Their Vicious Darling (Vicious Lost Boys Book 3)

It doesn’t take much to locate Cherry.

I find her in her old room scanning the pictures tacked up on her wall. She used to love cutting pictures out of the illustrated fairytales and homemaking books.

“You left everything the way it was,” she says when she spots me in the doorway.

“Of course.”

She makes a turn around the room.

When I built this house, I let her pick which room she wanted. She went with one on the lower level, far away from the pirates and the drinking and cavorting. I was glad she did.

I had never intended to bring her on this trip. The one fateful trip that saw a wrong turn somewhere, landing us in the Isles.

I had meant to sail to the Caribbean.

I never made it.

When I discovered Cherry hiding in the ship’s hold, I had a thought to turn around and return her home. But then I remembered why I was leaving, why I was so desperate to escape.

I couldn’t leave her alone with our father.

Cherry sits on her bed now and a cloud of dust kicks up. She waves it away. The sun isn’t up yet so there is only the amber glow of the glass sconces on the wall.

I sit beside her and try to search the vastness of my guilt and my shame for an apology that doesn’t sound contrite.

She leans her head against my shoulder and there is a stinging deep in my sinuses.

I take her hand in mine.

“Why do we continue to love those who hate us, Jas?” she asks.

I think she means to speak of Vane, but we both hear the unsaid name—Commander William H. Hook. Our father.

When I was a young man, I hated him and yet wanted his admiration in equal measure. I can still hear his voice in my head on frequent occasions telling me when I’ve fucked up.

Cherry didn’t get the worst of our father, but she didn’t get the best either.

“I don’t know,” I answer and give her hand a squeeze. “Gluttons for punishment, it would seem.”

One night, in late November, a very long time ago, our father caught me in the stables with one of the servants. “You are an embarrassment!” he shouted and whipped me with his belt. “A shame on this house.” Then he kicked me in the ribs and kept kicking until my ribs cracked.

I can still see Cherry huddled under the table wincing and trembling with each hit.

She was never meant to witness the violence and yet somehow it keeps finding her.

Not that she turned her head and pretended not to see.

Three days later, I caught her drugging father’s brandy.

Father was in and out of consciousness for seven days.

It was arguably the quietest, most restful stretch of our early lives.

“I want to go home, Jas,” she says now.

“Our home no longer exists.”

“I don’t care where it is or what it looks like. I want to go home.”

I think I understand what she’s asking for—a stable place and a place to be loved.

“I’ll find you a home,” I tell her. “A big brother promise to make up for my past transgressions.”

She looks up at me with her big, wide eyes. She has our mother’s freckles and more of our mother’s red hair.

Cherry barely remembers her, but I do.

She too loved someone who hated her.

Maybe that is our legacy. A maddening one at that.

“Don’t break this promise,” she tells me. “I will never forgive you.”

I lean over and plant a kiss atop her head. “I won’t.”