My voice softened. “How old were you when it happened?”
I couldn’t help but put myself in his place. I’d lost my mother when I was twelve.
“I was seventeen,” he said, glaring at me.
“I’m so sorry. At least you were older. You weren’t a little boy anymore.” The moment the words left my mouth, I knew it had been the wrong thing to say. His green eyes darkened, the faint lines around his eyes and mouth becoming more pronounced.
“You think that made any difference?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. Of course not.”
“I was the one who found her.” His gaze drifted away from me, a slight frown creasing his brow as he recalled what had happened. His eyes took on a far-off look, and I knew he was back there, seeing what had happened all those years ago as though it were happening right now. “I’d been out with my friends, just hanging out, getting up to trouble. I’d stayed out past my curfew, and I hate myself for that every day, wondering if I’d only come home when I was supposed to, then I’d have been able to stop him.”
The pain in his words cut right to my core. I didn’t want to hear them, knowing it had been my own father who’d done this. Knowing I shared fifty percent of my DNA with someone capable of such horror.
“Do you know what it’s like to see your own mother like that?” Hayden continued. He spoke in a rush, as though he’d never said these words out loud before and was using me as a type of confessional. “When I found her, she was sprawled out on the bed, completely naked. At first, I thought I’d walked in on her when I shouldn’t have, but then I noticed her eyes were wide open, and staring up at the ceiling. Her arms and legs were at a strange angle, too—displayed, not curled up comfortably like if she was resting.”
I brought my cuffed hands up to my mouth, trying to contain my whelps of dismay at his story. Tears filled my eyes, blurring his handsome, pained face in front of me. Just for this moment, while he was telling me the pain he’d been through due to my father’s actions, I forgot he was the same man who’d kidnapped me.
Hayden continued with his story. “I had this moment of utter horror. One part of me wanted to race over to her, and shake her and ask if she was okay, even though she clearly wasn’t, and the other part wanted to turn and run from the house. Instead of doing anything, I was just stuck there, rooted to the spot, not knowing what to do.” He closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “I’ve never been able to get that image from my mind. I see it every time I close my eyes. Do you know how fucked up that is, to see your mother’s dead body like that? To have it imprinted on your mind as a teenage boy. Yeah, I’ve got issues, but is it any wonder?”
I understood his hatred toward my father now, but that didn’t stop me thinking his anger was misplaced.
I risked speaking. “What my father did wasn’t my fault.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “Wasn’t it? Are you sure about that, Jolie?”
My stomach curdled, and though I didn’t want to bring up the painful memories I’d worked so hard to put behind me, I already knew what he was going to say.
“She was the last one, wasn’t she?” I said, my voice tremulous. I didn’t want to hear the truth, but I needed to know. I needed to understand the source of Hayden’s hatred toward me. “She was the final woman he killed.”
“Yes, she was. Both you and your mother lied to the police, giving him an alibi so they had to let him go. And what did he do two weeks later? He stalked and killed my mom, and then let me find her body. If only you’d told the truth, she would still be alive today, and we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
Waves of shame flooded over me. He was completely right. I remembered the night the police had turned up at the door asking questions about where my father had been a few nights earlier. My mother had told them he’d been home, and when she’d looked over her shoulder at me, lurking in the background, and had said, ‘Isn’t that right, Jolie? Your dad was home with us?’ I had nodded and agreed. Yes, he was home with us. He was with us all night. He couldn’t possibly be the one who was doing those terrible things because he’d been home with his family when it had happened. Yes, I’d lied. But I’d done it because I thought it was the right thing for my family. I’d thought we would all be torn apart if I told the truth about how I knew my father liked to sneak out late at night when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. And I’d been right—our family had been torn apart when the truth had come out—but I knew that didn’t make my lies right.
“I’m so sorry, Hayden. I never meant for that to happen. I was trying to protect my family.”
“And you got my mother killed in the process.”
“My mom died, too,” I said, tears filling my eyes, though I couldn’t look at him.
“It’s not the same. She took her own life because she couldn’t handle what she’d done, lying to the police like that, and who she’d been married to. But not you. You just kept going, even to the point of thinking it’s okay to stand up on stage and boast about who you are.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t boast. I wanted to help people.”
“You could have helped people back then by telling the truth.”
“I was twelve years old. I had no concept of what I was doing.”
“Bullshit. Everyone knew there was a killer around. Young women were given curfews and told not to go anywhere alone. You must have known there was a chance it could have been him. Why else would you lie, if not to protect him? If you’d thought he was innocent, you’d have believed he’d have been able to prove his innocence without the lies.”
He was right. A tiny part of me had suspected that my father might have been guilty of wrongdoing, and it wasn’t only because of his late-night excursions.
My cheeks burned with heat, but inside I felt ice cold. “I found something.” My voice was barely a whisper.
His frown deepened. “What?”
“I caught him one night, hiding something behind the kickboard in our kitchen. He didn’t know that I’d seen him, but I had. I watched him put something behind it and then push it back into place, and then I ran away and got back into bed and pretended I hadn’t seen a thing. I did my best to forget about it, but I couldn’t, so one night I sneaked out of bed and went downstairs and looked.”
“What did you find?”
“Women’s things. Nail polish. Mascara. Perfume. I didn’t know what it meant, though. I guess I’d hoped they were things he’d bought for Mom as a present and was hiding them from her. I was twelve years old. I loved my dad. I didn’t want to think of the possibility that it might mean he was the killer.”
“His modus operandi was all over the news. How he liked to... take care of them after he killed them. You should have known when you saw those things.”
“I didn’t want to know.”
“So, you lied.” His tone was accusatory.
“It wasn’t a lie. I just agreed with what my mom said.”
“You gave her credibility.”
“That was never my intention. All I ever wanted was to make my parents proud of me.”
“Oh, I’m sure your daddy is proud of you. A chip off the old block.”
His words stabbed like a knife to my heart. “Hayden,” I begged though I didn’t know what I thought I wanted him to say. That he understood? That he forgave me?
At some point during our conversation, something inside me had melted. I still didn’t think what he was doing here was right, but I was starting to understand. My heart had been shattered when I’d found out what kind of man my father really was, and then I’d lost my mother to suicide only weeks later, but so had Hayden’s. I reached for him, the metal cuffs jangling around my wrists, but he shook his head and turned his back on me.
That part of our conversation was over. No more reminiscing about our painful pasts.
I understood now why he’d taken me and why I saw such hatred in his eyes, but I still didn’t fully understand what his plan entailed
.
“So, what’s with the photographs and letters to my father?” I asked. “Do you think it’s punishment enough for him just to think his daughter is in danger?” I wondered how much worse this was going to get. A few photographs and a letter were most likely just the start. Perhaps Hayden planned on sending him body parts next. I couldn’t help thinking that I was being punished far more than my father.
But to my surprise, Hayden shook his head and turned back to me. “Not at all. Him thinking you’re in danger is just the beginning. It’s a way of motivating him.”
“To do what?”
“To escape.”
His words jangled through me. “Escape? Why would you want a known murderer to escape?”
Hayden straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. “So I can kill him.”
THE END
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Broken Minds
Bad Blood: Book Two
Chapter One
“You’re fucking insane.”
I stared at the man who’d kidnapped me, trying to piece together how he might think this would ever work. My hands were cuffed together at the front of my body, and I knew there was no way I’d be able to escape again. Hell, I’d barely managed to escape. What I hadn’t considered was that this whole island was my prison. Just because I’d gotten out of the room where he’d been keeping me for the past week didn’t mean I’d ever been free.
Hayden’s hair was still damp from the rainwater and the little swim from his boat, which I’d forced him to take when I’d tricked him into thinking I’d boarded. I’d hidden on the other side of the jetty, with my heart pounding and my breath trapped in my lungs, waiting until I’d seen him go beneath deck, searching for me, and then I’d slipped out and unhooked the boat from its moorings. I hadn’t considered that he’d have lifejackets and other flotation devices. I’d hoped he’d have been carried far away from the island during the storm, but instead he’d abandoned ship and swam back into shore to find me.
His shirt was still wet and clung to his abs and pectoral muscles in a way I was trying not to find distracting. He was gorgeous, rich, and I’d sucked on his cock earlier that day to distract him, before stabbing him with a pencil. Though I knew I should push that memory out of my head, I couldn’t get the sexy, salty taste of him off my tongue, and my core clenched with desire at the thought. No, I didn’t want him. I couldn’t allow myself to want him. The man was as crazy as my father.
Maybe that’s why you’re attracted to him? Perhaps there’s a little part of you that’s so messed up by what your father did that now you can only relate to people who are equally screwed up.
I didn’t want to think such a thing was true, but I couldn’t pretend there wasn’t a chance. After all, I’d never had any kind of relationship with a man. There had been sex, of course, but nothing emotionally intimate. But when Hayden had told me the story of how he’d found his mother after my father had murdered her, my soul had reached out to his, wanting to comfort him, even after everything he’d done to me. Because he was right when he said I wasn’t innocent in all of this. Yes, I might have been twelve when I’d lied to the police, but I was old enough to know better. The knowledge sat like a churning coil of snakes at the pit of my stomach. I’d known my dad hadn’t been innocent. I’d found women’s belongings hidden in our house—stuff I knew didn’t belong to my mother—and I’d watched him from my bedroom window as he’d sneaked out of the house at ungodly hours, thinking he was leaving me, my brother, and my mom all sleeping soundly. Did my mother know about his nightly trips out when she’d lied? Did she know about the other women’s belongings hidden behind the kitchen kickboard? Or had she simply lied because she’d found it impossible to believe he was capable of doing such a thing, had lied because she was desperately trying to keep her family together. Or maybe she had simply convinced herself that he was home night after night, curled up beside her in bed, and not out with his hands wrapped around the throat of some poor, innocent woman.
Either way, the lie had been enough to kill her, and she’d chosen to die rather than live with it. I, however, had chosen to keep going, and even now I was faced with the son of the final woman my father had killed—a woman who would never have died had I simply spoken up and told the police the truth—I found I still wanted to live.
I turned my attention back to Hayden’s crazy plan.
“My father isn’t going to escape,” I told him. “He’s in a high security prison.”
But, frustratingly, Hayden nodded. “Oh, he will. I’ve got people on the inside who’ll make sure he’s able to.”
“And then what? You really think he’s going to try to rescue me?” I shook my head. “I think you’re forgetting who my father is.”
Hayden’s green gaze bored into mine. “He always loved you—you and your brother, but mostly you. If I give him enough to find you, then he’ll come after you.”
“And that’s when you’ll kill him?”
A slow nod made up part of his answer. “Exactly.”
I thought of something. “Wouldn’t this have all just been easier if you’d had him killed while he’s still inside?”
A muscle in his square jaw tightened. “No. I want to be able to do it. I want to look directly in his eyes and make sure he understands why he’s about to die. And I want him to understand the fear and horror of knowing someone you love is in the hands of a psychopath. I want him to torture himself about all the terrible things I’m doing to you, just like I tortured myself about those final hours of my mother’s life.”
“How is he even going to know where to find me?”
A hint of a smile quirked the corner of his lips. “Oh, that’s where you’re going to help.”
My stomach lurched, and I shook my head. “No. I don’t want anything to do with that man.”
“Tough shit.”
What was he going to do? Dangle me on a piece of string to lure my father out of hiding, and then kill him? I didn’t want to see my father, not after all these years, but I didn’t want to watch Hayden kill him either. My mind whirred. I wondered if it was possible to get a warning to my father, somehow. I almost laughed at myself. Just what the hell did I think I was going to be able to do? I couldn’t help myself, never mind help him. And did I even want to help him, anyway? Wasn’t I doing exactly the same as I’d done back when I was a child—protecting him when he didn’t deserve my protection? Maybe he deserved to die, and Hayden deserved to be the one who killed him. But the last thing I wanted was to be involved.
“When is this all going to happen?” I asked instead, aware that I had no choice. I’d already tried to make a break for escape and look how that had ended up. I was now in handcuffs and Hayden had seen me naked. Worse than that, I’d put myself in a compromising position to try and win my freedom. What if I’d given Hayden the idea that because I’d been the one to start things between us physically, he was now allowed to do whatever he wanted. I was cuffed, and it wasn’t as though I’d be able to fight him off if he decided he wanted to end what I’d started.
“As soon as the plane gets back, and I get word that your father has received the letter you wrote. The next communication has to be worse, and not only that, it will give a hint about what your location is going to be—something only you and he will understand. He’ll make an attempt to break free, with a little help and a push from some of the guards I have working on the inside, and then he’ll
come and find you.”
“Please, Hayden. There must be something else you can do. My father is being punished. He’s been sentenced, and he’ll be spending the rest of his life behind bars.”
Hayden snorted. “You think that’s enough of a punishment? I expect he’ll be well treated in there. He’s probably got a whole group of like-minded friends, and he’s spending the rest of his life with a roof over his head and food in his stomach. He deserved the death penalty, and I swear I’ll be the one who gives it to him.”
“And what happens to me after you’ve killed him?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“You might go to prison yourself,” I pointed out, “if they catch you. And not only for killing my father, but for kidnapping and holding me against me will, too. Then what would be the point in all of this?” I gestured around, hoping he realized I was talking about the beautiful house and island. “You’ve clearly worked hard to own all of this, and it’ll all just be taken away from you if you go down for kidnapping and murder.”
Hayden shook his head and rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Can’t you see that the only reason I ever wanted to earn a lot of money was so I had the means to revenge my mother’s death. I don’t give a fuck about big houses, or private planes, or any of the other shit that goes with it. But if I hadn’t had the money, I wouldn’t be able to pull this off. People respond to cold hard cash. How else would I get people to do what I want?”
He had a point.
“And you’re just going to give it all up,” I continued, hoping to get through to him.
“It doesn’t mean anything to me. The house is just bricks and concrete. The plane is metal and fuel. Even this island is nothing more than a pile of rocks and dirt. None of those things would notice or care if anything happened to me. In fact, no one would. I could vanish of the face of the earth and no one would give a fuck.”
Shattered Hearts: A Dark Romance (Bad Blood Book 1) Page 15