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If I don’t get rid of the aunt, he gets abused for years and turns out a monster. If I do get rid of her, it’s another close family member dying in a brutal way, which will fuck him up more, even if he’s not close to her.
There is a third option, reporting her to child protective services, but I already know they won’t take the report seriously. Ms. Snow looks too squeaky clean on paper. She even has a golden retriever. And they don’t want another case file. I do at least know he wouldn’t go into foster care. Aidan has a lot of relatives, but the next in line is an Uncle Martin on his father’s side, who may or may not fear Aidan rising to take the throne of his father’s criminal empire. So is it safe to leave him with Uncle Martin? I guess we’re about to find out.
And how many people will I have to kill so this kid has a semi-stable home environment? As though any home environment littered with a string of corpses could ever be stable. This kid is so beyond fucked.
Aidan climbs onto the bus, a little shaky, and moves to one of the seats at the very back. He slides into it by himself, and something tightens in my chest. The only other person who has ever made me feel this much is Mina.
I watch as the bus circles the cul de sac and drives past the house I’m parked at. His gaze shifts in my direction, and I turn quickly away. I don’t need him to be a witness to two of my crimes.
I wait a few more minutes to get my emotions under control. I don’t like this, going into a kill withemotions. It’s not right. This is too personal to me, and when a kill is too personal, that’s when you fuck it all up. But there is no possible way I can let this kid live in this house with this witch whose abuse will only escalate the longer I leave him here.
He’s not going to stop looking like his father any time soon. In all likelihood he’ll only grow to look more and more like him as the years pass. And the speed with which the abuse started… it too closely mirrors my own experience. I’m not leaving him to live out that story. There was no avenging angel to save me, but Aidan—even though he may not yet realize it—is quite a bit luckier.
I push down the thoughts of how my chosen actions will also negatively impact him. The aunt kept a distance from the family, but she is still his family. And unfortunately, she looks a bit like his mother. So if I kill her, am I killing his mother all over again—or the last remaining living connection to her?
Fuck.
I hate having to weigh this kind of shit. This is not normal. I never should have started keeping tabs on this kid. What I didn’t know wouldn’t hurt me. I should have just let his fate play out because it’s clear, nothing I do is going to change it.
Chapter2
Brian
Iknock on the front door. A moment later it swings open. Eliza, obviously thinking Aidan missed his bus, seems ready to start shouting, but then she notices me.
“Oh,” she says. “Hello.” She says it with a bit of a question mark at the end.
I allow my gaze to drag slowly over her. She’s far more attractive up close than brief glimpses during my surveillance allowed me to catalog. She’d fetch a good price at the house. But I shake that thought out of my head.
I would have to keep Eliza’s identity a secret, and the one normal functional relationship quality I have with Mina is honesty. And if I did tell her, she’d never forgive me for ripping a non-kinky woman out of her normal life and into the darkness of the house. She’s got a soft spot for the women.
Shame, because it’s a great financial opportunity—not that I give much of a fuck about finances, but it seems like a somewhat normal thing to think about. And lately I’ve been trying to think more about what seems normal. I live in fear that one day Mina will wake up and think:“Well. He really is an irredeemable sociopath.”and pull away from me for good.
But I mainly look at Eliza this way to get her to drop her guard. I’m not unaware of my charms and that air of danger so many women are so attracted to. If she thinks I want to fuck her instead of murder her, it might get me in the door. After all, I’ve been watching this house for a while and despite her beauty, she doesn’t have a lot of gentleman callers. I also happen to know—courtesy of the listening devices—that she goes through a lot of batteries.
“I hate to trouble you, but my phone died, and I was wondering if I could use yours.” I put a bit of Gabe’sAww Shucks Ma’amdrawl into my voice.
She hesitates. “Where’s your car?”
I point up at the house across the way. She recognizes it. Or thinks she does.
“Oh! You must be my neighbor.”
How oblivious can she be to only know her neighbors by their cars?
“Guilty,” I say, plastering a sheepish grin onto my face. “I went off and locked my keys in the house. Donna is always saying I need to put my house key on the same ring as my car key,” I say, shifting my cover from hapless sexy stranger to non-intimidating neighbor.
She looks a bit disappointed at the mention of a wife, but the guy in that house does have a wife named Donna, and surely Eliza has noticed her out gardening before. But the fact that I’m now her neighbor and have a wife bitching at me about how I organize my keys, drops her guard even further. And I don’t need to seduce her, I just need inside the house.
She opens the door, “Please, come in.”
I don’t think I could be happier at those words if I were a vampire. I smile and cross the threshold into the foyer. The golden retriever growls at me and starts barking.
“Shut up, Baxter!” she snaps.
He whimpers and gets that sad dog face where you see too much of the whites of their eyes.
She turns around to dig through her purse, and I take the opportunity to grab her and slam her against the wall.
