Chapter 22
ADRIEL
I drop her off back at her house, careful to avoid the unassuming Toyota parked across the street. I already got the license plate and a picture of her new bodyguard. I’ll be doing a little digging later today. Want to know who he is. Can’t be too careful when she’s involved.
“You can leave me at the back,” she says. “I can go around the yard.”
I hate that she has to sneak around with me, but I can’t exactly expose myself either.
“I’ll be around. Call me if you need anything. My number is in your cell.”
She grins. “I know.”
Winking back, she hops out and gives me one final look before she disappears into the house.
Rolling back onto the road, I start back toward my home, but at the last second, I change my mind. I didn’t intend to do this now, not when there’s a killer and damn traffickers after her. Too many fucking variables I can’t control.
But I can control this. I can take what I’ve been wanting to for so long, since the first time I found out she didn’t love me.
That I was dispensable.
Now, it’s her chance to repent and beg for my forgiveness. And when I’m through with her, I’ll deliver her body to her sons in pieces. The only sons she ever gave a fuck about.
Keys jingle in the door, footsteps slowly creeping closer while I wait in her kitchen. My mother has no idea what I look like. She never even realized I was hers when I talked to her in the supermarket. I was just a random guy. If I had a heart, it’d break.
But I don’t have one. She made sure of that.
She hums a tune, switching on the light and illuminating the space already bathed by the rays of the sun.
I keep myself well-hidden behind a partial wall while still being able to see her.
Her cell rings, and she instantly answers.
Fuck. I need her off it.
“Hey, Raph. How are you, sweetheart? How’s Nicolette?”
There’s a few seconds of quiet, my pulse ripping through my throat at the sound of my twin’s name.
I hate him with equal fervor. Hate them all with a passion so deep, I ache to spill their blood. But she’s the one I want. The one whose death I’ve been imagining my entire life.
As I got older, I’d lie there and close my eyes as the nuns whipped me, and I’d see her throat ripped open as though I had done it with my own teeth. An animal of their creation. A beast who haunted their dreams, turning them into nightmares.
And I’m her grim reaper. Wicked as they come.
“Of course I’d love to come to the party,” she gushes, and my teeth snap. “Tomorrow night is great. If the girls need help, I’d be happy to.”
My hands ball. A party tomorrow? Too bad she won’t be making it.
“Sure, honey. You go. I’ll see you all tomorrow. I love you, son.”
I love you, son.
I wonder for a moment how it’d feel to have her say that to me.
Pinching my eyes shut, I take in deep breaths, steadying the ravaging of my exhales. She will get what’s coming soon enough, and she will see my face as I rob every quaking breath from her lungs.
She drops her keys and cell on the counter, not seeing me as she opens the fridge. Not knowing there’s a monster lurking behind her, quietly prodding closer until my arm curls tightly around her throat.
“Hello, Mother,” I chuckle humorlessly. “You look so happy. I can’t wait to take it all away from you.”
She gasps, her body jolting, trying to turn to look at me. “Oh my God!”
My laughter echoes.
“Please, please, don’t hurt me! Just talk to me!” she pants.
My forearm snaps tighter, suffocating her, enjoying the way she claws at my bicep. She knows exactly what my name is. She named me.
I drag her backward toward a chair around her table and shove her into it.
She notices the mask, the knife in my hand, the blade sharpened to perfection.
I didn’t intend to use this one on her. I had a special one custom made just for her throat.
But here we are. Improvisation has always been a strength of mine.
Her eyes fill with terror, and her hands shake.
Good. She deserves this. Deserves worse.
Reaching inside my pants pocket with my other hand, I remove a pair of zip ties, twirling them around my finger.
Her tears come heavy now, her eyes rimmed with regret, with pain I can’t seem to care much about. She didn’t care about me. Why should I extend this woman, this stranger, that courtesy?
“You won’t need those.” She inclines her chin toward the ties. “I won’t be going anywhere.”
My lips wind up, and I stuff the ties back inside. “You’re right, Mother. You won’t be.”
I take a single step toward her, tipping up her face with the edge of the blade, nicking the underside of her jaw. Drops of blood pool around the metal, and her eyes? They hold mine, brows furrowed as her chin quivers.
“I’m sorry,” she cries, sniffling back. “I—”
“Shut up!” I roar. “I don’t want to hear your bullshit fucking apologies! That isn’t what this is about. What’s done is done. And today, you will finally pay for what you did to me.”
She sobs, shutting her eyes, trembling from how hard she cries.
“Open your eyes!” I holler. “Open them or you die right here, right now!”
She slowly reverts her attention back to me and blinks through the moisture building.
“Did you even care?” I wrench back. “Did you even wonder about me?”
She nods. “All…all the time. I—oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Her words strangle out of her. “I hoped and prayed you had a good life, but I—I was wrong, w-wasn’t I?”
She shakes her head, wails like this is somehow all about her.
“You were.” I smirk wickedly. “Guess I wasn’t important enough for you to check on me.”
“I’m so sorry!” she continues to repeat that same shit over and over, and it only enrages me.
“You keep saying that! But sorry isn’t going to change anything! You abandoned me, left me at the hands of those monsters, where I spent years wishing that my mother would come and save me. But you know what happened?” A stoic laugh emanates from my lungs. “She never did.”
“A…” Fat tears roll down her face.
“I want you to know! To see what they did to me! Those nuns. Those vultures.” I line the knife against her throat. “You’re no better, even when you pretend to be.”
She snivels, unable to catch her breath, while I flip the knife to a close and stuff it back in my pocket. With both hands, I remove my mask, not afraid of her knowing who I am. Let her see me. She won’t be coming out of this house alive.
When she sees my face, her vision grows.
“Oh my God…” she gasps. “The store! I—I remember you.”
I grin, relishing the shock on her features.
“I knew something about you felt familiar,” she coughs out with a whisper. “But I…I just thought it was because of your eyes. You still have those big, green eyes.”
Her bottom lip quivers as her sadness reeks like her death will.
“My father’s, you mean.” I grin. “I know about Patrick. Know about your sons. Your granddaughter. You have quite a beautiful family. You must be proud.”
“Please, don’t hurt her! I beg you. Do whatever you want to me. But not Sophia. She’s innocent!”
Her hands tremor on her lap, fear for the one she loves encroached around her like a vise.
I grab the hem of my shirt and lift it off my body. “I was innocent too.”
Turning, I give her the brutality that was carved onto my skin, my flesh reborn into something even a mother wouldn’t love.
Her breaths come in jerky, panicked gasps. “Oh—oh my God. Wh-what have I done? My-my baby.”
Those treacherous sobs of hers return, making me want to choke them out of her. I’ve waited for this moment all my life, needing her pain, wanting to own it, to make her feel it as she takes her final breath.
“Don’t pretend you had no idea where I was, or that you couldn’t find out! You didn’t fucking care! You left me crying for you, needing you. Wanting you! And now? Look at me!”
She shakes her head and shuts her eyes, endless tears stamping through her vision.
“No! You fucking look at me, Mother!” I grab her throat, and she instantly returns her attention to me. “This is what you did to me!”
But she continues to sob, and I want to put a knife through her fucking throat so she stops.
“They used to tell me stories about how you didn’t care,” I tell her. “How you left me when I was a newborn. They’d whip me, tell me what a sinner I was. How no one would ever love me when my own mother didn’t.”
“That’s—that’s not true,” she weeps. “I loved you. I still do!”
Tears fall endlessly down her face. But I don’t for a second buy into her bullshit. She’d say anything to get out of here alive, to save Sophia, who she has no idea I’d never harm.
“You never loved me.” I squeeze her neck even tighter. “You never will. Your actions have proven that time and time again. You had so many fucking opportunities to get me out of that place, to tell me you were sorry for the mistake you’d made. But that never happened. So stop lying!”
All she does is cry, sniveling through her breaths like a dying animal.
“I’ve waited so long for this moment. To make you pay for everything.”
“I deserve it, son.” She blinks back her tears and nods.
“Don’t you dare call me that!”
“I don’t deserve to. You’re right. Do whatever you need to do to make this better for you. I will forgive you.”
“Who the hell says I need your forgiveness?! I need nothing from you. Not anymore!”
“Regardless, you have it.” Her voice cracks.
“Did he know?” I grind my molars. “Did Patrick know you gave me up?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “He—he only found out after you left that note at Gio’s wedding,” she pants.
I knew it…
“Before you kill me…” She sniffles. “Can I please just know your name? Please. I never knew it.”
I cough up a laugh. “What do you mean, you never knew it? You named me, didn’t you? The nuns told me you did…”
She shakes her head. “They lied.”
My pulse throbs in my ear, swallowing away the silence.
Fuck. What else did they lie about?
Doesn’t matter. She’s gonna be dead soon enough. She’s just like them.
“Adriel,” I tell her.
“Adriel… Thank you.” Her chin shakes, and she forces a smile, tight with melancholy.
Her eyes fall to a close, and she takes a long, deep breath, like she’s preparing for her final moment.
I slide the knife out of my pocket and flip the blade open. Lining it against her throat, I watch her swallow harshly, her body shaking as she silently cries.
“I never wanted this for you,” she swears. “If I could go back and do things differently, I would. I would’ve given up my life for yours. But I failed you, Adriel, and I see that now.” She sniffles. “For that, I deserve to die.”
She shoves her throat toward the blade.
“So do it,” she whimpers. “Kill me. I’ll still love you in the end. I need you to know I never stopped, no matter what you think.”
All I want to do is slice her throat right now. How fucking dare she say that to me?
“Please, just go into my bag and get my wallet. I beg you!”
My heartbeats echo in my rib cage, the sound drowning out the plan I’ve always had for her.
Her eyes seek for refuge, for forgiveness. Tears continue to leak down her cheeks, but she doesn’t cower. She stares right into me as the knife edges deeper against her throat.
She’s gonna die.
I have to kill her.
I have to get my revenge.
It’s what I’ve been waiting for.
The one kill I’ve desired above all others. And right here, right now, it can be mine.
“Please, Adriel, just look in my wallet.”
With a growl, I remove the knife from her throat, grab her bag off the counter, and retrieve the wallet she’s dying for me to see.
“Open and unzip that small left side.”
I do it quickly, reaching inside and finding a small colored photo.
My gut tightens with knots. In it is her, but younger, a baby in her hands.
“That was you.” She sobs. “That was you and me, Adriel. My boy.”
“Liar!”
“A nurse, she took a photo of you and me.” She can barely speak now, consumed by pain I can’t seem to understand.
She left me. She abandoned me. Why is she crying like it suddenly matters now?
With a roar, I lift the knife up in the air, clasping the photo with my fingers.
“I’m sorry,” she weeps just as I slam the knife down.
“Fuck!”
She sobs heavier now, the blade carved into the wood of the chair, right beside her thigh.
I can’t fucking do it. After all this time, wishing for this very moment, I can’t do it. I can’t kill my mother.
I stare at her, unable to understand.
She means nothing to me, and yet…
“Fuck!” I pull the knife out and return it back to my pocket, turning around and rushing out of here.
She’s bound to tell Michael who I am. They’ll come for me.
Let them. I’ll give them a war like they haven’t seen before.
I’ll kill her sons. Leave her with nothing.
“Adriel! Please wait!” she screams for me. “Please talk to me. Don’t go!”
But I’m already slipping out the door, where I’m safe from her lies.
I couldn’t kill her this time. But I was close. I’ll get another chance, and next time, I won’t fail.
Because I can’t.
She must die.
And I must be the one to do it.