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“You killed my sister.” It wasn’t a question because every inch of him screamed guilt.
“I had to, she would have ruined us.” And now there was something of a whine to his voice, like a spoiled child explaining why he didn’t listen to his mommy. “Besides, you know how desperate I’ve always been to win his approval and to show him I would be able to take over the business when the time came.”
“Jesus Christ, Ryan. Normal people don’t want to go into the family business if it’s murder.”
“I was scared shitless when I first hit her. She didn’t see it coming because I hadn’t known I was going to be able to do it. The construction workers had packed up for the day and I took my chance, I’d asked her to bring some paperwork to the building site. Said I needed it urgently, I’d planned to do something then and there, but I couldn’t, not with her looking at me. So, I dropped a few sheets.”
My eyes closed as he told me the next part and my heart clenched hard as I thought of Stacy’s last moments.
“She bent to pick them up and I grabbed a mallet. One swift blow and she was out. I thought she was dead, so I wrapped her up tight in one of the tarps.”
“Shut up,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Shut up, shut up…”
Stacy deserved so much more than that. Tears streamed down my face as I thought about Leo and telling him what happened to his mother. And then more tears came as I realized I probably wouldn’t be around to tell him.
“She wasn’t dead, though. She started groaning while I was looking for somewhere to put the body.” He chuckled, and that’s when I saw the glimpse of the monster he kept hidden. “Scared the fuck out of me. I hit her a few more times with a shovel just to make sure she was dead.”
“Shut up!” I was gagging. I was going to puke.
Poor Stacy. Her last minutes of life were terrifying and brutal. My sister didn’t deserve that. She’d stepped up when Mom died and took care of me even though she was basically a kid herself. She deserved to die an old woman surrounded by people who loved her.
“Where is she?” I asked, not that it would do any good now, as I was going to die with the knowledge.
“Steel City Plaza, I hid her body in one of the storm drains, there was a conduit that had been sealed off earlier in the week. I knew if I put her there then no one would find the body.”
I gasped, I’d walked past that building hundreds of times. To think that somewhere beneath my feet, my sister lay buried.
“I’m sorry, Ellie. I wish it hadn’t come to that, but she gave us no choice.”
“Bullshit! There’s always a choice, you sick fuck!”
“Yeah, fine, a choice to take her down, or go down ourselves. What kind of choice is that? You don’t know what my father would have done if I hadn’t taken care of the girl.”
“You’ll never stand up to Daddy, will you?” I spat, pulling at my bonds, desperate to get out and get my hands on this sick bastard.
The sadness and regret faded, replaced by anger. “I never lied to you about my father,” he said, as if that made any of this better. “I met you after Stacy went missing, was that all a set up?” I asked.
“I needed to know how much she’d told you, but after a while I realized I enjoyed being around you. I thought we had a future together.”
Seriously? I stared at him in shock.
“We could have been great together Ellie, I knew in time you’d eventually realize that you loved me too.”
I had a sudden thought, “It was you who left the notes and the gifts, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“So you thought that stalking and harassment was the way to a woman’s heart?”
He shrugged, “I was waiting for the right moment to tell you how I feel, and it might have worked if you hadn’t gotten involved with those bikers. Dad said they were digging into things that didn’t involve them. That’s when I remembered all those boxes of your sister’s stuff you stored in the garage. But when I went to check, they weren’t there.”
I reeled back from him in disgust, and his smile slipped, his shoulders sinking.
His shoulders sank. “I like you, Ellie, genuinely like you as a person. I didn’t want to do this, but I had no choice. Your biker boyfriend and his buddies shouldn’t be digging into shit that’s none of their business, but they are. Dad needs them to stop.”
Shit.
Fear pulsed through my veins and made my heart race like it was about to explode. The unspoken fear I’d been carrying for all of these years that people I love would be taken from me. This evil family had taken my mother and sister and now they wanted me. The fear was there, but it was mixed with anger like the perfect cocktail. “Your father is a criminal who’s into god knows what—corruption? Human trafficking? And you’re protecting him, all because he’s manipulated you into thinking you’re not good enough.”
