DON'T BREAK THE RULES

Chapter 44 - Ungrateful

"We were twins, in the same foster home. I promised her one day that I would give the life that none of our parents ever sought for us." The strain across his face was almost believable. "And I didn't lie, I gave her everything. Our plan had worked, everything had gone by the book. The Willas were murdered without any evidence. The home was destroyed before there was adequate search from the police."

When Joe heard that sentence, he thought he would faint. His heart began to race, his mind repeating what Connor had said. Jamie had been right all along, they had been killed, and Connor had been the one behind the entire execution. "Y-You...you really killed them?"

Connor's fingers scratched his forehead, as if it was a pain to even think about how this situation had shifted in this way.

"The credit cards were untraceable, the money we stole from the homes were all exchanged before they could even trace the bills. Everything had been meticulous—we changed our names before we legally entered the database, I had plastic surgery done to change a few face features, my business began blooming, my name began to be known. Everything had worked exactly how I had wanted it to."

"Except...?" Jamie spoke impatiently, stepping forward with his shoulders broadened. The cat was finally out of the bag—he didn't have any evidence nor proof that Connor had been the one behind the murders, but finally hearing the truth after all these years was all he had been waiting for; he was going to make sure he had the revenge he wanted.

Connor shook his head, sending his fingers through his disheveled black hair. At the brims of tears, he quietly hissed, "Sarah started to feel empathetic."

Jamie inhaled a sharp breath.

"You survived and we all knew you had. But after a few years, the guilt Sarah felt was unbearable and she left me. She ignored all my contacts, blocked me from her life. And then, all of a sudden, you moved back. But you were with her." His teeth gritted as if he relived all the emotions. "She had betrayed me, her own twin—she went looking for you. You guys started dating and I was livid."

"Why?"

"Because that was no longer safe for me!" He threw his arms in the air, as if these were words he had wanted to scream at her but instead directed them to the only ones who listened. "You had an easy access to my life; I couldn't let that happen. All I had worked for would've gone to ruins! And so..." he bit his bottom lip for a moment, shrugging his shoulders. In a quivering tone, he breathed, "I had to do what I had to do."

Joe couldn't tear his eyes away from him. He couldn't believe this was the Connor that he had once captured his entire heart.

A murderer.

"What did you do?" Jamie's heartbreak echoed across his breathless voice, his lips quivering as he kept his gaze locked on Connor.

Connor stared at the ceiling before shaking his head. He wasn't given much time to answer since Jamie stepped forward again. "What did you do?!"

He exhaled a long sigh. "I beat her to a pulp with a baseball bat."

Connor could practically hear the gurgles when she began choking on her own blood, the splattering when he burst open her skull. He remembered her body beginning to convulse inhumanely, curving its own bones as it went through a series of seizures, before it slowly stopped moving. He remembered the way he threw the garbage bag over his shoulder, her limp body inside as he walked to the Hamilton River. He even remembered when her foster parents began posting missing reports through the city, but none ever found her.

Jamie's eyes went blank.

All this time, he had been searching for Sarah, still convinced that she was alive somewhere, anywhere. Most of his life had been accustomed to how she was—he was ready to marry her since it felt as if she was his soulmate. He had been entrapped into her world, her life, that when she disappeared, he felt a piece of his heart leave with her.

Jamie's fingers squeezed into a fist.

"I knew there was a reason she came into my life—our meeting was so coincidental that it didn't make sense to me. But I fell in love with her." He lowered his eyes to his trembling fists, closing his eyes and attempting to push away the images in his mind trying to create what Connor had admitted. He could never picture he in that state, and to think of the horrors of how she felt in that moment, spread a sharp pain across his entire body.

He violently pointed his finger towards Connor. "You stole her away from me! You took every single person I ever loved and took them all away from me!" His fingers gripped his own shirt as he spat, "Why? Why me?! My aunt, her husband and the person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with?" Jamie shook his head. "And you had the nerve to blame me for those deaths! You forced me to fend for myself when I was just a little boy! To hide in the shadows wherever I went to make sure I wasn't going to be killed for surviving that night. What did I ever do to you, Tyler?! All I did was be your friend—why did you ruin my life?!"

Connor's jaw clenched. "Because I thought we were the same."

"We were the same—!"

"You lied to me!"

"I never lied to you!"

"Yes. you. did." Connor menacingly stepped forward, glaring at Jamie. "You said that you had been tortured by your mother—I endured the same."

"You have no right to speak on that," Jamie exhaled sharply.

"Those things were never true," he snorted. "Your family was the Willas. The famous couple that were supposed to take me in but last minute decide to leave me in a foster home where I was being molested!" Connor slammed his fist against the wall, instantly causing a hole. His teeth gritted for a moment, remembering the day he was excitingly packing his belongings only to be told he wasn't wanted anymore. "And you know what they said to me?! They said that it was because I was no longer pure."

Jamie furrowed his brows. "That's not true, Tyler."

"You think that was fair to me?!" He took another step forward. "You think I deserved that?!"

"That doesn't mean you kill them!"

"That's exactly what that means!"

"They helped you after, Tyler!" Jamie screamed at the top of his lungs. "They helped you when you left Kollons, we helped you!"

"It was too late by then." He lifted his chin, and Joe saw the evilness overflow in him again, proud that he had been the one to end their lives. "The decision had already been made. It was decided before you even came to Kollons."

"Sarah was innocent, they were all innocent." Jamie's eyes were on the verge of tears, veins showing on his neck as he begged Tyler to see it from his eyes. "How can't you see that you took these human lives as if they meant nothing?" He reached for his chest, gripping his own shirt as if to show how much it all had teared his heart apart. "I was innocent."

"And that's why I let you survive, Jamie," Connor quietly murmured, nodding his head with a small smile. "The only reason you're breathing right now is because your ties were never tight enough to hold you captured. The trash bags outside your parents window were placed there on purpose by me." He tilted his head to the side followed by a scoff. "I let you survive, don't you ever forget that. But honestly, from hearing how ungrateful you are..." Connor paused for a few seconds before adding, "I should have killed you too."

Jamie was unsure which nerve had been triggered, but it was one that had never been touched before because immediately after, all that was running through his head was murder. He reached for the gun in Joe's palm, swiftly stealing it before Joe could even realize.

He aimed it directly at Connor, his finger on the trigger as he removed the safety.

"I dare you, say one more thing."