Chapter 44
Atreus
I’m too stunned to say anything at all.
The woman I believed to be a ruthless serial killer is, at heart, a woman scorned so badly that it’s no wonder she would scorch the earth. It’s a tragedy she’s carried with her to this day.
I stare at the paper, unable to stop reading the words over and over again, as if they imprint deeper into my soul with each passing.
Sunny Reed has lost not only her child, but her ability to ever have one again. “Oh God…”
That surgery … was it intended?
What if it was forced?
Is that why she killed them all?
Orion grabs my shoulder. “Do something.”
“What?” I mutter, completely disheveled from what I just learned.
“Help her. Save Sunny. She doesn’t belong in prison.”
I stare at him for a moment to try to regain my bearings. “I don’t know how—”
“Yes, you do!” Xavier shouts, and I turn around to look at him. “If you care about her at all, you will find a way to make this right.” He swallows. “Give her the justice she needs.”
My gaze flickers between the paper and the boys, as my conscience unravels before my very eyes.
All I ever strived for was justice.
The law would fix this broken world.
But it turns out that none of us ever had the power to do so, not even me.
In this wretched world, sick, evil, vile men will always take what doesn’t belong to them, no matter the cost, even if innocents get hurt.
There’s only one way to destroy monsters like that…
To become even more sick, evil, and vile than they are.
Just like she did.
What will transmute my cold, icy heart?
Vengeance.
Sunny
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
I stare at the clock on the wall outside my prison cell.
So much time has passed since I was last free of these chains around my hands.
So much time … since I last took a soul to the underworld.
Smiling, I listen to the footsteps coming closer and closer, the strong pace telling me all I need to know.
“Atreus,” I mouth, just as he shows himself in front of my tiny window.
He stares at me as the door is unlocked and he waltzes inside, closing the door behind him. He towers over me, but I’m not easily intimidated. I can still strangle him with these bound hands if I wanted to. I just choose not to because he’s my only way out of this hole … and I kinda like him.
“Did you come to gloat?” I ask, tilting my head.
He glances at the bed behind me that’s bolted to the floor. “Are you sleeping well?”
“Why do you care?” I would fold my arms if I could.
“I never said I didn’t. You assumed,” he says.
Always so cryptic.
“Sit down,” he says, nodding at the bed.
“I’m not a dog, Detective Foley.”
He licks his lips. “Will it help if I say please?”
“Maybe.”
“Then will you please sit on the bed, Sunny?”
I narrow my eyes at him.
Why is he being so suspiciously nice? It’s unlike him, and I don’t trust it.
Sighing, I turn around and sit down, and he sits down on the chair that’s bolted to the floor right next to my door.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“I want to talk with you … about some things I found.”
“About me? Where? In my room? Did you enjoy the macabre collection of relics from the dead?” I muse.
He pulls out a bunch of papers from his pocket. “About your medical records.”
My throat suddenly clamps up.
How did he …?
“You didn’t tell your family what happened to you, did you?”
I swallow, but the dryness doesn’t go away.
“Someone gravely injured you,” he says.
My face begins to contort from the loss of control over my emotions, and I hate it.
“They took something from you that wasn’t theirs to take.”
“Stop,” I growl, not wanting to face it.
“You don’t want to talk about it because that’s the one thing that has been driving you since you started killing, hasn’t it?”
I hide my face behind my hair just so I don’t have to look him in the eyes and have him see right through me.
No.
Don’t get too close.
The blood is still fresh.
It stains my vision, clouds my memories, poisons my heart.
“You were pregnant,” he says.
Every breath feels like a suffocating scratch at my insides.
“Was it Samuel’s?”
I get up from my seat, shrieking, “Don’t you dare speak that name!”
Atreus
Her voice pierces the room as my words pierce through her soul.
I know I’m so very close to puncturing that wall she’s built around her heart, and I won’t allow her to mend it again. I need to see, see the unraveling to know…
I swallow, as if it will temper the rage she wants to unload onto me. “He is the last on your hit list.”
I know she wants to strike me.
I can see it in her eyes, the unadulterated fury mixed with grief.
“He deserves to die for what he’s done to me,” she says through gritted teeth.
I suck in a breath through my nostrils, pausing for only a moment. “When I found you in the woods, you were heavily bleeding. You were operated on by the men you sought to kill.”
Her eyes scatter about as if she’s seeing the images flash right by her.
I know she doesn’t want to go there, that she doesn’t want to relive it.
But I need to know the truth.
“I was there, in that very room, and I found the paper containing all the notes from the doctor who took your uterus.”
Tears stain her eyes, and she screams out loud as she bashes her own head against the wall over and over again.
“Make. It. Stop!”
I rush over to her and put my hand between her face and the wall. “Hey. Hey. I’m here. Look at me.”
She stops and finds my eyes, connecting in the dark, like we’ve always done.
One stalker to another, searching for the truth in our hearts … A meaning to our rampage.
And for some reason, something peculiar happens.
A tear rolls down her cheek.
One after the other.
Until there’s no going back.
No going back from the flood I’ve unleashed as she slowly melts toward my arms and into my embrace.
“Tell me what happened to you …” I whisper. “From the beginning.”