Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Celeste
The words bleed from my fingertips like confessions at midnight.
The bride wore white, but her hands were stained red.
She walked down an aisle of bones, toward a man who killed as naturally as others breathed.
Her father gave her away with trembling hands, knowing he would not survive the reception.
This was not a union of souls but a binding of darkness, two predators becoming one pack, sanctified by blood rather than blessing.
I've been writing for six hours straight, fueled by rage and coffee that's gone cold.
My manuscript is due to Juliette in three days, but that's not why I'm racing to finish.
I need to document this while it's raw, while the pain of discovering my father's truth still burns fresh.
Fiction drawn from fact, truth wearing the mask of story.
The protagonist in my novel just discovered her father trafficked children.
She's planning to kill him on her wedding night.
She thinks this makes her a monster, but her lover—a serial killer who only hunts predators—tells her monsters don't feel guilt about removing evil from the world.
They feel satisfaction.
They feel complete.
Art imitating life, or life imitating art?
I can't tell anymore.
The boundaries dissolved the moment I held the knife that killed Jake, the second I watched Morrison die, and I was fascinated rather than terrified.
Cain is in the kitchen, cooking something that smells like rosemary and death.
He's been quiet since showing me the documents from the Lockwood cottage, giving me space to process.
But I catch him watching me, those grey eyes tracking my every movement like he's waiting for me to shatter.
I won't shatter.
I'll sharpen instead.
The wedding dress hung in the closet like a shroud.
White silk and lace, pristine and pure, waiting to be baptized in blood.
She wondered if the stains would show, or if the darkness would soak in so deep that the dress would remain white, holding secrets in its fibers like the woman who wore it.
Her fiancé had asked if she was sure. Sure about the dress, the wedding, the killing that would follow. She'd laughed—a sound like breaking glass.
"I've never been more sure of anything," she'd said.
"My father sold children while teaching me to ride a bike.
He funded my education with blood money.
Every good memory I have is tainted with someone else's suffering.
So yes, I'm sure. I'm sure that he needs to die, and I need to be the one holding the blade. "
My phone buzzes.
A text from Dad:
Are you sure about this?
I don't respond.
He doesn't deserve reassurance.
He deserves the fear that comes from uncertainty, from knowing your daughter holds your life in her hands.
Another buzz.
This time it’s Juliette:
On my way. ETA 2 hours. Bringing surprises and a guest.
A guest? I show the text to Cain, who frowns.
"She should have asked first."
"She's Juliette. She doesn't ask, she informs."
I save my manuscript and stretch, vertebrae popping like bubble wrap.
Patricia's ring catches the afternoon light, sending rainbow refractions across my laptop screen.
I've been wearing it for two days now, and it already feels like part of my hand.
Or maybe I'm becoming part of it—another Lockwood woman tainted by the family's darkness.
No. Not tainted. Transformed.
I think about Patricia wearing this ring while she watched Cain and Juliette suffer.
Did it sparkle when she struck them?
Did the diamonds catch the light as she signed documents authorizing the sale of children?
How many tears have reflected in these stones?
Now it's mine, and it will witness a different kind of violence.
The necessary kind.
"You should eat," Cain says from the doorway.
"I should finish."
"The book or the planning?"
"Both. The book needs to be perfect. Our alibi depends on it."
"How so?"
"Who would be stupid enough to publish their actual crimes as fiction? It's hiding in plain sight. Plus, Juliette will have the timestamp. Proof I was writing during some of the killings."
He crosses to me, reads over my shoulder. I let him see the words, the barely disguised truth of our story.
"You're writing about killing your father."
"I'm writing about justice. Publishers will call it dark romance. Readers will call it twisted. We'll call it prophecy."
"And after? When it's published and people read about a daughter who murders her father on her wedding night?"
"They'll call it fiction. Because surely no one would be bold enough to publish their actual crimes. It's the perfect cover. My confession disguised as creativity."
He kisses the top of my head. "You're brilliant."
"I'm practical and hungry."
I follow him to the kitchen, where he's made venison stew.
From his latest kill, he tells me—a buck he took down three days ago, before our world exploded with my father’s secrets.
The meat is tender, gamey, real in a way store-bought never is.
We're eating something he killed with his own hands, just like on our wedding night, we'll celebrate with blood on ours.
"Tell me about the first time," I say suddenly. "Not your parents. The first intentional hunt."
Cain sets down his spoon, considers. "Webb. Four and a half years ago."
"The dealer Sterling wanted gone."
"I didn't know that then. I just knew he was selling to high school kids. Three had overdosed, one died—a fifteen-year-old named Katie Marsh. I went to her funeral, saw her parents destroyed. Her little brother asked why Katie wouldn't wake up."
"So you decided Webb needed to die."
"I decided he needed to fall off a cliff. Nature is dangerous in these mountains. People disappear all the time." He takes a sip of wine, remembering. "I watched him for two weeks, learned his routine. He hiked the same trail every Sunday, always alone, always high. It was almost too easy."
"Did you push him?"
"Didn't have to. I damaged the trail barrier, weakened the soil at the edge. When he leaned against it to catch his breath, it gave way. Gravity did the rest."
"But you arranged his bones."
"After. I climbed down, found his body, and... adjusted things. A message, though I didn't know who I was sending it to then."
"You were sending it to yourself. Announcing what you'd become."
"Maybe. Or maybe I was sending it to Sterling, letting him know someone else was hunting in his territory."
A car door slams outside.
Then another.
Juliette did indeed bring someone.
"Were you expecting—" I start, but Cain is already moving, hand going to the knife at his belt.
The door opens without a knock.
Juliette enters first, dragging a massive garment bag.
Behind her is a woman I don't recognize—mid-twenties, Asian features, eyes that have seen too much.
"Celeste, Cain," Juliette says, setting down the garment bag. "This is Thalia Kim. She's one of Morrison's survivors, one who escaped."
The woman—Thalia—won't look at Cain directly.
She focuses on me instead.
"Ms. Lockwood said you're planning something. About the Christmas Eve shipment."
My blood chills. "Juliette, what did you—"
"Thalia escaped three years ago. She's been working with an underground network to help other girls get out. When I told her about Christmas Eve, she insisted on coming."
"You told a stranger about—"
"I told a survivor about a chance to save twelve girls," Juliette interrupts. "Thalia has resources. Safe houses. People who can help the girls disappear after you intercept them."
Thalia finally looks at Cain. "You killed Morrison."
It's not a question, but Cain answers anyway. "Yes."
"Good. He liked to... sample the merchandise. Especially the young ones. The ones who looked scared." She pulls out a folder, hands it to me. "These are the girls coming in Christmas Eve. The network has been tracking them."
I open the folder.
Twelve photographs, twelve names, twelve lives about to be destroyed.
The youngest is thirteen—Maria Sanchez, taken from a group home in Albany. Reported as a runaway, with no one looking for her.
"How do you know all this?"
"Some of us never really escape," Thalia says. "We just learn to work from the outside. The network keeps tabs on shipments, tries to intercept when we can. But this one... Sterling runs a tight operation. We've never been able to get close."
"Sterling," I repeat, the name like poison on my tongue. "You know about Sterling."
"Everyone in the network knows about Sheriff Sterling. He's been doing this longer than Morrison, longer than any of them. He's the reason the Adirondack route is so popular—safe passage guaranteed, no questions asked."
I think I might vomit. All those nights he came home late, claiming to be protecting the town.
He was protecting the trade route instead.
"The Lockwood estate," Thalia continues. "That's where it started. Richard Lockwood and Sterling built this network thirty years ago. Even after the Lockwoods died, Sterling kept it running."
"How many?" I ask. "How many girls over the years?"
"Hundreds. Maybe thousands. The records were destroyed in a fire at the sheriff's station five years ago. Convenient electrical problem."
Five years ago.
I remember that fire.
Dad said it was lucky no one was hurt, that only old evidence in cold cases was lost.
He'd been so relieved, I thought it was about the building being saved.
But it was about the evidence being destroyed.
Cold cases.
Missing girls who would never be found because my father burned the evidence.
"Some of us remember, though," Thalia continues. "We keep our own records. Names, dates, faces. Sterling sold me when I was fifteen. My parents owed him money—they thought he was helping with a loan. He gave them two options: pay with cash they didn't have, or pay with me."
"Your parents sold you?"
"My parents were told I'd be working as a domestic servant to pay off the debt. They believed it because they needed to. Sterling was good at making people believe comfortable lies."
The silence that follows is heavy with shared trauma.