on purpose?” I asked. “You sent him to prison and then had him released, just because you could?”

“You’re finally getting it.”

“That’s where you were last week?” I stared at him in disbelief. “You were the witness that the press wouldn’t print?”

“One and the same.”

“If what you say is true, you could have kept him in prison!” I accused. “You could have done the right thing, Ryland. Gave him what he deserves. But what you’re talking about is no better than what he did.”