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Memories of high school and college came flooding back, a constant stream of cruel jokes and taunts about my father, the notorious serial killer.
Asshole teenagers would leave jewelry on my chair in class or outside my dorm room, mimicking his sick signature of taking jewelry from his victims and giving it to my mother.
I was always an easy target for their amusement, especially when a copycat emerged mere years after his arrest, who also took jewelry from his victims and sent it to my mother.
All packaged in boxes from her bakery.
Just thinking about that hellish time suffocated me with anxiety, my stomach twisting into painful knots. My world spun around me, and I placed my hand on the kitchen island. The cool marble only intensified the burning inside, my chest tightening as I fought for air against the onslaught of memories assaulting me like a sadistic movie.
How the copycat eventually helped my father escape prison.
How he abducted me as a way to punish my mother.
How I saw the worst of humanity during those few horrible days.
Bile rose in my throat and I stumbled into the bathroom, retching up the contents of my stomach.
At just fourteen years old, I was forced to experience things I would have given anything to forget.
But I never would.
No matter how much time had passed, witnessing the man whose DNA ran through me rape, torture, and brutally kill several innocent women would never be erased.
The guilt for not doing enough to stop him would never be erased.
Believe me, I’d tried.
It didn’t matter how many times my therapists reminded me I did what I had to in order to survive. That if I’d tried to intervene, he would have only hurt those women even worse.
I still felt like I should have done more.
It was one of the reasons Melanie and I became such good friends. She’d been through something similar, having been abducted when she was a little girl by someone hoping to get revenge against her father, who owned a private military firm. She was forced to witness horrific things. Saw the worst in humanity. Spent days wondering if she’d soon be one of the victims she saw her captors kill, as if their lives didn’t matter.
When there was nothing left in my stomach, I flushed the toilet and slowly rose to my feet. Ollie nudged my hand with his nose, his dark, concerned eyes staring at me.
“I’m fine, buddy.”
He nuzzled me, and a sense of comfort washed over me, despite the memories he held, considering he’d been Samuel’s dog.
After his death, we both struggled to cope with the loss. In a way, we helped each other heal.
I gave Ollie’s head another scratch, then rinsed my mouth and splashed water onto my face. Taking several calming breaths, I reminded myself that my sorry excuse for a sperm donor was gone. He couldn’t hurt me anymore.
The necklace didn’t mean anything. It was probably just some asshole with too much free time on his hands playing a prank on me.
That was all Iwantedto believe it was.
But what if it was more than that?
An unexpected knock ripped through my townhouse, sending a renewed shock of adrenaline through me as Ollie took off and barked at the door. I mentally cursed myself for not installing my camera doorbell yet.
Still on edge, I padded into the hallway and opened the closet, putting my code into the small safe. The door beeped, and I stared at the gun inside as a memory rushed forward.
Receiving a necklace at my apartment in Atlanta.
Samuel witnessing the anxiety that plagued me.
Him dragging me to the nearest shooting range and teaching me how to handle a gun.
