All That Really Matters Nicole Deese (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📖

need your help with Monica. Try to get to the bottom of what’s really going on.”

I nodded again. “I will.”

Molly

More Sasha and Monica drama at the house tonight. Separating the girls after a minor altercation in the living room. Glo has Sasha at the cottage and Clara and I will be in the bunk room with Monica in the main house. We’re all good now, everything is handled, and we’ve followed protocol. No need to worry. Good night.

Morning couldn’t come soon enough.

29

Molly

Something shrieked inside my head. No, not shrieked. Wailed. A shrill that dipped and circled and never once stopped to take a breath. It just kept going and going and going and—

“Molly! Molly! Wake up!”

My eyes snapped open in the dark room. Was it morning? Where was the sun? I blinked several times, trying to remember why I was in a cold room on a hard bottom bunk, when Monica’s face cleared into focus.

“Hey,” I said a bit groggily. “What time is it?”

“Wren’s hurt,” Monica said, rubbing her arms and shivering so hard her teeth chattered.

Her words sobered my groggy mind. “What? Where?”

And that’s when I noticed the tears glistening on Monica’s cheeks. “Clara ran out about ten minutes ago, and I followed her. The police are here, and Silas is—”

I didn’t wait for the rest. In socked feet, shorts, and a ribbed tank, I barreled out of the unfamiliar room and down the long hallway, slipping and sliding around every corner and curve. The wail of emergency sirens still hadn’t halted as I slid over the hardwood into the lobby.

But nothing on earth could have prepared me for what I saw.

Wren.

Only not my Wren with the auburn braid that fell over her shoulder and the quiet disposition that wouldn’t harm a blade of grass. No, this Wren was curled up on a stretcher, grasping her head in both hands and sobbing to the point of dry heaves. Because her hair, her stunning Irish hair that she’d grown long in honor of her mother, had been hacked off above her ears.

And the anguish that twisted her face was far more gruesome than the blood that trailed the cut on her cheek.

“Wren!” A cry squeezed from my lungs as I ran toward her. But before I could reach the gurney, arms were around me, encircling my waist and holding me back, pulling me away. I fought against them, desperate to get to her. Desperate to touch her, to know she would be okay.

“No, Molly,” a low voice said as I watched Clara go to Wren. “I need you to stay here. Clara will go with her.”

“What? No.” That wasn’t right. I should be the one with her. I was her person. Not Clara.

But it was Clara who rubbed Wren’s back, Clara who spoke comforting words into her ear, Clara who stroked her butchered hair as the medics covered her bloodied sleep clothes with thin white blankets. All while Wren sobbed herself sick.

What had happened? Who had done this to her?

I fought to break free once again, twisting against Silas and pleading for him to please just let me go with her. But his arms were as firm as his voice in my ear. “Molly, listen to me. I know you’re upset, but I need you to be calm. I need you to help us understand what happened at the cottage. To give your statement to the police. Glo said she saw you talking with Sasha last night, outside.”

“Sasha?” The shutter in my mind’s eye shot in reverse. The fight. The bargain. The discovery.

“They’ve opened an investigation on the house.”

My mind couldn’t quite make sense of his use of the word investigation. But even still, my muscles slacked beneath his hold as the last of my shallow breaths squeezed from my lungs. For the first time my eyes roved the lobby to where two officers stood at attention, reading the room. And at the moment, reading me.

With all the willpower I could muster, I nodded my head and straightened my spine in an attempt to stand on my own.

Slowly, Silas let me go as I tested out the strength of my legs, actively reminding myself to breathe. “You okay?”

Again, I nodded, though my body felt as detached from my brain as the part of my heart being wheeled out of the lobby on a stretcher.

“Are you Molly McKenzie?” the larger of the two officers asked me.

“Yes.” Something heavy draped over my shoulders. A gray hoodie. Silas’s. Robotically, I slid each of my arms into the sleeves and zipped it to my chin. The thick hem fell to my mid thigh, blanketing my sleep shorts but failing to hide the involuntary shiver that had overtaken my body.

“Will you please come with us? We’d like to ask you a few questions. About last night.”

About last night. A phrase at war with another that had finally registered in my brain. They’ve opened an investigation on the house.

On numb legs, I followed the officers down the cold corridor, stopping only once to look back at Silas, searching for any ounce of strength or comfort he might offer me in his steady gaze. But Silas’s eyes weren’t tracking me this time. Instead, they were tracking the ambulance as it pulled away from the manor, carrying an innocent victim he’d done everything in his power to protect from the viciousness of this world.

A victim whose attacker I’d struck a deal with only hours ago.

I tossed my keys on the breakfast bar in my kitchen, flinching at the harsh sound of metal on granite.

My house felt quieter than usual. Emptier, too. I’d spent so little time at home over the last month, leaving at the break of dawn and coming home after the sun had set, that I’d nearly forgotten how this place looked in the daylight. Dust particles gathered in clumps on the textured hardwood, scattering with my every step as muscle memory carried me down the hall to the room responsible