Chapter 13 Dread #2
Lionel already had his back turned when she blew me that kiss, and it’s likely the only reason he followed through with killing her.
If he had known Katherine Sharpe had a son who watched him from the window, she might’ve come home that night, set free because he knew someone could identify him should he harm a hair on her head.
Instead, he scattered her body parts across a junkyard almost an hour away from our house. An employee found her two weeks after her disappearance, her head mounted on a car hood like it was a fucking ornament on a Mercedes-Benz.
My silence allowed him to kill her, and I didn’t even have the decency to kiss her back before sending her off to her grave.
Slowly, I turn back to face Reverie where she sits beside the pool, her glazed-over eyes locked onto the water. She’s disassociating, but I have plenty of ways to bring her back to me.
“When?” She doesn’t need clarification.
"Yesterday,” she whispers, dropping her stare in shame.
I grind my teeth, tempted to wrap my hands around her pretty little neck and shake her.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” My voice is cold. Unrecognizable.
It takes an extra few seconds before she drags her stare to mine.
“No,” she answers bluntly. “I knew you’d find out eventually, and I hoped when you did, I’d have already gotten on a plane to a different country.”
I’m not sure which part of that sentence pisses me off most, so I settle on all of it. Every goddamn letter.
“You were going to leave,” I state plainly.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I still might.”
Over my dead fucking body.
“Why haven’t you?”
“Because he found a reason to make me stay.” When I arch a brow in question, she continues, “His girlfriend, Roxi, introduced herself to me while you were in Texas. She’s a student here, and they’ve been dating for a year now. She’s so excited to be a happy family.”
She delivers the information robotically.
I stare. Except I don’t see her anymore—I just see red.
The effect is like two tectonic plates in my chest shifting beneath the surface. An earthquake forms, quickly building in strength until I’m quaking with violence.
He’s already found his next fucking victim.
I ball my hands until my knuckles threaten to split skin. I’m trembling from the murderous rage coursing through me, vibrating with the bloodlust to pound my fist into his face until there’s nothing left but bloody pulp and bone fragments.
When I am finished, I’d be hard as a fucking rock, and it would be Reverie’s mouth wrapped around my cock to relieve me.
The mere thought of it has my dick swelling in my jeans.
My vision returns, and Reverie’s back to staring at the water, this time appearing defeated.
I brought her here to explore this recent discovery of her phobia of water. I wanted her to strip herself bare, both physically and mentally, and tell me all about it, watch the water lap at her pretty tits while she trembled and cried over her biggest fear.
Then, I would’ve reminded her I’m her biggest fucking fear.
Now, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with her—other than snap her goddamn neck.
“You thought he kidnapped you,” I state, my monotone voice drawing her attention back to me.
Slowly, she nods her head, and I know there’s more. Deep down, I already know what she’s going to say, but my mind refuses to entertain it for even a second.
Silence hangs between us, though our conversation is loud: my unspoken demand for her to spit it out while she silently begs for me not to make her.
The filtration system churns, and she sighs, relenting.
“He left me a note.” She pauses for a beat, and then delivers the final blow to my delusion. “In my dorm.”
Lionel isn’t just out of prison.
He’s actually here—in Colorado.
I step toward her, uncaring of how menacing it is, uncaring of her leaning away, her fear shifting from another monster to the one standing before her.
“Do you know where he is now?” I hardly recognize my own voice. It's deeper, lined with gravel, so lifeless.
She shakes her head. “Only that he plans on seeing me soon.”
Once again, my upper lip curls, disgust coating my tongue.
“Already planning a family reunion,” I drawl. “Have you started calling Roxi your stepmommy yet?”
The last word has barely left my mouth before her face is contorting in rage. Quickly, she scrambles to her feet and stomps the few feet up to me before jabbing a finger into my chest.
“You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, Dread. You think you know everything, but you don’t!” she shouts.
I lean down, pushing myself deeper into her finger, and bare my teeth as I question, “What else is there to know, Reverie? Remind me, how many interviews did you and Regina do, accusing me of being a liar?”
She clenches her jaw, seething at me.
“Twenty-six. The fucking answer is twenty-six,” I snarl. “And that doesn’t include your special family reunion with Connor. Once the copycat started murdering people, you two couldn’t keep your mouths shut about how I put away the wrong man. Do you even believe there’s a copycat at all?”
“Of course I do,” she snaps.
I laugh. “‘Of course I do,’ she says,” I echo mockingly. “Yet you’ve never said otherwise, have you? I think the two of you made yourselves pretty fucking clear.”
She doesn’t back down, though. Instead, she scoffs and shakes her head, a derisive smile curling her lips. “My mother made herself clear. I was eight years old and had no choice.”
My brows shoot up on my forehead, giving her an ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ look. “What about now?”
She blinks at me, slow to understand, and I let out a mocking chuckle.
“Don’t act like your father isn’t still fucking relevant, Reverie.
Don’t act like his victims’ families aren’t still seeking justice for what he did to them.
You act like you hate the man, but it’s just performative bullshit because, for once, no one here believes your lies.
Lies you’ve allowed the world to believe for over a goddamn decade while those families fucking suffer. ”
Hurt twists her features. “I’ve suffered far more than you will ever know,” she says quietly, her voice trembling. “Those lies kept my mother alive. They kept me alive.”
I scoff, shaking my head. She has no fucking idea how much time I spent watching her, watching them be the perfect fucking family.
Regina stared at Lionel with a love so potent, I fucking choked on it.
It was exactly how my dad used to look at my mom before he died.
Regina didn’t just love and support Lionel.
She worshipped him.
“Did he hurt her?”
The previous emotion swirling in her gaze retreats, and in its place is an emptiness that is far more telling than her mouth.
“Just because he never hit her doesn’t mean she was safe,” she answers, her voice dropping. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
“There’s a lot you don’t tell,” I retort. “If I’ve got it so wrong, then fucking tell me. Because as far as me and the rest of the goddamn world is concerned, you’ve never retracted your support for him publicly, which means you still support him, and you still think I’m a fucking liar!”
The last sentence echoes in the massive space as I seethe down at her, my chest pumping as that familiar feeling builds in my chest.
Hurt.
I’ve spent nearly my entire childhood hurting, and the woman standing in front of me is part of the reason.
Tears gather in her eyes as she stares up at me with a trembling bottom lip.
“I’ve always believed you,” she whispers. “I still do. I believe you.”
Those four words are catastrophic to my insides.
I’ve always believed you.
Despite how hard I try to shove them down, tears rise to the surface of my eyes. My sinuses burn as I fight them back.
“Then why the fuck did you lie?” My voice cracks, and I fucking hate it. I hate her. So fucking much.
Her mouth parts like she’s going to speak, but just like always, she clicks her teeth shut.
And that only pisses me off more, but it also makes me deeply suspicious.
“If you’re biting your tongue, you’re either lying to me now and telling me what you think I want to hear so I don’t hurt you.” She shakes her head, denying it before I’ve even finished. “Or your secrets will only make me angrier.”
This time, she glances away, and I have my answer.
And it’s a fucking hit to the sternum.
Once again, my arm snaps out, but this time, I grip the underside of her jaw, tugging her until her front is flush with mine. With a sharp gasp, she clutches my wrist with both hands and digs her nails into my skin. The position forces her onto the tips of her toes, struggling to keep her balance.
“What are you hiding from me?” I snarl.
“Not everything is about you,” she bites out.
“No, it’s about you,” I agree. “The second your father took everything from me, you became all I had left.” I jerk her closer, eliciting a strangled gasp from her throat. “My entire world revolves around you, darling, and you’re no longer his to have—you’re mine.”
She shakes her head, staring up at me like she’s seeing me for the first time.
Did she think my obsession with her was so trivial?
I’ve watched her for as long as I can remember, just out of sight or hidden in the background.
From the moment I got my first cell phone at twelve and stalked her online, to taking two buses to Silent Mist and watching her from afar any chance I got—the minuscule free time I had outside of swimming, I spent thinking, watching, and hating her.
I visited her at her first job as a barista, though she was too much of an anxious wreck to recognize me.
I was at the dealership when she bought her first car with her own money.
Her friend’s house for homecoming and prom.
When she opened the acceptance letter for HCU with Agent Jones and his wife.
Her graduation. The day she left for college, I drove behind her with Rogue and Severen beside me.