There Is No Devil Sinners Duet Book 2 By Sophie Lark-pdfread

She stares at us blearily, the strap of her dress slipping down one shoulder.
“You ate without me?” she says, her voice mushy and loose.
Either she doesn’t notice the blood on my hand, or she’s choosing to ignore
it.
Randall’s piggy eyes flit between me and her, as if trying to decide whether
to transfer his rage to a new subject.
My mother must intuit the same thing—she sidles up to him, laying a hand on
his bicep, looking up into his face and batting her long false eyelashes.
“Should we go upstairs?” she slurs.
I see the struggle on Randall’s face—the offer of sex battling with his
undrained rage.
“In a minute,” he says. Then, turning to me, “Get my belt.”
This is so outrageous that I gape at him. He already took my iPod and
slammed me into the wall. There’s no way I deserve a whipping on top of
that.
Through stiff lips, I say, “You can’t do that anymore. The gym teacher said.”
“The gym teacher said,” Randall mimics me in a baby voice. He points one
sausage-like finger in my face. “FUCK your teachers.”
My mother makes a small sound from behind closed lips.
This wouldn’t be her first visit from CPS. Or even her fifth. They’ve been
called to our various apartments many times over the years. The end result
was a couple of weeks where I had lunch packed for school and somewhat
cleaner clothes. Only once was she subjected to drug tests—that made her
angrier than anything. We moved again, and our harried social worker never
reappeared.
“We don’t want trouble,” she murmurs to Randall.
It’s so rare for my mother to stand up for me that for a moment I feel a slight
flush of warmth, the last vestige of an affection that once dominated my
entire life. She was everything to me, my only family and my only friend.