AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Cash…” Colt says my name in disbelief, eyes wide and hands up.
“He had that coming,” I state, and Colt nods in agreement.
“We can’t let her leave,” he tells me. “Not like this.”
“What do you suggest, brother? Locking her in your tower again?”
“I didn’t explain well enough. She needs to hear the words.”
“And what words are they?” I sling the gun on the coffee table and pick up a decanter, swigging the liquor straight from the bottle.
“That I didn’t fucking kill Clara!” Colt exclaims, snatching the drink from me and taking a gulp.
“Those videos are awfully damning,” I snort.
“You know me better than that.” He glowers.
“I understand you’d kill to protect me from pain. If she didn’t love me, you realize how badly I would have taken that fucking news.” I sit, my head in my hands.
“You’re right, you would have spiraled into darkness, killing yourself with booze and cheap women like you did when she died. But you’d also come out of it too, when something real came along, when it wasn’t an infatuation but real love, like with Mona.”
“What?” I look up at him, not sure if I heard him right.
“Come on, Cash. I know you better than you know yourself.”
I replay everything he’s said in the last twenty minutes, dissecting and arranging it all. “You said you dropped her off yourself. You drove her across the water.”
“Can you imagine the shock I felt finding her body on our property the next morning?”
“How did she get back here?” I stand.
“What are you saying?” He hands me back the drink.
“I’m saying someone either traveled to the island and took her right where you left her or…”
“Or someone from there killed her and brought her back here.”
“You heard what Mona said about our mother. She said she wasn’t on the island, never returned—just like they thought about Clara.”
“Fuck. Do you think the killer is from the island? What about Annemarie?”
“Mona said someone was watching her, felt it all the time. What if that someone followed her here?”
The possessive beast inside me emerges.
“We need to find Mona.” Colt panics.
“She’s on foot. She couldn’t have gone far.” I try to placate him, but my own anxious heart is thundering in my chest.
“What are we going to do about him?” I nod to our dead father bleeding out all over the place.
“We can get rid of him later. Let’s go find our girl.”
Twenty-Four
Mona
My eyes spring open. I gasp, shooting up from a laying position. An engine roars as we sway. We’re on a boat. No!
“You’re awake. Good,” my father says coolly.
“I’m not going back! No! Stop!” I yell.
“I’ll give you another dose,” my father warns, his tone is deadly.
I get up, looking all around, seeing the house fade into the sunset.
No. No.
My soul dies a little more every second we spend moving farther away from Colt. He couldn’t be the man who killed Clara. Surely, I’d feel it.
I’d been so lost before meeting him. He awakened me, then broke me into a thousand pieces.
How could Colt be innocent? The video shows him mishandling her, being cruel. She died that night, her body found on their property. There’s just too much evidence to be able to believe it wasn’t him, yet my soul tells me it’s not possible.
A distraught sob catches in my throat.
“It’s okay. When we get back, you can repent,” my father sneers. His fist clutches a handful of my hair, tugging my head back, making me wince in pain. “Look at this trash on your face. Did they make you their slut just like they did your sister?” It’s just a flavored gloss on my lips.
“You knew about Clara and them?” I whimper.
“Of course I did. Their father made sure of that. What a vile creature he is. It’s no wonder his wife left him to be reborn with us.”
“Where is Judith?” I ask, curious to understand what happened to her.
“Judith broke our laws,” he scorns, releasing me with a shove. I knock into Eli, who’s looking out at the ocean rather than at me. “She abandoned us to seek medical attention. Her belief wasn’t strong enough. This is why I stopped recruiting. Only pure bred believers are blessed with his light.”
Eli doesn’t even blink, the good little servant not stopping the rough handling my father likes to dish out.
“Why come for me? Am I not to follow Judith’s fate? I broke your precious laws.”
A backhanded slap catches me off guard, causing a trail of fire over my cheekbone. My teeth cut into the gum, copper liquid popping over my tongue. Bastard.
Colt’s word for his father is perfect for mine too. They’re both bastards.
“We have rules for a reason, Mona. To keep our people pure from the unclean, the toxic poison of the outside world. They are not to be mocked or broken. You are my daughter and naïve. You will face punishment, then you will marry and atone.”
