Chapter 58 #2
"But you'd do it again," I tell him quietly.
I know he would. In his head, Mom tried to separate him from his soulmate. Because in his mind Mom didn't love him and didn't understand him.
"The other women?" I ask.
"I was a man, Roxy. I had needs you couldn't fulfill. I told you I'm not a monster. I wanted to find someone I could talk to about you, but they all reacted like her. They called me a pervert. Crazy. Deranged. I'M NOT CRAZY!"
He's right. He's not crazy. Crazy is too mild a term.
The sound of a car comes from outside, and his eyes instantly dart to the masked man.
Everything happens so fast my mind barely registers it. The masked man runs up the stairs, Henry moves toward me, and the front door is kicked in.
A gun appears in his hand and he aims it at the hallway, where I know who will appear in seconds.
Since his back is to me, I take the blade I got from that masked psychopath and press it to his throat, and Henry's body goes rigid.
Damien, Roman, Stefan, Pavel, and Maksim appear, and despite myself, I smile when my eyes meet my husband’s, which sparkle when they see my position. And I love when his eyes look like that.
"S?onko, what are you doing?" Damien asks.
"I got tired of everyone wanting to fill my husband with bullets," I answer.
Roman grabs Henry from in front of me. Henry fights back, shoving against Roman's chest and snarling something I can't make out, but Roman overpowers him, dragging him away. My body instinctively carries me into Damien's arms, which lift me to wrap my legs around his waist.
"I missed you," I whisper as I kiss his neck, and his hands grip my body even tighter.
"There's no one upstairs," I hear Max's voice shout.
He escaped.
That masked psychopath escaped. And I don't know why, but I don't feel much regret.
Therapy, Roxy. Time for that therapy session.
I loved him. And if I'm honest with myself, it's one of the reasons I survived those years. Him, Luna, the hope that maybe at some point I wouldn't be invisible to Dad—they were my anchors. The things that kept me putting one foot in front of the other when I wanted to disappear entirely.
Even now, when I remember how he brought mac and cheese on those terrible nights before he moved away, I feel warmth in my chest. The memory is so vivid.
He'd show up at the door with the takeout container still warm, sit with me at the kitchen table while everyone else ignored my existence, and just talk.
About nothing. About everything. He made me feel like I mattered.
Because he saved the Roxy of back then, in a way.
The broken girl who thought she deserved every cruel word, every cold shoulder, every reminder that her mother was dead and it was somehow her fault.
His presence, his affection, even though his intentions were what they were—even though I now know it was all twisted and wrong—it kept me from shattering completely.
"When did you suspect it was him?" I whisper to Damien as I stare out the window.
We've been home for an hour, and I'm still stuck staring out the window at the same bare trees.
Their skeletal branches sway in the wind, stripped of leaves weeks ago.
I've been fixated on this one particular oak, counting its branches, tracing the pattern of bark, anything to keep my mind from spiraling.
Trying to process everything that happened in those two hours.
"There were several things. First, the fact that you didn't remember me.
It could have been just a child's memory that over time left that night behind, but something told me you wouldn't have forgotten me so easily.
At least that's what I wanted to believe," he tells me quietly.
"And him, being a psychologist, seemed the most convenient. "
I only now turn and look at him. I know now that I couldn't have forgotten him, because I remember every detail perfectly.
How those chestnut strands slipped over his forehead.
How his dimples appeared at the slightest hint of a smile.
How he had rough hands and that white bandage, slightly yellow at the edges.
"Then, at the wedding, when I was shot, for a split second I had him in my line of sight, and it seemed like, in the chaos of the moment, he walked toward us without his cane.
But since we had no cameras in the ballroom and since shock can cause hallucinations, I decided not to make assumptions without more evidence. "
I try to think if he ever slipped up in front of me. If I noticed. Henry has walked with a cane for as long as I can remember.
"And just when we arrived at the port, I got a call from Professor Leigh, one of the people who taught him in college. Even back then, he found something strange in Henry’s behavior and actually wrote a paper cataloging him with psychotic tendencies.
Care to guess who The Bloody Dahlia's first victim was? "
I look at him and, frowning, whisper, "Laura Leigh, Professor Leigh's wife."
"Correct. After his wife's death, Professor Leigh moved to another state, and that paper got lost somewhere in the college filing cabinets."
I listen and try to arrange all the information in my mind. Were there moments when he slipped up and I simply ignored them? Or did I blame it on the trauma of losing Mom, of having pain in that leg?
"Does he live in Austin?" I ask.
"He has something rented there, but no neighbor has seen him in weeks. He does, however, have a property here, under an alias."
He lived in the same city as me all this time, and I had no idea. All the dates when I'd call him and he was maybe a few miles away. And I never suspected anything, because both Austin and Chicago are in the same time zone.
So many plans and lies and spilled blood, for a fantasy concocted by a sick man's mind.
And even though I want to be glad we finally know who it is, I can't. Because no matter how much I hate The Bloody Dahlia, my Uncle Henry is among the few good memories from my childhood, and I'll need time to tear those memories out by the roots.