Page 120 of The Dearly Departed

Brody huffed a sardonic laugh as he, too, kept his blown-out gaze fixated on the knife twisting and turning around my fingers. The guy was strung out of his mind, high on marijuana and only God knew what else.

“Is something funny?” I asked, glancing in his direction.

He laughed again, his eyes lifting from the knife to the mask, as he shook his head with incredulity. “You’re a goddamn psychopath, yeah? The other guys, they said they thought you were crazy, but, no, you really fuckin’ are. Gerry’s got a loony tune doin’ his dirty deeds now.”

I crouched in front of him and stared straight into his eyes. “Maybe I am. But if I’m a psychopath, Brody, what does that make you?”

He snorted and rolled his eyes, diverting his attention away from me and toward the still image on the TV. A frozen scene in which he used his own two hands to strangle a young woman while he forced himself upon her. That woman was dead because of him. Many women, from what I’d learned, were dead … because of him.

“I’m doin’ what I’m supposed to do,” he said, a serene look on his face. “All those ladies? Trash. All of ‘em.”

“And who are you to judge?” I asked, keeping my curious gaze on his expression.

“We’re all judgin’, aren’t we? We all sit back and watch the news, pass ‘em on the streets and wag our fingers … I’m just cleanin’ up the mess over here, friend, and you’re gettin’ in the way.”

Cleaning up the mess. A blinding rage washed over me as the blade slowed in its spinning dance.

My mother had been on those streets, no different from the women Brody thought were better off dead. She could’ve been one of his victims, had she lived long enough. Those women could’ve been her friends.

“You know what, Brody?” I asked with a sigh as I stood, straightening to my full height and towering over him.

“Yeah?” he replied, tipping his head to look around my figure, to keep his sights on his handiwork, displayed proudly on the TV.

“I think we’ve chatted long enough,” I murmured, raising the blade. “Time to say goodbye.”

There was the smallest glimmer of fear in his stare then, right before the sharpened point of my knife plunged through one of his eyes. His scream filled my ears, bouncing off the walls of his dingy basement, and I groaned as I reached over for the duct tape.

“Sorry about that,” I muttered as he wailed, writhing against his binds. “I should’ve taped your mouth shut before I did that. Our riveting conversation must’ve made me forgetful.”

I tore another piece of tape from the roll and slapped it over his mouth, his cries instantly muffled. My gaze dropped to his groin to find his dick standing fully at attention, and I huffed an incredulous chuckle as I pulled my blade from his eye socket with a wet, squelching sound.

“And you have the nerve to call me a psychopath? Brody, please.”

I rolled my eyes before winding my arm back and jabbing the blade into his groin, hoping that the pain I inflicted on him amounted to a fraction of the pain he’d put all those women—the trash he spoke of so fondly—through.

In this moment, the only trash I could see sat in front of me, bleeding out onto the grimy basement floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dean and I returned to Seint Manor just as the limousine was pulling into the circular driveway.

They had the rehearsal dinner tonight. Analise and Benjamin would be getting married tomorrow afternoon. The reality that she would soon become even more unobtainable, even further out of my reach, sank like a dirty, moss-covered stone in the pit of my gut as I stood in the driveway, waiting for the Seint-Crowley family to exit the vehicle.

Analise was the first to climb out of the car, wearing a deep purple evening gown. My breath left my lungs with a mournful sigh, as I wished I could go to her and sweep her off her feet, and as if she heard the sound of my tortured thoughts, she glanced over her shoulder in my direction. Her eyes lingered, their depths full of hopelessness and longing, as her lips parted, like she wanted to say something, but even I knew there was nothing that could be said in front of Gerald and Virginia, and so she said nothing and instead hurried toward the open door of the mansion.

I felt like a pauper in her presence, despite the cash sitting beneath my bed. I knew none of it came anywhere close to the fortune she and her future children would one day inherit. And still, as inadequate as I felt, my eyes held on to her form for as long as I could, until she disappeared through the doorway and into the house.

Virginia briefly stopped before entering to look in my direction, her eyes warming with interest before her nose wrinkled.

“Your attack dog is a mess,” she said.

The comment was meant for Gerald, and when he looked at me, he only shrugged.

“How can you tell when he’s always dressed in black?”

“You don’t smell it?”

“Smell what?”