“But you didn’t.”
I shook my head. “Mom said I’d already suffered enough. Especially with the rape trial coming up, where I was going to have to face Peter again. She couldn’t bear to see me face even more shit.” I swallowed thickly. “So we covered it up.”
“How?”
“Well, before we had Mignon, we had a black Labrador named Tara. She was old, but she had the energy of a puppy right up until the day she died, and she loved going on walks. My dad used to take her every morning.” I sat up straighter and took a deep breath. “You know the wooded area behind my house?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a bunch of trails in there. One of them leads all the way up to the edge of an abandoned quarry. It’s a big one, too. Really steep cliffs.” I twisted my hands again, heart thudding painfully in my chest. “Anyway, it’s a twenty minute walk from our house, so my dad used to take Tara there and back every morning before work. Mom and I decided to use that to our advantage. We got an old carpet and rolled him up in it. Then we put him in the back of his truck, waited until two in the morning, and drove to a lookout that’s near part of the old quarry trail. We dragged him to the edge of the trail together, and then we unrolled the carpet and let his body fall off the cliff.”
Hunter rubbed his brows. “Right,” he muttered. “What then?”
“We went home, burned the carpet and scrubbed the back of his truck. Then the next day, we reported him missing. We told the police that he’d gone for his usual morning walk with Tara, but only the dog came back.” I stopped to scratch my chin. “At first they told us it was probably nothing. Everyone around town knew he was a big drinker, so they thought he probably just took a few beers with him on his walk, lost track of time, and ended up lost in the woods somewhere. They said he’d probably turn up by the afternoon.”
“And then?”
“They started to take it seriously once two whole days had passed, and he hadn’t shown up to a single one of his handyman jobs. They sent out a team to look for him on the trail he always walked along, and then on the third day, they found his body in the quarry below it.” I paused and exhaled loudly. “We were terrified. We thought they’d know right away that he didn’t just slip and fall. But we were lucky. They didn’t investigate it too thoroughly. After all, it was just a poor dead guy in a little hick town.”
“Right.”
“They still did an autopsy, because they had to, and the coroner said he had severe head injuries consistent with a long fall onto rocks. So his death was ruled an accident.” I sighed heavily. “But… it wasn’t. Mom and I killed him and covered it up. Then you found out, and I guess the rest is history.”
Hunter stared at me, eyes wide. He looked oddly confused. “That’s it? That’s the whole story?”
“Yup.” I let out another deep sigh. “Even though you kidnapped me and tortured me this weekend, the shitty thing is that I can honestly say I’ve had worse days before.”
Hunter’s eyes went even wider. He didn’t say anything. Just sat there looking deeply bewildered, wringing his hands in his lap.
I cleared my throat again. “So… now you know everything. Every nitty-gritty detail of why I did what I did. I know there’s no excuse for killing someone and covering it up, no matter how awful that person was, but I hope you can at least try to understand. I’m not a ‘filthy fucking murderer’ like you said the other day. I’m a murderer, sure, but I’m not a bad person. I swear. I would never hurt someone like that ever again.”
Hunter scrubbed a hand across his face. “I don’t understand,” he said in a low voice. “That’s really the person you killed? That’s it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course that’s it.”
“So you only killed your father. No one else.”
“Yes! I told you, I’m not a bad person. I don’t go around smashing random people’s heads in, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Hunter went silent for another moment. Then he stood and grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet. “Here. Put this on,” he muttered, handing me his jacket. “I have to show you something.”
Confused, I wrapped it around myself. He was so much taller than me that the jacket almost reached my knees, even though it was a normal length on him.
He went to the door and beckoned for me to follow him. When we reached the top of the cellar stairs, he held up a hand to get me to stay back, and then he stuck his head through the doorway and peered around. “Okay. There’s no one in the hall,” he said. “Come on. Quick.”
I followed him toward a staircase and padded up behind him. When we reached the second story, he directed me to a set of ornately-carved double doors halfway down the hall and ushered me inside.
“Sit,” he said, pointing to the bed.
I did as he said, stomach churning with fear and confusion.
Hunter rummaged through a nightstand drawer and pulled out a black cell phone with a red cherry sticker on the back. He played around with it for a couple of minutes, and then he handed it to me.
“What does this mean to you?” he asked, staring right at me.
I glanced down at the phone screen. It was a chat log between me and my old online buddy xxLNZxx.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why do you have this?”
Hunter kept staring at me, eyes dark and slightly narrowed. “What does it mean to you?” he repeated.
I nervously shifted my weight on the bed. “Well… it’s me. It’s my conversation with an old friend.”
He crossed his arms. “What friend?”
“I never knew her name,” I said, shrugging one shoulder.
“How the hell is that possible? You talked almost every day.”
“Yes, but it was an online friendship,” I said. “They’re always different to real-life ones.”
“I find it very hard to believe you never exchanged names.”
I blew out a short sigh of annoyance. “Look, she knew my name, because it was right there in my username, so she used that for me. But she only ever called herself L, and that’s what I called her too. It was never really an issue.”
A red flush was starting to creep up Hunter’s neck. “Explain this to me,” he said, pointing to our last few messages.
“She said she was bored and asked if I wanted to meet up so we could finally hang out in real life, and she gave me her number so it would be easier to sort something out,” I said. “I called her to tell her I was already busy. I promised my mom I’d pick her up from work, because her car was being weird again, and I didn’t like the idea of her catching the bus late at night.”
“So you didn’t see this girl that night?”
I shook my head. “No. She didn’t answer when I called, and then she never spoke to me again. Totally ghosted me.”
Hunter sat down next to me. He turned to face me and lifted my chin, forcing me to look right into his eyes. “She really didn’t answer your call?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Uh-huh.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why do you care, anyway? Why do you have my chat logs from a whole year ago?”
He went silent again, for a long moment. “Because you were talking to Lindsay,” he finally said.
My brows shot up. “Wait, what? It was her?”
He nodded, lips set in a thin line. “Yeah.”
“Oh my god.” I leaned back, holding my palms up. “I had no idea it was her. I swear.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might’ve met her through your mom, seeing as she works here.”
“No. We met online, and I never saw her in person. I had no idea she was my mom’s boss’s daughter.”
Hunter was silent for another moment. “Laney… you were one of the last people to see or speak to her,” he finally said, voice dange
rously soft.
“I told you, I didn’t see her or speak to her that night!” I could feel my blood pressure rising, and I leapt to my feet again. “Wait a minute… is that what you thought about me? You thought I came here and killed Lindsay?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head, heartbeat pounding. “Why?”
Hunter rose to his feet too. “Like I said, you were the last person to see or speak to her. I checked the call records, and I know you’re lying about her not picking up that night. She answered your call, and you spoke for forty-seven seconds.”
“Hold on,” I said, lifting a hand again. “I never said she didn’t pick up. I said she didn’t answer. And she didn’t!”
“What the fuck is the difference?”
“You know when you accidentally call someone? Like a butt-dial?”
“Yes.”
“I think it was like that, except it was an accidental pick-up. The call went through, but she didn’t actually answer it. I just heard—” I paused and racked my brains, trying to recall that evening. “Breathing, I think. And maybe some wind in the background. That’s all. I figured she sat on her phone and accidentally answered my call, so after a while of saying ‘hello?’ over and over, I hung up and waited for her to call back. But she never did.”
“It’s not just the call. You have her necklace too.” Hunter’s eyes were trained on my throat now. His neck and face had turned an even deeper shade of red.
I fingered the pendant around my neck. “This necklace?”
“Yes.”
“This was hers?” I said in a small voice.
He gritted his teeth and reached out to touch the pendant too. “I had it made for her. For her birthday. She said she loved it, and I could’ve sworn she was wearing it that night. Before she….” He stopped and cleared his throat. “It went missing after she died. Someone stole it.”
My eyes widened, and I dropped my hand as if the pendant had burned me. “My mom found it in a pawn shop in Silvercreek last year, and she bought it for me as a late birthday gift. I honestly had no idea who it belonged to before me. I swear.”
Hunter’s eyes snapped to mine. He held my gaze for a full thirty seconds before speaking up again. “You’re not lying,” he said, voice barely above a mutter.
“No, I’m not.”
“So… it wasn’t you,” he said. Every muscle in his body had tensed up. “I was wrong.”
A rush of anger hit me then. “Yes, you were fucking wrong!” I said, chest heaving as heat flooded my body. I reached out and slapped his chest as hard as I could. “God, you stupid fucking asshole! Why didn’t you tell me from the start that you thought I killed your sister?”
I was furious. No, beyond furious. He stalked me for months. Tormented me. Hurt me. All because he thought he knew something about me which turned out to be totally wrong.
Worst of all, I’d gone and blurted out my darkest secret to him only moments ago, thinking it was what he wanted to hear. So now he knew everything about me. Even the parts I wanted to keep hidden forever.
The bed dipped as he sat down, shoulders sagging.
I was tempted to slap him again, right across the face, but as I looked at his sad blue eyes peering up at the necklace, something in my heart cracked.
He was devastated. It was written all over his face.
Grief was a demon, and it had obviously broken him, filling him with darkness. He needed to feed that darkness to cope with it, and it had grown so hungry that only other people’s suffering could sate it.
It wasn’t an excuse. Not for the horrendous way he’d treated me. But I understood.
He was trying to cope with the reality of his sister’s death by treating it as a mystery that needed solving. A mystery with an evil villain at the center. It was his way of escaping the pain. Escaping the horrible truth of what really happened that night.
In order to do it, he needed to find someone to blame. Someone to suffer his wrath.
That person—the villain—ended up being me.
My anger was still simmering beneath the surface, but now it was accompanied by feelings of compassion for him. Feelings I thought I buried long ago.
I sat down next to Hunter. “Sorry for hitting you,” I muttered.
He leaned forward, cupping his head in his hands. “Don’t,” he muttered. “Don’t say you’re sorry.”
“But—”
He cut me off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Fuck, Laney… I’m so sorry. I did all of this to you, and I was wrong. So fucking wrong.”
“Yeah, you were.”
“You should call the police.”
“Why?”
“So you can ruin my life like I tried to ruin yours.” His voice cracked with desperation as he spoke. He sounded as broken as he looked.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” I murmured.
He rubbed his face. “You have to. I can’t be here anymore. I just… fuck!” He looked up at me. “Call the police, Laney. Tell them what I did.”
I could’ve done just that. His phone was right there on the nightstand, and I knew the code.
Instead my fingers twitched on my lap, itching to touch his hair. His face. His body.
I should hate him. I shouldn’t wonder what it would be like to throw my arms around him and comfort him instead. But I couldn’t help it.
I finally darted out a hand and put it on his left leg. “Why do you think someone killed Lindsay?” I asked. “I thought it was ruled a suicide.”
“It was,” he said. “But…”
“But what?” I said gently.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I need it to be someone else’s fault,” he muttered. “Otherwise it’s mine.”
My brows knitted. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, I told you my story, so I’d like to hear yours now.”
He stayed quiet for a moment. Then he turned his head and lifted his gaze to my face again. “Fair enough.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “My siblings and I… we didn’t exactly have the greatest childhood. I know that sounds like total bullshit because we’ve got all the money in the world, but it’s true what they say. You can rent happiness for a while if you have enough money, but you can’t buy it.”
“What happened?” I asked, eyes widening.
“I feel fucking dumb even saying it,” he said, hands clenching into fists at his side. “After what you told me about your father and that piece of shit who hurt you, it just seems… trivial.”
“Just because one person’s problem isn’t technically as bad as another person’s problem, it doesn’t mean they have no right to complain,” I replied. “Life isn’t a pissing contest to see who has it worst.”
His lips flattened. “Yeah, I guess so,” he muttered. “Anyway… it was our dad. I guess you could say he’s got anger issues.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. That’s the thing. That’s why it sounds so stupid,” he said. “He would just snap without warning sometimes. Throw things. Punch holes in the wall right next to us. Stuff like that.”
“That’s mental abuse,” I said. “He might not have physically hurt you, but he still terrorized you by acting like that. Especially if you were just little kids.”
He nodded. “It was like walking on eggshells all the time. I tried to hide Lindsay and Adam from it, so they wouldn’t have to see him going nuts like that, but it was almost impossible, because I could never tell when he was going to snap,” he said. “Sometimes a big thing would be fine with him. Like when Adam accidentally set the hedges on fire with some stupid fireworks. Dad just laughed at that, like it was nothing. But then at other times, something tiny would set him off. Like one of us having our elbows on the table during dinner. He’d suddenly start throwing plates and yelling as if we’d burned the whole fucking house down and killed his best friend.”
“That must’ve been terrible for you. All of you,” I said sof
tly.
“It got better as we got older, because we knew he wouldn’t touch us, so he didn’t scare us as much anymore. But it affected the way we turned out, for sure. I turned into… me. You know what I’m like.” His mouth pinched at the corners for a second. “Adam sort of retreated into himself. He spent most of his time in his room reading, and he turned into a giant geek. And Lindsay… well, she went a bit wild.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Hunter said, lifting a palm. “She was sweet. Kind. Loving. But she had another side to her, and it got worse as she got older.”
“How so?”
“She rebelled a lot. Smoked. Drank. Started sleeping with guys when she was only fourteen. I know I sound like a hypocrite because I drink and fuck too, but she was my little sister, you know? I wanted to protect her from that sort of shit, because I know what guys can be like. I didn’t want anyone to hurt her.”
“I get it.”
“Anyway, when she turned sixteen, she got worse. She had an affair with a married man in his twenties. Then another one. Plus a bunch of other random guys. And all that time, she was dating one of my best friends. Kairo Belmont.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think I remember someone telling me about that. That she was with Kairo, I mean.”
Hunter swallowed audibly. “At first I thought the stuff about her cheating on him was just typical rumor mill bullshit,” he said. “Even though she was popular, she had lots of enemies, because people were jealous of her.”
“Understandable.”
“So anyway, we were having dinner together at home one night. Dad was out at some business event with Mom, and Adam was out too, with some friends. I figured I could take the chance to talk to Lindsay. Tell her what people were saying about her.”
My forehead wrinkled. “What happened?”
“She laughed at me. Told me to mind my own fucking business. I told her it was my business, because I wanted to keep her safe, and if people were going around spreading this sort of shit about her, someone might want to hurt her. Like the wife of one of the married guys, or something like that.” He stopped to clear his throat, but his voice came out husky anyway. “Anyway… she told me it was actually true. All the rumors. After that we got into a fight. A huge one.”
Savage Prince: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 1) Page 30