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That said, killing our father was one job we both wanted.
We gagged him. We tortured him. We made him whimper and scream into the gag as we unleashed unto him a flurry of pain and misery. He was nearly unrecognizable by the time we were done with him, and I insisted Veronica take the final blow, the last cut. She was the one he’d hurt all these years; she had every right to end him and his pathetic life.
I helped guide her, told her where the heart was, and then she stabbed him one final time, and our father’s eyes widened and then shut, his body, held up by chains, going slack. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, feeling strange.
Another emotion, trying to rise to the surface. Smugness? Happiness? Something in the middle of the two.
It was as I stared at my father’s limp body that I knew. I wasn’t emotionless after all. It just took a lot to bring them out of me. Killing someone made it all too easy, especially if they deserved it.
This was my first time, but it wouldn’t be my last. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t go on how I was before. Something had to change. I think, after all this time, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
Clean up the streets. Make it so that my family, Veronica, would stay safe. Be her protector, her guardian. Never leave her side. She was the only thing that mattered to me anymore.
Veronica didn’t have the stomach for what we’d done, though, because as soon as she watched our father’s body go limp, she stumbled back, turned around, and threw up.
She dry-heaved for a good fifteen minutes after that. Vengeance only dwelled within her soul because of the pain and abuse she’d endured, but now that the man responsible was dead, that vengeance was gone, replaced by a normal girl wrestling with the crime she had committed.
We never spoke of it again. I did most of the cleanup work, out of respect for her. She couldn’t, but that was okay. There were two types of people in this world. Not the hunters and the prey, but the protectors and the ones who needed protection. I was the former, while my sister was the latter.
I made it certain our father’s body would be discovered and linked to a drug cartel that was local in the area of the warehouse, and when the news hit our mother, she lost it. A week after our father’s closed-casket funeral, she killed herself by taking too many sleeping pills. It was ruled as an accident, not a suicide, but Veronica and I knew the truth.
Two funerals back-to-back, and suddenly Veronica inherited everything. The money, the Montgomery respect, our father’s position handed down to her, even though she knew nothing about running a company.
And she didn’t care to. It wasn’t long after that that she decided to sell off all her stocks in the company and let someone else run it. She cashed out, and together, we searched for a new place to live, a place that could give us a fresh start. It took us a while to find the perfect location, a small town named Eastcreek that was in some dire straits. The whole town needed money pumped into it, and luckily for them, my sister had more money than she knew what to do with.
She purchased a large plot of land, had it cleared out, and she built a new Montgomery Manor. It wasn’t long after that that she drew the attention of a local man around her age, a man who didn’t care about the money or her last name. They started to date, and less than a year later, they got married.
Veronica and I never spoke of that day, the day we ended our father’s life together. I wondered if that’s why she’d cashed out, if she couldn’t bear to be surrounded by his friends and the board, who’d helped guide his business decisions all these years, if that was why she wanted to move to the middle of nowhere and start a new life. If it had anything to do with how quickly she latched onto that Jones fellow.
It wasn’t but a year after they were married that she popped out a boy. I wasn’t there in the room when it happened. I was in the hall, waiting, but when I was allowed into that room with her and her husband, when I was allowed to hold the boy, my nephew, I leaped at the chance.
I was a seventeen-year-old uncle, and as I gazed down at the baby, at his round, cherub face, I knew I’d found someone else to protect. Gareth Montgomery was our future. He had to be, because I certainly wasn’t about to start dating now.
No, a life like that never interested me. I’d leave the romance and the family-making to my sister.
My sister lay on the hospital bed, her black hair slick with sweat, her makeup smeared. Her husband stood beside her, rubbing her shoulder, whispering words of affirmation to her, but she was too busy staring at me and her baby.
Wearing a hospital gown and not the sleeves she usually wore, you could see the small tattoo on her wrist, an all-seeing eye. She’d gotten it after our father’s funeral, possibly to remind herself of what we’d done. I didn’t need a reminder; I thought of that day often. The day we’d killed our father together was the day everything had changed for me.
The day I knew I had to kill again.
Life was a whirlwind after that. Six years later, my sister’s husband was murdered by his own brother. At first I thought it was because of his jealousy, but I came to find out that Veronica’s husband wasn’t as faithful as he should’ve been. It was because of that reason that I knew I needed Rick on my side, so I guided him, told him what to do, and basically handed him the position of head sheriff.
I got into a routine. I was careful. I avoided places where there were cameras, and when I was in public, I always wore regular clothes, a baseball cap, and dark sunglasses. I cleaned up the streets one person at a time.
The judicial system wasn’t perfect. People got out without a necessary punishment all the time, and the ones that were thrown in jail were often released early based on good behavior, even if they were violent criminals. Rape. Assault. Domestic abuse. I went after them all, the ones I could be reasonably sure I could catch and kill with no problems. Once Rick was in the sheriff’s office, I had another man funneling me information whenever I wanted it.
Whenever I needed it, really.
And then, six years after my sister’s husband was murdered, I came home after a successful hunt to find Veronica dead in her bed. She’d been stabbed, five times in various places on her torso. My world spun. The one person I wanted to protect more than anything in this world had been killed… by her own son.
When I found Gareth, he wasn’t sorry. In fact, I found him in his room, with a bucket of Veronica’s blood, sitting at his desk. A paintbrush rested within the small bucket. When he heard me enter his room, he turned his head over his shoulder and gave me a look—a look I’d been too busy to truly see until now.
It was a look that was like mine, only full of rage and venom.
Gareth’s inner monster wasn’t like mine… but I was the only one who could help him. Keep him out of jail. Try to guide him and show him a way he could do what he wanted while avoiding the consequences of federal prison.
When Rick came, I told Gareth to wait in his room. He didn’t, and so Rick saw him, covered in Veronica’s blood, and the man started to hate his own nephew. He wasn’t the only one.
