Chapter 33 Holland
HOLLAND
The words slithered under my skin, cold and sharp, cutting places I didn’t know were still vulnerable.
In an instant, my mouth went dry. “Shut up. You know nothing about me.”
Her laugh was a wheeze, a death rattle laced with triumph.
“I’m sick of being nice, you little bitch,” she spat. “You have no idea whose blood runs in your veins.”
The world tilted, and the floor shifted. I staggered back, my gun lowering as bile rushed up my throat.
Her glare sliced through me with a glowing cruelty.
The room faded in and out: a boy in the dark, whispering my name.
I shook it off as my knees almost gave out. I caught myself on the doorframe, the weapon slipping to my side.
Kip’s mother’s fingers twitched under the blanket, but her smile stayed sharp.
“You want the truth? Isn’t that what you came here for?” she rasped. “You were never just some trafficked child.” A wheeze scraped from her throat. “You were his.”
My stomach twisted. “Whose?”
Her pale eyes blazed with a chilling intensity, mocking me with every glance.
“The leader of us all,” she sneered, her words dripping with venom.
“The one they all feared. The man who claimed ownership of you before you even took your first steps. The most merciless and infamous serial killer alive today.”
I stumbled back, the breath knocked out of me while my head refused to believe her lies. “We call him the Pied Piper.”
The name hit me cold, but it was unfamiliar, meaningless. But the way she said it, like a hymn, like a curse, like she was tasting it on her tongue. It made my fucking skin crawl.
“I don’t—” My brow arched. “I don’t know who that is.”
“No, you wouldn’t, would you? You were small the last time you saw him.” She shifted slightly, making a faint sound from the oxygen machine.
“The Pied Piper isn’t a man most people meet. He’s a shadow. A whisper in your nightmare. A cruel promise in the dark.” Her gaze flicked up to mine, slicing straight through me. “He plays his music, and we all follow.”
A shudder ran down my spine, something black curling under my skin.
Kip’s mother’s voice dropped to a reverent whisper.
“Your mother was one of them. And you—you were his little accident.”
My knees locked. My hands shook around my weapon.
“When she betrayed him, he took you,” she revealed. “Because he could. Because it proved he was untouchable. Because it proved to the rest of us that blood meant nothing to him.”
The room blurred, my vision splintering at the edges. “No …”
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “He gave you up like a tithe, a little red-haired offering. And Ally … oh, poor Ally. She was simply collateral, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
My chest squeezed tight, threatening to cut off my air supply.
“Who is my mother? Is she alive?” The words tasted bitter on my tongue, but I had to know.
Kip’s mother tilted her head, assessing me. “You look like her. Or you did. She’s gone. You don’t betray the Pied Piper and live to talk about it.”
A whisper of sadness passed through me, but I would digest that information later when I had time to wrap my head around it.
Kip’s mother tilted her head. “Did you ever wonder why you’re so angry?
Why you fight so hard? Why you survived when you should’ve died?
” Her smile curled. “It’s in your cells, your DNA.
” She pointed to the front of the house.
“It’s time for you to go, Samantha,” she whispered, her words fading like the last thread of a hymn. “You have so much to learn.”
My brain rejected the idea that a killer was my father, shoved it away, but it scraped at the walls inside my skull. Bile scorched my throat as my vision blurred, black stars crowding the edges.
I’m his.
I wanted to rip the blood from my body. I wanted to cut his legacy out of my skin. I wanted to burn everything and everyone down.
But mostly—I wanted to never, ever have been born. A serial killer!
Running from the room, I rushed outside. I stumbled down the steps, heart jackhammering in my chest, skin crawling like something was slithering right under the surface. The afternoon light cut at my vision, hot and sharp and too bright.
She’s lying. She always lies.
My feet hit the gravel. My hands fumbled for the car door but missed the handle once, twice. A strangled cry tore from my throat.
She’s a manipulator. She’s poison. She’s Kip’s mother, and she wants to hurt me, hurt him.
I yanked the car door open, collapsed into the driver’s seat, and yanked the belt across my lap.
She’s lying. She’s lying, she’s lying.
Under my ribs, something old and buried was screaming.
The engine purred to life, but I didn’t drive. I sat there, fists clenched on the wheel, forehead pressed hard against it, while I stopped myself from marching back in there and killing the fucking bitch. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I needed more from her before she met her maker—the devil himself.
And the reality was … I knew.
I felt it deep in my bones, like the chilling shiver that raced down my spine when a sinister shadow slid across my skin.
I sensed it with the same unnerving certainty as when my name was whispered in the pitch black when in captivity, and instinct told me exactly who it was without the need to turn around.
Some part of me had always known. The nameless hands, and the faceless voices. Not the men who bought me. The man who made it possible. My father. Pied Piper.
“No,” I whispered, pressing my shaking fingers to my mouth. “She’s lying. She’s twisting it. She’s angry I lived and afraid I’ll report everything I know to the cops. She wants to break me by telling me I’m the daughter of a cold-hearted monster.”
But even as I said it, even as I forced the words out like a chant, like a dangerous spell—my pulse was pounding out a brutal beat: It’s true. It’s true. It’s true.
And in the back of my skull, a song I didn’t remember ever learning hummed softly, and I wanted to gouge it out.
Memories I didn’t know I carried ripped open inside me—images, voices, the sting of rope on my wrists, the sour stench of sweat and fear.
They surged like a tidal wave, too much, too fast, crashing through the cracks in my mind until I couldn’t breathe.
Truth. Lies. All tangled together, clawing at me, dragging me under.