Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

“Her heart was broken long before Rika was born or her
husband died,” my father droned on.
She wanted me even with what my father did to her? Her
husband wanted me anyway?
“She would look at you for so long, completely obvious,”
GGabriel continued, inching up to me farther and torturing me
with what was happening right under my nose, and I never
even knew it. “I actually thought she’d be a liability, and I
might have to kill her, too.”
What if she didn’t like what she was seeing? What if that’s
why she never approached me? What if she saw me growing
up and thought I was turning out exactly like him?
What if she was scared of me?
“You honestly never noticed?” he asked, looking at me like
I was the dumbest shit on the planet.
Rage filled my chest, my stomach twisted into knots, and
every image of him flashed in my head.
Raping her. Destroying her life. Stealing me away as she
screamed.
Forcing her to watch another woman raise me a few miles
down the road.
GGiving me to that house and the horror I had to swallow.
And I looked up at him, clenching my jaw and channeling
it all, knowing I would never give him any grandchildren to
get his hands on.
“I thought you were so much more perceptive than that,”
he told me. “But I guess she wasn’t very smart, either, so—”
I growled, grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving the
goddamn dagger right into his fucking stomach.
My friends gasped behind me, and I heard Banks cry my
name, but it was barely a whisper.
He jerked, his mouth falling open as he stood there wideeyed
for the first time in his miserable fucking life, and
looking like he couldn’t breathe all of a sudden.