Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Liam
Present
Jesse trails off. “It sounds so fucking stupid, Liam. Why was I so gullible? I wasn’t a naive kid.
I was raised by an asshole father who was convinced that every person was out to fuck him over.
But Whitaker? There was something about him that just…
maybe I hated myself so much that I wanted to throw myself into the situations he tossed at me.
Maybe I wanted others to hurt for hurting me. Maybe I was just some naive asshole.”
I shake my head because that’s not really how I see it.
“He manipulated you every step of the way. He gave you safety, something you hadn’t had in a long time, maybe not even since birth.
He gave you food, warmth, and most of all he created a divide.
He was good, the outside world was not. So now the question is, what did he do to the people he had you collect? ”
Jesse swallows hard, tears in his eyes. “I didn’t know. I wanted to believe him so I simply believed him.”
“How long did you not know?”
“A month, maybe.”
“And how long did you keep doing it after you knew?”
“I didn’t know what he was doing to them… they just… the ones he was sending me out to trick weren’t good people. They were lecherous men who wanted to prey on me. A few of them got rough with me. One beat me so badly I thought he was going to kill me. I hated them. I wanted them to suffer…”
“Was he killing them?” I ask.
I have to hand it to Jesse, he doesn’t even look away from my eyes as he says, “Yes.”
“How long before you knew that?”
“I don’t know, Liam. A part of me thinks I knew for a while.
Another part tells me I didn’t know at all.
But I think I was just… pretending not to know because Whitaker made everything bad in the world right.
He knew I wasn’t ruthless like Zach was.
He… he sent Zach out and he brought back a woman.
I didn’t know that he had, but I found his trunk open with blood in it and Zach was gone.
I looked up at the house and found Whitaker wearing this…
look on his face. A look I’d never seen before.
I just… I remember telling myself to go to my room because this wasn’t my problem.
And Whitaker… I knew something wasn’t right.
I knew it was wrong. I knew I needed to get away. I knew so much, Liam, but still… fuck.”
“So what did you decide?”
“I smiled at him and I told him that I would help Zach find the missing person. And I think Whitaker thought I’d finally decided that I belonged there.
That I was broken enough, that I hated the world enough to become his puppet, much as Zach had.
So I ran into the woods looking for someone, not knowing what I was going to find. ”