Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cain
The groundskeeper's cottage sits fifty yards from the main Lockwood estate, hidden behind a wall of evergreens that have grown wild in twenty years of neglect.
Snow crunches under my boots as I approach, each step deliberate, measured.
I haven't been inside since I was seventeen, the day before I killed my mother and father.
He'd called me to his "office" to discuss my future—military school, he'd decided.
Somewhere that would "fix" what was broken in me.
I remember that conversation perfectly.
Him sitting behind his mahogany desk, while my mother stood by the window like a porcelain sentinel, both of them explaining how this was for my own good.
How I needed discipline, structure, distance from "negative influences"—meaning Juliette, meaning anyone who might believe us about the abuse.
"You're sick, Cain," Richard had said, lighting his Cuban cigar, the smoke curling between us like a barrier. "The violence, the anger, those incidents at school. Normal boys don't break other boys' arms over words."
"Normal boys don't have to protect their sisters from their parents," I'd replied.
My mother had slapped me for that.
Hard enough to split my lip, careful to avoid leaving marks that would show.
They were always careful about visible marks.
The bruises were always where clothing would cover, the cuts where they could be explained as accidents.
"You'll thank us one day," she'd said, her manicured nails still stinging my cheek. "When you're older, when you understand what we've saved you from becoming."
But they hadn't saved me from anything.
They'd created exactly what they feared—someone capable of killing without remorse.
They just hadn't expected to be the first victims.
Now I'm back, bolt cutters in hand, ready to uncover the secrets he died to protect.
The padlock is new—someone's been maintaining this place.
Sterling, most likely.
The metal gives way with a satisfying snap, and the door swings open on oiled hinges.
Definitely maintained.
The smell hits me first—cigar smoke and leather, somehow preserved after all these years.
Or maybe that's just my memory overlaying the present.
Inside, it's like stepping back in time.
My father’s desk dominates the room, that same mahogany monstrosity where he conducted his real business.
His filing cabinets line one wall, each drawer labeled with years—1995, 2000, 2005.
His wall of photographs from town council meetings and charity galas, playing the philanthropist while trafficking children.
The hypocrisy is preserved in dust and shadow.
There's the chair where I sat during that last conversation, burgundy leather worn in specific places.
There's the letter opener Patricia had fingered while suggesting I might benefit from being "fixed" in other ways—chemical castration, she'd mentioned, as casually as discussing the weather.
The room hasn't been touched except for maintenance.
Even Richard's fountain pen sits where he left it, a Mont Blanc worth more than most people's monthly salary.
I pick it up, test its weight.
This pen signed the documents that destroyed hundreds of lives.
This pen authorized my abuse, Juliette's suffering, the trafficking of children through our home.
I set it down and start with the desk drawers.
Locked, but the picks I carry make quick work of them.
Richard always underestimated me, thought locks and threats could contain what I was becoming.
The first drawer holds exactly what I expected—financial records, ledgers in code, bank account numbers for offshore holdings.
Richard was meticulous about money, probably why the operation ran so smoothly.
Each ledger is dated, organized by quarter.
The amounts are staggering.
In 1998 alone, he moved three million dollars through various shell companies.
The codes are simple once you know Richard's psychology.
He used dates—not birthdays or anniversaries, but dates of acquisitions.
Each transaction tied to when he acquired a new child.
January 15th, 1997: $50,000.
March 8th, 1998: $75,000.
December 24th, 1999: $100,000.
Christmas Eve.
Even their depravity couldn't take a holiday.
I decode three pages before I have to stop, nausea rising.
The numbers are staggering.
Millions of dollars over decades, all built on children's suffering.
The second drawer is photographs.
Some innocent—town events, publicity shots.
Richard shaking hands with the governor at a fundraiser.
Patricia playing piano at a charity gala for missing children—the irony makes me want to vomit.
Them accepting an award for their "contributions to child welfare" from the state assembly.
But underneath those, wrapped in plastic like pornography—which I suppose it was to Richard—are different images.
Children.
Dozens of them.
Some at the estate, some at locations I don't recognize.
Their eyes are empty, already broken.
I recognize the background in several—our house.
The room next to mine.
The blue wallpaper with sailboats that Patricia chose because it was "cheerful."
I'd heard sounds sometimes, crying I thought was Juliette having nightmares.
But it wasn't always her.
Other children were kept there, sometimes for days, before being moved on.
And I was sleeping one room away, planning my parents' deaths while other children were living through hell inches from my bed.
One photo stops me cold.
A girl, maybe thirteen, dark hair like Juliette's.
She's wearing Juliette's dress—the yellow one Patricia bought for Easter.
I remember Juliette saying she lost it, Patricia flying into a rage about carelessness, making Juliette stand in the corner for three hours as punishment.
But she hadn't lost it.
They'd given it to another girl, a temporary replacement, a practice run.
The girl in the photo has bruises on her arms.
Fresh ones.
Richard's work, probably—he always grabbed too hard when he was excited.
My hands shake as I set these aside.
Evidence.
All of it evidence that should have put them away for life if anyone had been looking.
The third drawer is locked differently, with a combination rather than a key.
I try Richard's birthday, Patricia's, their anniversary.
Nothing.
Then, on instinct, I try my adoption date—the day they acquired me.
The lock clicks open.
Richard's posthumous joke—using the day he acquired me to lock away his darkest secrets.
Inside is a single manila folder labeled "Insurance."
The first document is a contract.
Sterling's signature at the bottom, dated twenty-five years ago.
He's agreeing to provide "safe passage" through his jurisdiction in exchange for monthly payments of $10,000.
More than his annual salary every month.
But it's the addendums that reveal the true horror.
Sterling didn't just look the other way.
He actively participated.
Arrest records destroyed for men who asked too many questions.
Witnesses intimidated into silence.
Missing person reports that were never filed.
Three girls who tried to escape in 1998—Sterling is the one who brought them back.
Their names are listed: Maria Santos, Jennifer Wu, Ashley Brennan.
Ages fourteen, fifteen, thirteen.
The next page is photographs of Sterling with girls.
Young girls.
At the estate's pool house—I recognize the tile pattern.
In what looks like a motel room, the Pineview Motor Lodge based on the bedspread pattern.
In the back of a police van, the girl unconscious or drugged.
He's not just facilitating; he's participating.
In one photo, he's holding a girl who can't be older than fourteen.
She's definitely unconscious.
His wedding ring is visible on his hand, the same one he still wears.
Celeste would have been ten when that photo was taken.
The same age as the youngest girl in the photos.
I feel sick, thinking of her growing up with this man.
Thinking of her as a child in that house while her father was doing this to other people's children.
Did she ever wonder why he came home so late?
Why he sometimes smelled like unfamiliar perfume?
Why he had unexplained scratches?
There's more.
A list of names, dates, prices.
The trafficking ledger goes back thirty years.
Some names I recognize and wish I didn't—Judge Hamilton who presided over family court and decided custody cases.
Dr. Wallis, the pediatrician who did "health checks" on all the local kids.
Father McKenzie from St. Mary's who ran the youth programs.
Coach Williams from the high school.
They're all here, all complicit, all customers.
The whole town is infected, rotted from the inside by this network. Every institution meant to protect children was actually feeding them to predators.
Then I find the folder that changes everything.
"Michael and Sarah Reeves - Acquisition"
My biological parents.
The document is a purchase order.
Two children, siblings, ages five and three, acquired from Michael and Sarah Reeves in exchange for debt forgiveness.
The debt?
Three hundred thousand dollars owed to Richard's "investment firm"—clearly a front for loan sharking.
But there's more to the story.
Medical records showing Sarah Reeves had been trying to get clean from heroin, trying to get her children back.
Letters from her to social services, begging for help, saying her husband had done something terrible, that her children were missing.
All dated after the "sale."
She hadn't known what Michael had done until it was too late.
Police reports of her trying to file missing person reports, being turned away by Sterling's department.
"Custody dispute," the reports say. "Civil matter."
My parents didn't die in a car accident like I was told.
Michael sold us to pay his debts, but Sarah fought to get us back.
There's a handwritten note at the bottom in Richard's script:
Mother becoming problematic. Multiple attempts to contact children. Father eliminated as per agreement—made example for other debtors. Mother to follow after appropriate interval to avoid suspicion. Cover story implemented—car accident, bodies burned beyond recognition.
They killed them.