AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hurry into the bathroom without looking back to see if he’s staying or leaving.
I shower fast, then scrub the foul taste from my mouth with a toothbrush. I dress in wool slacks and a button-down shirt and don’t bother with the cuffs, shove my feet into loafers without socks, and return to the living room. He’s made significant headway with the trash; there are two big garbage bags stuffed full, and a bin filled with empty wine bottles.
I push a pile of dirty clothes off a leather armchair onto the floor, and sit down. “Who do you want me to kill?” I ask him.
“Gideon Culpepper. That little shit who killed my Molly.” He swallows hard and sets down the third bag. The bravado has vanished, and tears shimmer in his eyes. Gideon was a rich little trust-fund brat who introduced Molly to heroin. She overdosed and he split, leaving her to die. And he never did a day in jail.
I gesture at the chair facing mine, and he sinks into it.
“I can get you a drink,” I say uneasily. A man is crying in front of me, and it’s not because I’m planning on gutting him in the next few minutes. How can I make him stop crying? I don’t want to watch him snivel and I don’t know how to be comforting.
“Nah, I tried that.” He shudders. “I just wake up feeling like shit the next day, and she’s still gone.”
Yeah, been there, done that. For months now.
Carter’s tearstained eyes meet mine, and the only reason I don’t puke is because I see the fury shining behind the tears.
“I saw his wedding announcement in the paper, and I thought that maybe he had changed. Maybe he was truly remorseful, maybe my Molly’s death turned him around, made him rethink how he’s living his life.” His face contorts in grief. “I mean, I thought if he was truly redeemed, then I had to be happy for him. I prayed to God to find the strength to forgive him. I went down on my knees and prayed.”
Yeah, and how’d that work out for you?
It was my cruel, sarcastic voice. Had I said it out loud?
I glance at him.
Nope, doesn’t look like it.
Carter’s fists clench. “Then I did some checking around. Nothing’s changed. He’s beating her, and she wants out, but he told her if she cancels the wedding, he’ll kill her little sister and nobody will ever be able to pin it to him. He bragged about getting rid of other girls.Like my Molly.”
Something clicks inside me. I nod.
Tamara would want me to do this.
I didn’t lie when I told her that I live only for her. I can’t talk to her, I can’t give her false hope, but I can do things that I know would make her proud.
And the grief that drenches his voice and wrecks him every time he speaks of his lost daughter and calls her “my Molly”, I understand that too—horribly, painfully, in a way I never did before.
Empathy sucks. What a useless, stupid emotion. I hate it. If I could scorch it from my soul, I would. But it’s in me now, and apparently it’s not leaving any time soon.
“All right. Give me his latest location, or I can find it out myself. It’s done,” I tell him.
Geoff shakes his head vehemently. “No way. It’s my kill.”
I start to argue, but he interrupts me. And I let him. I am not the man that I once was. “This is my revenge. He hurtme.If I let some someone else take my revenge for me, what kind of man am I?”
“So why come to me, then?”
He hesitates. “I don’t know. You’ve done it before. I have to figure out the logistics of transport and all that. How to keep him subdued until I get to where I need to take him. Hell, where to take him. Because I’m going to take my fucking time.”
I think he wants a little more than that. I think he someone to share the burden of sin with him. “All right,” I say. “Let’s start planning.”
“Really?” He’s like a kid who just found out he’s going to Disneyland. He lights up and suddenly looks as if a thousand-ton weight has dropped from his shoulders.
As for me…I still feel vacant. Dull. Thick and ugly. But knowing I’m doing something that would make Tamara happy is enough to cut through my haze of self-pity and get me moving, at least. If only I could tell her about it myself.
A quick glance around the room reminds me why I can’t.
I’ve shattered the mirrors, the vases, and most of the furniture. I’ve stabbed paintings over and over again. Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of furniture and artwork, destroyed. And I don’t remember doing any of it.
