But when I glance up, it’s only to see his jaw hardening and that dark, almost demonic look of paranoia come back into his eyes like he sometimes gets when he’s on drugs. “You betrayed me. Just like they said you would.”
They?Who the hell are they?
“Get off me.” I shove him, but he grabs me and wrestles me against the wall, his slim body suddenly strong as granite. His jaw tenses as he looks me up and down.
“Did you fuck him?” Then he laughs, a harsh, brutal little sound. “Of course you fucked him. You always were a slut.”
“Stop it, Z,” I snap, shocked at the words coming out of his mouth. “Let me fucking go!”
But his jaw just clenches and then he’s slamming me painfully up against the wall.
“I saidno!” he shouts right in my face.
Which is when I realize, far too late, that fuck, I’ve seriously miscalculated all this.
What the actual fuckishe on?
I search his red-rimmed eyes, pupils all but pinpricks. This isn’t weed. Or even coke. Fuck.
“Do you have anyideathe sacrifices I’ve made to keep this family together all these years?” he shouts. “Doing what needed to be done. Keeping your little worldsafe and fucking happy. I protected you and that Goddamn kid—even though he wasn’t even mine! And this is the fucking thanks I get!”
He pounds the wall beside my head with his fist, his knuckles sinking in with a small explosion of paint and drywall chips. I scream and avert my face, genuinely terrified of Z for the first time in my life.
“You’re delusional,” I bite back. “What the hell are you on, Z?”
I pull out my phone to message Elio or Lorenzo or another of the cousins to come by—anyone—but Z suddenly slaps the phone out of my hand, sending it scuttling feet away on the tile of the foyer.
When I try to lunge for it, he grabs me.
“Masks off now, Harp,” he breathes in my face, breath foul. “That’s better. It was always better when we could talk honestly about the ugly things. Like it was when we were kids.”
He reaches out to touch my face, but I pull my head away.
“Z, let me go.” I twist in his punishing grip. “You’re hurting me!”
He chuckles darkly. “Do you know how much you’ve hurtmethe past ten years?”
“What the fuck are you doing, Z?” I screech as he finally pulls away from where he’s got me pinned against the wall, but only to hike me over his shoulder, thick sinew of his arm like a shackle pinning my arms at my waist.
“Zedekiah!” I shout again at the top of my lungs. “Put me down this moment. I’m not fucking kidding.”
“I said no,” he barks, and his voice doesn’t sound quite right.
Nothing about him has sounded right since I walked through the door.
I buck wildly and kick my legs. Even though he grunts a couple of times when I land a kick, he doesn’t stop. Like whatever he’s taken stops him from even feeling the pain.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
I can’t believe that Zedekiah—the boy whose window I used to climb in at night to feel safe—is scaring the shit out of me like this.
He throws open the closet at the back of the primary bedroom.He drops me unceremoniously to the carpeted floor, and I scramble for the door, but before I can get to it, he starts to shut it with me on the inside.
I don’t fucking think so.
I haven’t been locked in a closet since I was twelve years old, and Mama learned what a stubborn little bitch she gave birth to.
I scramble to jam my hand between the door and the jamb.