Page 4 of Violent Little Thing

A throat cleared.

We all looked toward the door to find Olive and Benedict Vanderbilt standing in my doorway.

Olive wrung her hands, her eyes full of tears, and said, “Oh, Charleigh. I’m so, so sorry.”

She’d apologized so many times that I’d lost count.

My eyes once again burned with unshed tears.

It wasn’t her fault.

She’d tried.

But Benedict?

He hadn’t tried.

“What do you want?” Dad’s cool tone was only aimed at Benedict, though it fell on deaf ears.

Literally.

Benedict was deaf, as was his son, Lysander.

That’d actually been what had drawn me in to Sonja at first. She’d known sign language, and it’d interested me since I was deaf in one ear.

When I was five, my family found out that I had Waardenburg Syndrome, type one. It was a genetic thing that was passed down to me from my father. The syndrome gave me two bright blue eyes, so blue that they looked fake. A streak of white-blonde hair from my right eyebrow to my right ear—though that blended in slightly with my already blonde hair. I also had hearing loss, that was usual with Waardenburg Syndrome.

Needless to say, when I’d run into Sonja and saw she was signing, I’d gotten curious about her and her family.

We’d been best friends ever since.

Well, until Seraphina killed her.

Benedict started to sign.

He spoke, but he didn’t like looking different in front of people that weren’t his family, so he didn’t speak now with us.

Instead, Olive translated.

“We know that we can’t fix what happened,” Olive said, her eyes hurt. “We wanted to go ahead and cover your medical bills and the bills that have accrued in the last week since you’ve had to take off from work to be with Charleigh. Also, we’ve talked it over with our financial advisor, and we’re going to give ten percent of the Condors over to y’all. In recompense.”

My parents stayed silent.

I started to cry.

I didn’t want compensation for their daughter nearly killing me. I wanted my best friend back.

Benedict kept signing, but I ignored everything else that was said.

Couldn’t think about it anymore, honestly.

Prologue II

You deserve a break. Stop healing. Choose violence. Go fucking insane. Do it for the plot.

—Emory’s secret thoughts

Emory