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She wipes her mouth with the back of her shaking hand. I grab it and lace my fingers through hers. Her skin feels cold and clammy.
“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” she asks, her voice raw from either the whiskey or the shock of finding my father alive and in my basement.
“Because I wanted to make sure you were ready. You’re the strongest woman I know, Rella, but even the strongest would have a hard time coming face-to-face with the man responsible for half of your childhood nightmares.”
“Who knows he’s here? Does Trouble?”
“He knows,” I reply darkly. It took effort to hold Trouble back from killi
ng my father when we first found him. There was no fucking way I was going to allow him take away that particular kill. Trouble deserves a piece of revenge, but I deserve the glory of finishing him off. “So do Judge and JW. They’re the only ones.”
“So, Mae doesn’t know?”
“No.”
My brothers and I unanimously decided to keep this away from Mae. She already struggles enough with the shit we do. We didn’t want to add more unnecessary stress. We’ll tell her after Deacon is dead.
She wraps one arm around her stomach and hunches over, looking at me with bleary eyes. “How long has he been here?”
“Eleven years. Since we came back.” Her entire body jerks upright. “We found him a couple of weeks before we came here.”
It was actually the day Ellie, Judge’s woman, was attacked. JW had gotten a call from one of his academy buddies that Deacon had been found. Guilt gnaws at me because it was through my urging that we made our move immediately, which resulted in Judge breaking things off with Ellie because he didn’t want her to be part of our sinister plans for the adults who escaped Sweet Haven. Later that night, after he ruthlessly pushed her out of his apartment and life, three guys pulled her into an alley and beat her so badly she almost died.
“The night of the raid”—I go on to explain—“my father escaped the authorities, but only because I let him. After Hell Night, we went to his hunting lodge, where he…” I clench my teeth. “…raped me again. I knew what was coming that night, so I took a syringe with a sedative from Dr. Manor’s office earlier that day. While my father was distracted raping me, I injected him with the sedative. There was a hidden hole underneath the carpet in the living room my father used to hide stuff he didn’t want the Council to know about. Once he was out, I threw his body in the hole.”
“But why? Why not let the authorities have him?”
“Because I wanted him to get away. I wanted him free for me to find later. Prison wasn’t where he needed to be, because I wouldn’t have been able to reach him. I could have had him killed, but that wasn’t good enough. I wanted to do it myself, and I needed the time to do it as slowly as I wanted. He needed to suffer.”
Her throat contracts as she swallows. Leaning forward, she grabs the neck of the bottle of whiskey and takes another sip, this one smaller so she doesn’t choke. Her face flushes red when the burning liquid hits her throat.
“So, what have you been doing with him this whole time?”
I feel like smiling, but hold it in. I’m sure I already come across as a psycho; I don’t want to add to it by showing how much I enjoyed the shit I’ve done to my father.
“Different things, depending on my mood. But he suffered through every single minute. Because of what he did to us.”
“And what are you going to do with him now? Why haven’t you killed him yet?”
I grab the bottle from her hand and toss back a couple of swallows. I set it back on the table.
“Having him down there, accessible to me any time I wanted, was palliative. Any time my mood turned too dark, that’s where I went. It was one of the only things that helped calm me. Torturing that bastard eased some of my rage. He is my atonement for everything he made me do to you.”
“Do you plan to continue to keep him down there?”
“No,” I grunt. “It’s time I destroy the son of a bitch.”
She nods, like my answer is no surprise. I level her with my eyes.
“Now it’s time for me to ask you a question. Deacon has caused us both a lifetime of pain. You slit your wrists and ended up with Marco and Gabriela because of him. I’m… the way I am because of him. He deserves every form of punishment imaginable. I need to—”
“Yes.” She cuts me off before I can finish.
I tilt my head and regard her. “You don’t even know my question.”
“Yes. I want to be there,” she says, her voice harder than I’ve ever heard before. She practically growls the next words. “Yes. I want to help punish him.”
I lean forward, making sure our faces are level. As much as I want Rella with me when I finally rid the world of my father, I need her to understand the full ramifications of being there.
