Chapter 28
Annabelle
Alone in my room, I cross over to the thrown journal and pick it up. “Who are you and what do you want with me?” I whisper. Is this his thing? Going after mothers and daughters? No one has mentioned it before. There has been no link to suggest this. Is it just me then? My bad luck?
Have I decided the guys aren’t the suspects just because they said so?
All these questions crash through my brain, and I can’t think straight.
I don’t want to think. I was happy with Ethan—all of them—doing my thinking for me.
It’s what I wanted when I allowed him—them—to take over my life.
That hasn’t changed. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Life is too hard, and I’m barely hanging on, only getting this far because of them.
I drop the journal onto the duvet. My heart thuds against my ribs.
I want to trust them because the alternative is a void I can’t face.
I need them to be the monsters that protect me from the bigger monster outside.
The door clicks open. Ethan stands in the frame. He doesn’t ask for permission. He enters the space as if he belongs here. He belongs everywhere I am.
“You’re spiralling, Annabelle,” he says. His voice is a low vibration that settles under my skin.
I look up at him. His blue eyes are deep. They are steady. He reaches out and brushes a thumb over my lip. “He can’t touch what we’ve already claimed.”
I sink into the mattress. My muscles are heavy. I’m tired of the ghosts. “Don’t let him get me.”
“He won’t.” He sits beside me. The bed dips. “I’ll kill him before he even sees your shadow.”
“You didn’t do this.” It’s a statement. I know he didn’t. None of them did.
“No,” he says.
“Are you upset that I thought it?”
He snorts softly. “No. I’d have been disappointed if you didn’t. It would mean you were too far gone.”
“I’m not gone,” I say, my voice sounding like it belongs to someone else. “I’m just tired.”
Ethan pulls me against his side. His chest is solid. I rest my head against the dark fabric of his shirt. I have no choice but to stay. The weight of his arm across my middle is a promise. It is a lock I cannot pick.
“We’ll find him,” he says. “We’ll end it.”
“And then what?” I ask. I look at the scuffed leather of my journal. “What happens to me when the threat is gone?”
“You’re ours,” he repeats. He doesn’t look at me. He looks toward the hallway. “That doesn’t change.”
I close my eyes. I need to believe him. “Is taunting him the only way to get him to show his face?”
“It’s the quickest.”
“What if he gets to me?”
“He won’t. We won’t let him.”
“But if you are surrounding me, he will see you. He won’t show himself.”
Ethan’s hand slides to the back of my neck. He doesn’t squeeze. He reminds me he’s there. “He’s playing a game,” Ethan says. “He thinks he can bait us by scaring you. He doesn’t realise we’ve already changed the rules.”
“How?” I ask. My throat is dry. I need more than vague promises.
“We let him think he’s winning. We let him see a gap in the wall.” He tilts my chin up. His blue eyes are freezing. “But there is no gap, Annabelle. Only a trap.”
I want to believe the lie. Aidan appears at the door. He doesn’t enter. The intensity of his presence makes the air feel thick.
“Dinner’s ready,” Aidan says. “You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I mutter, but my stomach betrays me with a sharp, hollow ache.
Aidan walks into the room. He doesn’t look at Ethan. He doesn’t look at the journal. He only looks at me. “I didn’t ask if you were hungry. I told you it’s ready.”
He reaches down, and for a second, I think he’s going to grab me, but he takes the journal off the bed. He flips it over in his large hand, his expression unreadable.
“Don’t,” I say, reaching for it.
He holds it out of my reach, his eyes snapping to mine. “This stays in the drawer. From now on, you don’t look back. You look at us.”
He hands the book to Ethan, who takes it without a word. The dismissal of my past, of my mother’s memory, makes my blood spark with a sudden, sharp heat.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I grit out, standing up to face him.
Aidan steps into my space. He is a wall of heat and muscle. “I just did. Now, move.”
I want to fight him. I want to scream that they can’t erase her. But when I look at the hard line of his jaw, I see the truth. He isn’t erasing her. He’s trying to stop me from joining her.
I walk past him into the hallway, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm. The scent of garlic and seared meat fills the apartment, a domesticity that feels like a trap.
Callan is already at the table. He has four glasses of wine poured, the dark liquid shimmering under the lights. He doesn’t look up when I sit down.
“Drink,” Callan says, pushing a glass toward me. “It’ll help the Scotch settle.”
I take the glass. The stem is thin, fragile between my fingers. I take a sip, and the tartness of the wine cuts through the lingering burn of the spirits.
Ethan and Aidan sit on either side of me. I am boxed in. Three points of contact. Three monsters. One woman who has stopped trying to find the exit.
“Tomorrow,” Ethan says, his voice cutting through the silence. “We start the baiting.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, my hand trembling as I set the glass down.
“It means you go to work,” Aidan says, his eyes dark. “And you act like you aren’t afraid.”
“But I am afraid.”
“Good,” Ethan murmurs. “Afraid means you want to live. Progress.”
I blink at that. It means I want to live. When did that change?
I pick up a fork and push a piece of steak around the ceramic plate.
Ethan takes the fork from me and holds it up. I open my mouth because what choice do I have?
“What do I have to do?” I ask after I swallow. My voice sounds steadier than I feel.
Ethan cuts another piece of my meat for me. The steel blade scrapes against the plate with a sharp, jarring ring. “You work. You talk to Margaret. You walk to the car. You don’t look over your shoulder.”
“He’ll see me,” I say. “He’ll know I’m not alone.”
“He knows that already,” Callan says. He hasn’t touched his food. He stares at the wine in his glass. “He wants to see if we can keep you. He wants to see the moment we fail.”
“And will you?” The question hangs in the air, heavy and suffocating.
Ethan takes my hand. His palm is hot. “We don’t fail, Annabelle. We win. Every single time.”
I want to believe him. I need to believe him. “He wants to see if we can keep you… why did you say that?” I stare at Callan for an explanation. “You make it sound like this is about you.”
“That’s because it is about us, as much as it’s about you,” Ethan says, drawing my attention back to him.
“Because of your mother,” I murmur.
“No,” Aidan says. “Because the killer is our father.”
The air leaves the room. I stare at Aidan, waiting for a punchline that isn’t coming. My mother is dead because of their father. The men holding me, feeding me, and claiming me carry his blood. It is in their veins. It is in the hands currently resting on mine.
“I’m going to be sick,” I whisper. I don’t move. I can’t move. My muscles are lead.
“Annabelle,” Ethan murmurs. He doesn’t let go of my hand. His skin is a brand.
“You’re his sons. You’re the sons of the man who ripped my life apart.”
“We’re the sons who are going to end him,” Aidan says. He looks at me with a ferocity that makes my heart stutter. He doesn’t look ashamed. He looks hungry for the kill.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I find my voice. It’s a blade I’m turning on them. “You let me sit here. You let me sleep with you. You let me trust you while you knew the truth.”
“We knew you’d react this way,” Callan says from across the table. He hasn’t moved. His wine remains untouched. “You see the monster in us because you see him.”
“I see the lie,” I grit out. I yank my hand away from Ethan. “I see three men who have manipulated me to get to their dad.”
I stand up. My chair scrapes the floor.
“We aren’t using you,” Callan says.
“No?” I round on him. “It fucking feels like it from here.” My heart thumps, my blood roars in my ears.
“Sit down, Annabelle,” Ethan says. His voice is a low, dangerous rumble, but I don’t move. I can’t. The walls of the penthouse are closing in, turning this luxury cage into a tomb. Every touch, every word they’ve given me over the last few days feels like a layer of filth coating my skin.
“You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
“It makes no fucking difference. We want him dead more than you do,’ Aidan spits out. He doesn’t look sorry. He looks like a predator who has finally been let off his leash. “We are the only ones who can stop him. We’re the only justice all those women are ever going to get.”
“Justice?” I let out a jagged laugh. “You’re his blood. You’re just like him.”
Ethan is in front of me before I can blink. He doesn’t grab me, but his presence is an iron weight. “We are nothing like him.”
He is offended. Insulted.
Good.
I turn to run for the lift, but Callan is already there, blocking the way.
“There’s nowhere to go, Annabelle,” Callan says quietly. “He’s down there. Waiting. If you walk out that door, you’re dead. Is that what you want? To make it easy for him?”
I stop, my chest heaving. “He’s downstairs?”
Callan nods.
“How-how long?”
He shrugs. “Who knows?”
“Fuck,” I mutter. This changes everything. I can’t run out there straight into his trap. But how can I stay here with his sons who have lied to me? Again. “I hate you. I hate all of you.”
“Maybe, but without us, you would probably already be dead. We are protecting you. You being here with us, is protecting you. He won’t move while we are with you.”
“Was that your plan all along? And don’t fucking lie to me again! Did you know he was coming after me? Or has he only come after me because I’m here with you?”
Ethan’s eyes don’t move from mine. He doesn’t look guilty.
He doesn’t look like he regrets the secrets he’s kept from me.
He simply looks at me as if I am the only thing in the room that matters.
“Possibly. We can’t answer that. We don’t have access to his list or his mind.
Maybe you were always a target, maybe not. ”
It’s the truth. I can see it in his eyes.
“Is there anything else? Anything else at fucking all that you’ve lied or not told me about?” This is it. This is the one chance they get.
“No more lies,” Ethan says. “The only things we lied about were that there were three of us and that the serial killer is our father. That’s it. Everything else we’ve said and done has been the truth.”
“Truth,” I scoff. “Do you even know the meaning of the word?”
Ethan doesn’t move. He stays rooted to the floor, his blue eyes boring into mine with a terrifying certainty. “You’re the only thing that matters now. You’re the reason we’re going to finish this.”
“I’m a tool,” I say. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, as tears spill. I am so fucking sick of crying. “I’m a way for you to hurt him.”
“You’re everything,” Aidan growls. He moves toward me, and I don’t have the strength to run again. “And he’s nothing.”
I sink onto the sofa, my head in my hands.
The world is a dark, twisted place, and I am trapped in the centre of it with the three men who are both my salvation and my ruin.
I don’t know how to breathe. I don’t know how to survive this.
But I know I can’t leave. The monster is downstairs, and the monsters in here are the only ones holding the door.