56. Ethan
Angelo would never have won in a fair fight. He baited me with Cassidy. Waited in the shadows until I let my guard down. Then surprised me with a brutal blow to the back of my head.
I wake up hogtied on my side, my cheek pressed to the cool, clammy ground of Glenmont Manor’s crypt.
Cassidy is weeping softly in her chair a few feet away, but as soon as I move, she gets herself under control. I expect her to yell through the gag, but she just stares at me with big, sad eyes.
Then she squeezes her eyes closed, wincing.
A shoe slams into the small of my back, and I groan as I try to huddle away from the pain.
“Welcome back, old friend,” Angelo says cheerfully, coming to stand in front of me. “You know, it’s taken me a while to figure out how hard to hit someone. Too hard, and they could never wake up. Not hard enough, and they wake up before you’re ready.”
“You fucking let her go,” I growl out.
“Or what?” He crouches in front of me, Smith’s gun dangling from a hand gloved in blue latex.
Fuck.
He prods me with the muzzle. “You’re not exactly in a position to negotiate, Ethan.” He turns, aiming the gun at Cassidy’s head. “I could shoot her right now, and you couldn’t stop me.”
I try not to let that statement get under my skin, but there’s a physical jolt of pain through my heart when Cassidy whimpers and squeezes her eyes closed. I have to get him to concentrate on me, not her.
“So why the hell am I still alive?”
Angelo swings the gun back to me, and thank fuck for that. Relief washes hot and cold over my body.
“Do I seriously have to explain that to you?” he asks, frowning slightly as he tilts his head to the side. My mind works feverishly, but it’s hard trying to think through the headache pounding away at my temples. I’m pretty sure I have a concussion.
“You’ve always been smarter than me,” I tell him, loathe to state such a blatant lie, but hoping it will make him let down his guard. “Guess you’ll have to spell it out.”
Angelo giggles, eyes sparkling. “Thought as much.”
Something about him is off. Like way, way off.
I’ve seen him coked up, buzzed, stoned, and drunk. And it has nothing on what I’m seeing right now. It’s like he’s on a different plane of existence. Maybe he dropped acid.
Christ.
We’re both fucked if we’re dealing with a lunatic on LSD.
He stands so quickly I flinch, expecting a bullet in the head or another boot in my kidneys. But he turns around and walks over to Cassidy, grabbing her hair and wrenching her head to the side.
I force myself to watch, even though I want nothing more than to close my eyes and wipe out the sight of her suffering.
She’s here because of me.
If I could be in her place, I’d swap with her in an instant. Since that’s not an option, I’ll witness every moment of her fear and torment.
I vow, in this life or the next, to avenge her for her suffering.
“I’m not going to kill you.” He drags the muzzle down Cassidy’s cheek, and she stares desperately over to me like she’s begging me to make it stop.
And God, I’d give my life right here and now if I could make that happen.
“That would be murder.” He presses the muzzle into Cassidy’s cleavage, and starts sliding it in and out.
I clench my teeth, working furiously at the hands behind my back to break free, but there’s no give in the ropes. He wanted to make sure I’d be powerless to watch him torturing my girl.
“What then?” I ask roughly.
Angelo’s smile chills me to the fucking bone, but when he slides his gun down and slips it under Cassidy’s skirt, lava starts pumping through my veins.
“Stop! Just tell me what the fuck you want!”
“I want everyone to know Cassidy wasn’t your first victim.”
First victim?
“No.” The word is as cold and hard as the floor I’m lying on.
Angelo’s smile widens. “Now you’re getting it.”
He turns away from Cassidy, ambling over to an old cabinet where I kept some of my lower-value gems. But it’s not the stones he’s after. There’s a trunk beside it. I stored some of Becks’s coat and purses inside it when I took her clothing out of the manor.
“I’m actually surprised at how well preserved she is. I thought she’d just be a skeleton by now,” he says as he reaches inside the trunk.
My chest is as tight as the ropes around my wrists and ankles, but somehow my heart finds enough space to pound.
“Huh? Doesn’t look too bad, does she?” Angelo holds out his arm, a desiccated head dangling from his fingers. Tangled, matted brown hair and shrunken eyes render the skull almost unrecognizable.
Almost.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Cassidy screams frantically through her gag as he walks over to her and holds the head beside hers.
“You’ve got a type. Brunette’s with green eyes.” He points the gun at Cassidy. “She’s chubbier than the last, though.”
“Why?” I grate out. “What the fuck did she ever do to you?”
“Her?” Angelo spins to face me, Becks’s head swinging like a gruesome air freshener hanging from a serial killer’s rear-view mirror.
“Oh, Becks was lovely, Ethan. I really liked her.” He shakes her by the hair, making a kissy face at what’s left of her decomposing head. “Until you moved out here to the middle of nowhere. Started talking about kids. Closing the company.”
His teeth shine orange in the soft glow from the crypt’s spotlights.
“You left me no choice. Something’s gotta give, you know?” He walks back to Cassidy, and she cringes away with a disgusted moan when he swings Becks’s head closer to her.
“Thought things would go back to normal if I got Becks out of the picture. But you just kept turning down jobs. Guess you had enough money by then, huh? Didn’t give a fuck about what I wanted. It was all about Ethan Remington. You know how much money I was making before you got all fucking soppy on me and quit?”
“You killed my fucking fiancé!” I roar. “How the hell did you think I was going to react?”
“Bullshit!” Angelo stabs the gun in my direction. “You thought she’d run off. Felt so fucking sorry for yourself, you just gave up.” His voice keeps rising, the gun in his hand gesturing so wildly that Cassidy ducks her head to avoid getting slugged.
“I begged you, Ethan, fucking begged you to start up the business again. But you never gave a shit about me, did you?”
He drops the head into Cassidy’s lap, laughing as she tries to buck it off.
“I’m going to peel the skin off your tiny little dick and feed it to you,” I growl.
Angelo laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. “Gonna be hard when you’re multiple life sentences for murder.” He runs a hand over Becks’s head like he’s stroking a cat.
Christ, this guy is so goddamn unhinged. How the fuck didn’t I see this coming?
Because he’s right.
I never cared about anyone else. It was always about me.
As if snapping out of a daydream, Angelo shoves the gun into the small of his back and darts into the shadows, emerging with a golden candlestick.
He walks up to Cassidy with such determination that I can already see him bashing in her brains. She gives up trying to push Becks’s head off her lap to stare at Angelo with wide, panicked eyes.
“No!” I yell, and he has the fucking audacity to laugh at me.
But instead of turning her skull into a pulp, he wraps her fingers around the base of the candlestick. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “Hold it tight, sweetheart. Gotta convince forensics you were defending yourself.”
Cold realization slams into me like the fucking iceberg that hit the Titanic.
He’s going to make it look like I dragged Cassidy down here to kill her…just like I killed Becks. That’s what it’ll look like to the cops, anyway.
And then what? He’ll kill us both?
She won’t be alive to tell the truth, and the cops will thank God this case was handed to them wrapped in a neat little bow.
Merry fucking Christmas.