AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “He told Teo he was my dad, and Jace got some pictures of him at the club,” I said. “He couldn’t see his face, but like…Sammy, I could recognize the way he walked.”
“Okay. So a killer is fucking with us,” he said. “Which part of that is a surprise? There are still bounties on our heads, someone is trying to clip us. Now I’m being framed for murder. None of this means our father is involved. I know you trust Teo, but I obviously need to remind you that your boyfriend is the boss of a very profitable gang that’s less invested in finding killers and more invested in continuing business as usual.”
“That’s not fair,” I replied.
He cocked his head, his eyes darkening. “I know Teo loves you,” he said. “But he already has a job. It’s not ‘detective’.”
I stared at him.
“Okay, so let’s say I’m living in this twisted reality where our sweet salesman father is the same man who is terrorizing the entire city,” he continued. “That would mean Dad faked his own death years ago and then...what, Sof? Decided to take a career detour into mass murder? Because that’s naturally the most logical career progression after selling water treatment equipment for years?”
I swallowed. “Okay, look, I’m just telling you what I know. You want to get defensive, that’s your call.”
“The thing is, you don’t know anything,” he replied. “You’re speculating.”
“Yeah, Sam. And what happened last time I was speculating?”
“Now, that’s not fair,” he said.
“We’re well past fair,” I replied, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I knew you might say this, so I actually prepared something.”
I took a deep breath and reached into my bag, which was sitting next to me. I pulled out a folder filled with evidence I had painstakingly collected over the past few months as Victor recovered. The weight of the papers felt heavier than ever as I opened the folder.
“Look at these,” I urged, spreading newspaper clippings across the table. The headlines screamed out in bold print: ‘EvergladesViper Strikes Again,’ ‘Police Baffled by Serial Killer’s Trail of Bodies.’ When I first started collecting these, they were all local to Miami and the Everglades and all that shit, but now it’s moving North.”
Sam’s eyes scanned the articles, but I could tell he was still struggling to accept the truth. “This doesn’t mean anything. We know the Viper is a serial killer with near infinite resources.”
“Alright. Well,” I insisted as I pulled out another stack of papers. “These are police reports, Sam. They detail how each victim was found, and the similarities between their deaths. And this” – I pointed at a map showing the locations of the victims’ bodies – “is what finally made it all click for me. The killings follow a pattern, one that traces back to our father’s old hunting grounds.”
Sam stared at the map, his face pale and his hands trembling as he traced the dotted lines connecting each point. My heart ached for him – I knew how much this hurt, how it threatened to shatter the image of our father that he’d held onto for so long. I’d had some time to process it with Teo and the rest of the guys but I could see Sam’s heart breaking like mine had. Worse than when we had found out our parents were dead.
Or at least when we thought they were dead.
“Still not enough?” I asked quietly, trying to keep my voice steady. As much as I wanted to protect Sam from the pain I was feeling, I knew that I couldn’t shelter him any longer. He needed to see the truth for himself.
“Fine,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “Show me the rest.”
With that, I pulled out the article about the car accident that supposedly claimed our father’s life. Jace had done some digging and found that our father’s death certificate had been falsified. DNA tests on the body pulled from the wreckage didn’t match the samples taken from his toothbrush, and the man held no facial similarities to our father.
“Remember how they talked us out of identifying the body? We thought it was to protect us,” I said. “Turns out Dad bribed someone to make that happen.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not, Sammy.”
For a moment, we sat in silence, the oppressive atmosphere of the visitation room pressing down on us like a physical weight. Then, slowly, Sam nodded.
“Fuck. Did he kill Mom?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
For a moment, we sat in silence, both of us processing this newfound information. The room felt heavy and Teo’s room felt smaller than it ever had.
“So Teo has been helping me with a plan,” I said. “We need to take him down.”
“We?” Sam’s eyes widened with alarm. “Sof, we cannot go near him. Let your boyfriend handle it if you have to, but we can’t go near Dad, okay? He’s a killer. A psycho. He has us in hiscrosshairs. Teo and his underlings might be able to confront him, but you and me? Absolutely fucking not.”
“I know he’s dangerous, Sam.” My voice was resolute. “But he’s out there. He’s hurt us, our Mom, all of those people,” I gestured at the clippings spread out before us. “And he’s still out there, hurting others. He almost killed Teo, he almost killed Victor. He kidnapped Jace for a hot minute. He’s our father, we have a chance of getting close to him that no one else does.”
