19. Cain
CAIN
Delilah couldn’t see me from where I sat crouched in the shadows.
But I could see her. She’d become even more beautiful than I remembered.
The years hadn’t broken her, but there was a subtle droop to her shoulders that wasn’t there before and a small wrinkle that sat permanently between her brows.
She seemed thinner and sadder too. But the setting sun made her golden hair glow like the angel I knew she was.
It took every ounce of restraint I had in me not to fuck this up and go over to her right now.
My hands gripped into the sharp bark of the tree as I steadied my overwhelming emotions. My breath felt warm trapped behind the filtered gas mask I wore on my scarred face, smelling of mint and plastic.
The wind picked up and rustled the leaves on the trees around me and the birds above me squawked loudly as their feathers flapped.
I was so aware of every little thing. It was a stark difference to the cold cell I was used to.
It’d been five years of being locked away and shut off from the outside world, and it felt like my senses were heightened as I took it all in.
My feet shifted on the ground reveling in the softness of the Earth instead of hard concrete.
The time I’d spent locked away chipped away at my humanity.
The only thing that kept me grounded in reality instead of slipping into madness was the thought of Delilah and the promise I made her.
For these past five years, I stopped talking.
Hadn’t said one fucking word to another soul and I wouldn’t, not until I spoke to her.
At this point I wasn’t even sure my voice would work.
It’d been so long since I’d uttered a syllable, let alone a whole fucking sentence.
I watched through the dim tint of the lenses of my mask as Delilah smiled and waved goodbye to a short woman with black hair and a silver streak that framed her face.
And then she looked right at me and my heart stuttered in my chest. I knew there was no way she could actually see me, but it felt like she did.
To be this close to her after all this time felt surreal.
All I had to do was walk out from behind these trees and I’d have her in my arms again.
But it was too soon. I had more to do before I was ready.
Until then, I would watch and wait. Even if it was killing me to not rip her out of that bastard’s hold right here and now. I had to be smart about this or all that time I spent planning would be for nothing.
I’d been let out of prison two weeks ago, and in that time, I’d collected my trust fund left by my late grandfather, found a house on the outskirts of town, and tracked down the woman who’d occupied my every thought for the past five years of my life.
I needed to know that she was okay before I could enact my revenge.
Prison had gifted me enough time to plot, looking at my plan from every angle until it was perfect.
As I watched Delilah, I understood that her life was dictated by that son of a bitch pastor impersonator that married her.
He still taught at Kingston, inflicting his particular brand of assholery on underage kids.
Still walked around with that air of entitlement and was still somehow revered by the community despite his heinous crimes.
He had everyone fooled. And those who weren’t fooled enabled his behavior.
His reign of terror was over— only he didn’t know it yet.
I waited until Delilah got into her silver sedan to head back to my motorcycle.
It rumbled beneath my legs as I peeled out of the parking lot and headed back to my house where I could keep track of my prey from one of the many cameras I’d set up around their house .
My list of revenge was long, and it started with my own parents.
I’d already stopped at their house and snagged this mask and a few poisons from my father’s shed out back.
The key code was the same one he’d used before I was taken to Kingston.
It was so easy to take what I needed. My family still kept to their same predictable schedule.
The one I knew like the back of my hand.
My father and brother spent the day going on calls and wouldn’t be back until 6pm, while my mother grocery shopped every Monday, and volunteered at the local food bank on Wednesday and Friday, giving me plenty of time alone to do what I needed.
The poisons my father used were hard to come by and most likely illegal, but they’d take out an infestation, and that’s exactly what I planned to do.
I was able to shimmy in through the back open window and plant a few timed chemical reactions so that when they got home… kaboom. Bye, bye house of horrors.
I should have felt more remorse doing that, but I felt none.
They’d let me rot. They’d raised me in chaos, always treating me like a problem to be solved instead of a son to be loved.
Really, I was doing the world a favor. Ridding it of the vermin, and if anyone understood what it was like to do that, it was my family since they did it for a living.
When the news got ahold of their demise, they’d assumed it was caused from their own hubris, which worked out for me just fine.
The house I’d bought was the perfect set up for what I had planned for Delilah. All I needed to do was install the right hardware that would keep her from running. She needed to be extricated from Pastor John, and he needed to be put in the ground for his many sins.
He might have stolen years of my life. He might have had Delilah, but I had been more than patient and I was ready to keep my promise to her.
I’m coming, angel. Don’t you worry. I thought as I careened down my long driveway.
The house was tucked away in the woods. A perfect escape from prying eyes.
And the right distance away from any nosy neighbors that might hear her screams. I wasn’t sure how Delilah would react to me, so I had to take every precaution.
It was two stories with white siding and had several cozy fireplaces situated throughout.
My favorite was in what would become the library room, but for now was rows of empty walnut-colored shelves and a lone velvet emerald wingback chair that came with the house.
The kitchen was massive, housing two ovens and every appliance I could think of.
Picking things to fill the place always brought me back to Delilah and wondering what she would like or want.
It often led to me purchasing multiple options hoping one of them would be the right choice.
It was clear that Pastor John made all her decisions for her, and that wouldn’t fucking do.
In the back yard there were several large trees that offered the right amount of shade and then several acres of woods that I’d only begun to explore.
On one of those trips, I’d found an abandoned school bus that I had no idea how the thing even ended up there since there was no clear road and it was surrounded by trees.
In preparation, I’d lined the property with state-of-the-art surveillance, and the best camera system money could buy.
That way I would be alerted if John and those Crusaders he called his friends ever came looking for me, even though I purchased the property under an alias, you could never be too careful.
In the control room, I could see all the cameras.
A man named, Ace, helped with it all, even with changing my identity.
He'd gone to Kingston just like me and somehow tracked me down before I even stepped foot in Kingston.
It was clear he wanted these fuckers to burn just as much as I did.
With his connections, I was able to record every movement and be alerted to anything suspicious.
He made it accessible too so that I would get an alert on my phone if I happened to be away from the control room.
There were cameras placed all over the town at this point.
Several outside of Kingston Prep, ones outside the judge's house, the library, the police station, and of course Pastor John's house. They were tucked away in items that looked like rocks and leaves so they wouldn’t attract suspicion. Lastly, there were several cameras in the corners of what would become Delilah’s room.
It was nearly ready, but I still had a lot of recon and renovations to do.
While a lot was the same from the time that I’d been gone, there was a lot more that had changed.
Like technology. When I was taken to prison, we only had flip phones that could barely send a text.
But now, phones were like an entire computer in the palm of your hand.
There were new apps too that everyone was obsessed with.
New cultural references that I didn’t understand. It felt overwhelming to catch up on.
I sat down at the desk just as Delilah was pulling into her driveway.
When she exited the car, I noticed that she moved slowly, like her body hurt.
I frowned watching her, wondering what had happened to her.
She looked skittish and tired. My finger traced her pixilated face on the screen as if that would somehow comfort her. Not much longer, I promised.
A squeak broke my attention, and I groaned internally.
Since I’d moved in, there was a fucking squirrel that kept terrorizing my front door like it had a personal vendetta against the inanimate thing.
I’d chased him off more than once, and at this point was close to setting up traps to capture the little rascal.
I left the monitors and banged on the door in question, hoping that would scare him enough for now.
I’d only come back to the house for some more provisions.
Tonight, I’d wanted to camp outside of Delilah’s house.
Maybe I was fucking nuts, but I felt better being closer to her just in case she needed me.
I didn’t trust that piece of shit in there with her.
And while I wasn’t ready to put my plan into action, I knew that if I had to, I’d risk it all to come to her aid just like I promised her I would.
Stuffing my bag full of water, snacks, and plenty of caffeine, I headed out, ready for a night of watching over Delilah.
Their house was far nicer than any teacher’s salary should have been able to afford.
But the ivy and dense foliage that covered so much of their brick studded house afforded me enough coverage to go undetected.
I stared into their house, mask affixed to my face, watching as Delilah cooked dinner. Her face was devoid of any emotion. She didn’t dance. Didn’t laugh. Just existed, stirring and staring off into the distance. That’s when Pastor John walked through the front door and her entire demeanor changed.
Her spine went straight and her eyes were wide with fear.
She plastered on a tight smile and walked over to him, kissing him on the cheek.
I couldn’t hear what he said, but the scene looked like something torn from a nineteen fifties sitcom.
He sat directly at the head of the table waiting expectantly while Delilah went and served him up a plate.
It didn’t escape my notice that while Pastor John had himself a nice-looking pork chop and potatoes, Delilah had a salad that wouldn’t even feed a rabbit. No wonder why she’d looked so thin.
They ate in silence, not saying one word to each other. How fucking depressing. This was the life he’d shackled Delilah to? She seemed more like a slave than a wife. And I’d bet my left ass cheek he dictated her every move, down to that sad looking salad.
My jaw twitched and my hand flexed as I willed myself to stay fucking put and not break in there right now to snatch her like I wanted to. I would not fuck this up.
We’d both lost too much time for me to make a mistake now. Our revenge had to go off without a hitch, or we could lose more than just a few years. One wrong move and I knew he’d kill her and me. I couldn’t fail her again.
Instead, I watched from the shadows calculating my next move, knowing that soon we would be together again. She was right within my reach. It was only a matter of time and while I watched, I took note of everything, memorizing their schedules down to the minute.
I learned he drank his coffee black and was obsessed with protein shakes.
He wore designer suits, while Delilah was forced to wear drab looking 50’s style dresses that came down to her knee and went up to the top of her collar bone.
She spent her days at the library, while he continued to be a shitty ass teacher at Kingston.
Beyond that, I knew he took meetings with influential leaders of the community every Sunday evening under the guise of ‘bible study’.
I hadn’t found a way in yet to listen or see what they were discussing, but I would.
Ace assured me he was on it, but I wasn’t used to relying on anyone else for help.
While I appreciated his assistance with getting the cameras and my new identity set up, I preferred to do the dirty work myself.
People had only ever let me down, and I wasn’t about to start trusting them now. Even if we had a common enemy.
The house that Delilah lived in had fifty-seven points of entry. Windows, doors, ventilation, and if I was really desperate, the chimney. But I didn’t fancy myself to be Santa Clause, so I ruled that one out.
In the meantime, I monitored everyone else on my list. Taking notes while I lived off the rest of my trust fund.
It was enough to live comfortably for an extended time, which was perfect for what I had in mind.
My plan that I came up with in prison would only carry me so far.
Now that I was out in the real world and had to put it into action, I had to factor in what changed since I’d been away.
Every day I spent watching Delilah was that much closer to the day we could finally be together again.
I wanted to make sure she was comfortable.
It would be a big adjustment, and I didn’t know if she would try to hurt herself or what even to expect from her.
While I knew her to be a fighter, five years is a long time to endure constant abuse.
Both emotionally and physically. She might not be the same Delilah that I remembered, but I sure as hell was willing to help her remember what she was capable of.
I just needed a little more time.