Ryder
Where the hell are they? I’ve texted and called both girls’ phones and haven’t gotten an answer. I press Jessie’s name again and hit call, just as the garage door opens and they both step out. Jessie locks the door behind them.
Kelsey’s face is red, her eyes puffy like she’s been crying. She slides into the passenger seat, and Jessie takes the back, leaning forward and sticking her head between the seats. “Everything okay?”
She sniffs, “Yeah—”
“She’s just emotional about the house selling,” Jessie interrupts, and Kelsey nods, glancing at Jessie with a sad smile.
Something feels off about it, but I knew the emotions from selling her childhood home would hit her sooner or later.
So I guess it could be that. I told her there was no rush to sell it, that I would pay the bills until she was ready, but she insisted it needed to be done.
She wants to be able to put it all behind her and move on.
To heal, and I respect that. Kelsey is the strongest woman I know, and one day, maybe I’ll get to call her my wife.
I never wanted to grow a family, but something about Kelsey gives me that itch. As if she were created just for me. My heart beats harder when she’s with me, like there’s a reason for it to beat.
I put the Noire in reverse and take off down the road to the bank. Kelsey turns the volume down, muting the song “Kryptonite” by Jeris Johnson. “Did Lilith say anything to you this morning?”
“About?”
I see Kelsey shrug out of the corner of my eye, “I don’t know. Anything?”
I try to think back on what all might have been said, but it wasn’t much besides Lilith threatening that we’ll all be killed once he finds out. But the “he” is still in question. Everybody has somebody higher than them. I used to think I was at the top of the food chain, turns out I was wrong.
“No,” It’s not really a lie, but why give her something to worry about? I won’t let anyone come after her, and I hope I’ve proven that to her by now. “She was just pissed off.”
I park the Noire in the back of the bank and choose to take the back entrance. I unset the alarm, and we walk inside, taking a right at the end of the hall to the staircase to the cellar.
“Are you going to kill her?” Kelsey asks from behind me.
The wooden steps creak under our weight. “Yes,” Jessie hisses. “She wants you dead, Kels.”
“Not yet.”
“What?”
“You know how this goes, Jessie. Interrogation, then torture, then murder.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,”
We come to the first cell, the one Lilith’s in, and she’s singing what sounds like a nursery rhyme. That sends a shiver down my spine. Fucking creepy bitch.
“Oh, hello, dear.” She eyes Kelsey with an eerie, bright smile. She looks her up and down, assessing her. What is her obsession with Kels?
“Don’t call me that,” She grits out through clenched teeth.
“You’re so much like your mother,” She laughs.
“You don’t know my mother.” The amusement that flashes across Lilith’s face at that statement doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Oh, but I do.”
“Enough!” I growl. “Tell me what you know.”
She makes a tsking sound, then looks around aimlessly as if looking for something. “I suppose you want to know many things. Which would you like first?”
She knows what she’s doing. Leaving it up to me to ask the questions, in hopes I’ll forget something and she’ll be dead before I remember.
“What do you want from her?” I ask, nodding towards Kelsey.
She smirks, “Ahh, I see. Those letters your daddy left you didn’t say?”
How the fuck does she know about the letters? A crucial puzzle piece is missing, and I’m going to figure it out. Kelsey takes a step back from the bars.
“Listen here bitch.” Jessie runs up, gripping the bars, “You give it all up now, or I’ll gladly make your death as slow and painful as possible!” She screams, spit flying.
I grab her around the waist pulling her back. The last thing we need is to get Lilith pissed off and silent again.
“Lucius and I made an agreement twenty-one years ago.” Her eyes bounce from Kelsey’s to mine. Twenty-one? That’s how old… “He left the society to be a father, and I continued to work. I didn’t have time for a baby.”
“No,” Kelsey breathes. I keep my eyes trained on Lilith.
“If I had it my way, you wouldn’t have been born.” She rolls her eyes at Kelsey’s quiet sobs, and I’m thankful there are bars separating us, or Lilith’s neck would be snapped already.
“After you reached adulthood, I wanted to see you. Lucius denied, so I took it into my own hands.”
“What makes you think you had a right to see the child you wanted dead?” Jessie snaps.
Lilith ignores her and resumes, “Lucius left on a contract. He was paid as long as he cared for you and left me out of it, but as I got older, I realized I had made a mistake and was jealous of Linda.” Lilith speaks her name with disgust.
“If you wanted a relationship with her, then why did you sell her to be raped?”
“She needs to learn what a woman’s body was made for.”
I pull the cell key from my pocket and sling open the door. The sound reverberates through the cellar. I wrap my hand around her throat, my fingers digging into her windpipe, “You speak of that woman like that again, and I’ll cut your guts out and feed them to you before you take your last breath.”
She smiles up at me as her lips turn blue. I’m convinced this evil bitch is already dead. She’s a demon that’s possessed another woman’s body. I shove her head back, and she coughs, gasping for air.
“He’ll kill all of you,” She chokes out.
My patience is wearing thin. I punch the brick wall and feel my skin split along the knuckles. Shit. I look over at Kelsey, finding Jessie standing in front of her, saying something I can’t hear.
“Who?” I shout. “Who the fuck is he?”
“Her grandfather,”
Son of a bitch, “cut the fucking riddles,”
“I don’t have a grandfather. They’re all dead.” I look up to find Kelsey now standing beside me inside the cell. I allow it, because there’s nothing Lilith can do as she’s restrained to the chair bolted into the concrete.
“Oh, my naive child. Lucius’s father, Henry Vaugn, is very much alive.”
The president? “Then I guess I’ll figure that out when he finds me.”
I take two zip ties and loop them together loosely around her wrists before I remove them from the chair restraints. I tighten the zipties, then release her ankles. “Get up,” I command through clenched teeth.
I lead her towards the stainless steel table and shove her on top of it. “No foreplay?” Her joke lands flat and honestly makes me sick. She’s hella fucked up in the head.
“I’m getting to it.” Just not the way she was intending. I grab her wrists and slam them down above her head, placing the built-in handcuffs around her wrists, tightening them until I know they’ll break the skin. I do the same to her ankles on the other end of the table.
I grab the scalpel off the surgical tray. I can’t tell you the last time this thing was sanitized. Good thing the patients I see down here don’t leave, or they would leave with more than what they came in with.
“This will hurt. A lot.” I whisper in her ear.
She laughs demonically as I drag the scalpel down her bare arms. Blood bubbles to the surface along the cut.
“This is for everything you’ve done to hurt my girl.
” I dig the scalpel deeper down her legs.
I make it to her knee before a small, soft hand folds over mine.
“Come to save me?” Her voice scrapes my nerves like nails on chalkboard.
“No. I’ve come to finish the job.” Kelsey replies, like the badass I love.
“You’re nothing more than a used-up whore,” Lilith shouts. I step away, entranced by Kelsey’s carvings on her disturbed mother. She doesn’t deserve that title. She never deserved to know Kelsey, and Kelsey never deserved the life Lilith gave her.
By the time Kelsey’s finished, her blood-covered hands shake, and Lilith is painted in her own blood. She’s weakened from the bloodloss and her screams and bitter words died moments ago, although she isn’t dead.
“What now?” She asks. Dried tears cling to her face.
“I’d gladly do the honors of ending the cunt,” Jessie offers from the opposite side of the room.
“We kill her, and I’ll have the clean-up crew dispose of her without a trace.”
“You do it,” Kelsey tells Jessie, and a menacing smirk curves her lips. She’s been waiting for this. She has a lot of pent-up rage she’s been needing to burn off anyway.
She steps up to the table and wraps her fingers around her neck. Her face pinches as she cuts off her air. Lilith is too weak to fight it, but we know when she’s dead the moment her body completely relaxes.
I make my way over to Kelsey and wrap my arms around her small shoulders. She cries silently into my chest, her hands fisting my shirt. “It’s over,” I assure her.
“I love you.” Those three words have my heart skipping beats. I never thought I would hear them from her. Never thought she could love me.
“I love you, too, baby.” I hold her tighter.
I’ve already ordered the crew to be here and start the removal process.
A lot of shit was said tonight that we’ll need to discuss.
Kelsey is the granddaughter of the president, and she never knew.
Her father changed his last name to protect her, amongst other things.
He did all he could to try to keep her safe, but they still found her.
Not anymore. If I have to, I will kill her grandfather, too. Whatever it takes to keep her safe.