Chapter One
Jocelyn
I sit in a now eerily quiet home, doing my best to focus my thoughts.
Dalton left three hours ago, after he swore to me that Darby’s children would be safe with him. The same blood may flow through our veins, but that blood belongs to the worst monster of all, and I think he knows I’ll hunt him down just the same if he harms them.
They’re innocent in all of this, and I’d like to think that, at one point, I was too.
I tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear, and let a breath slowly escape me, then square my jaw.
Luke Greene stole my innocence long before I ever knew there was such a thing.
To me, that was just a fairy tale, a fable I would read about in books whenever he would allow me such a comfort. The time I spent teaching my brothers a basic education as best as I could, I would steal some of those moments to lose myself between pages of worlds that I knew I’d never find.
Worlds where children weren’t repeatedly bred by their father.
Worlds where women had choices.
Worlds where families were normal, and not what we were led to believe that they were.
And even now, as a grown woman, I find myself longing for those worlds I read about as a child, when I would lay my head down and sleep next to his sweating body.
A cloud slowly drifts by the moon, meticulously blotting out the light for a few seconds, engulfing me in darkness.
Being in the dark is something I should be used to... but the time I spent down in the oubliette with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, and the time I spent in the old, abandoned home that I took refuge in on the outside of town, have done nothing to change how I feel about it.
To me, it’s not a welcome thing.
It’s where monsters throw the innocent to rot.
I chuckle slightly as I reach for my cane, then get to my feet as steadily as I can.
Perhaps I was innocent at one time in my life, but I can’t remember when that was, and I don’t like to dwell on it either.
I start to walk through Dalton’s home, seeing the essence of our shared monster everywhere. Whether he knew it or not, this home is a damn tribute to Luke.
I try to tear my thoughts away from him, because maybe it’s my own obsession that sees him in everything.
But failure is something that I’m used to, because I still struggle to think of anything other than Luke.
I love my father and I always will.
I can’t love what he did to me, or to my daughter, but I can’t help that I do love him.
Never in the way he would have hoped for, but the way a daughter should love her father.
Her abductor.
Her tormentor.
The man who made her bear a child, then threw her in a fucking hole to die, only to later taunt her with a hope of being a family.
No matter how fucked up his idea of a family was, any time spent with Darby was more precious to me than no time at all.
He took her from me, and I still love him.
I wish I knew the easy answer to the question– why ? But I don’t, and I never will.
I’m starting to become as crazy as the rest of them, I think grimly as I brush a strand of hair away from my face.
The Greene Family curse is to always love him—no matter what—but the obsessive thoughts I’ve been having ever since I knew I would be the one to end this have become almost too much to bear.
Obsession drives us all in one way or another. For him, it made him love his children, their children, and by the looks of Dalton, the children after theirs as well.
So far, there are only three of us who I have figured out haven’t given in to his way of love.
Me, Dalton, and Darby .
My sweet baby girl.
She never knew it, but I watched her some nights when she slept with the children in their room.
I watched on the nights when she sat wide awake, angry at what her life had become, and her determination to keep him out if he tried to enter and harm their children.
She was born a Greene but held the same convictions as her mother.
She knew that this was never love.
Dalton knows it too.
So do I.
I look away for a moment, my eyes taking in the dirty, worn carpet of the living room.
When I raise my eyes again, I look out the window and nod.
I’m the only one standing between Luke Greene and the end.
After what he did to my child, I’ll gladly accept the burden of looking him in the eyes for the last time.
And I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he realizes that he wasn’t strong enough to kill me after all.