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I turn her around to face me, gripping her by the shoulders probably harder than I should. I know I’m scaring her, but I don’t care. I need her to understand. I HAVE to cross that name out. I have to. I have to finish this.
“He SOLD you to me to pay off a debt! He is not a good man, Madison!” I say this as though I’m somehow better as though I didn’t orchestrate her entire situation.
Maddie shakes her head again… “No…”
“Yes. What do you think the money he owed was for? He was in the same ledger with all the other men who used and abused her. He was a frequent client, but he was close friends with my father, and a lot of times my father just wrote it down in the ledger as something he’d owe him later. Do you have any idea how I felt when I learned that the father of the woman I’ve always wanted owed me such a large debt? After all, what can ever repay a child losing his mother?”
She shakes her head, the tears streaming down her face.
I continue. I know I should stop, but I can’t help myself. “I thought… This is how I get to have Maddie. I thought I could let your father live even though he did such an unforgivable thing. His fuckup made it easier for me to have you, for me to justify it. And for a split second I forgot about my revenge, I forgot what he did to her because I wanted you too much, and I knew this was the way to get him to agree to give you to me. It wasn’t just the money and the threat of me killing him for it, it was the fact that he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I knew what the debt was about and whether I’d tell you if he didn’t comply with my demands. He didn’t want me breaking the illusion of who you thought he was.”
Did I ever really think I could let her father go? I put him on the list. I put his photo on the wall. I wrote the notes. I did the research. Didn’t I always know?
I put him last, hoping against hope I wouldn’t have to kill him, that somehow I’d be able to let Maddie in trade be enough. I’d hoped maybe my anger would be sated by the time I got to him, that maybe I’d be numb or bored or… something, and I could just walk away.
I broke my ritual with Father Rossi, testing the waters… trying to prepare myself for the possibility of letting the last one go. For Maddie. Just this one thing for her because I knew she’d never be able to understand why I need to do this. But I can’t. I have to kill him. It’s a compulsion in my mind, an invasive demanding thought, my mother demanding vengeance for what was done to her from beyond the grave. And I can’t deny her this. I just can’t. I feel guilty enough that I ever considered it.
I feel torn between the only two women I’ve ever loved, but I have to avenge my mother.
Maddie pulls away from me, and I release my grip on her.
“If you do this, I will never love you, Aidan. I will never trust you. If you kill him, you are dead to me!” she shouts.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears. She means it. I know she means it. If I kill him, I’ll lose her forever. But forever is a long time, and I’ll never let her go. Someday she’ll understand. She has to. Someday she’ll see this was what had to happen. I’d do the same if it had been her that had been harmed like this.
“I have to do it. I can’t let him live. I tried, Maddie. I kept coming down here every night, staring at this wall, trying to will myself to put all this stuff away and call it done, but he’s got to go. Tonight. I can’t let it go on anymore. Your father is a monster.”
“YOU are a monster!” she hurls back.
I need her to understand, but I knew she wouldn’t. It’s why I’ve tried so hard to convince myself I could stop, that this last one was the last one.
She shakes her head and backs away from me. There’s nowhere for her to go. She can’t get out that door without me.
She lunges for one of the weapons and aims the gun at me, but I don’t keep them loaded in here. Still, I dodge out of the way because I know just how loaded an unloaded gun can be.
I lunge at her and wrench the gun from her hand, I press her against the wall, holding her wrists over her head. I nudge my knee between her legs. There are other things I’d rather be doing than fighting her. We’re both breathing heavily and I know she knows what I’m thinking and the shift my energy has taken. I want to take her against this wall and make her forget all the reasons she wants to hate me.
She spits in my face. “Don’t you fucking dare touch me when you’re telling me you’re going to kill my dad. You fucking psycho! I KNEW I couldn’t trust you enough to love you. I knew it!”
I take a deep breath and wipe her saliva off my cheek.
“Maddie…” I say calmly, calling forth all the patience I’ve ever possessed.
“He’s my dad, Aidan! He taught me how to ride a bike! He bought me a car for my sixteenth birthday. He went to all the games I cheered at. Please… You don’t know he did those things. How do you know? Did your dad leave you a diary or something? Why would he do that? How do you even really know? You weren’t there! You were just a kid. Anything you’ve been told could be a lie. You don’t know ANY of this happened!”
I grab her by the arm. I know I’m being rough with her, and I’m trying to keep it in check, but it’s Maddie who doesn’t know anything. I push the space in the wall and the secondary room’s hidden door slides open. I shove her inside.
“You want proof? You want to see the ugly evidence? Fine. I wanted to spare you this, but fucking fine. You want proof, here it is.”
I take a flash drive from a drawer and plug it into the computer. There’s a folder labeled “Clients” and inside it is a folder for each of the twenty-two men who hurt my mother.
I feel dirty for having watched all of these, even though I watched through blurred spaces between my fingers the way a child watches a horror movie. But I needed it to fuel my rage and resolve to ensure she got justice even if it was far too late for that. I needed it so I could steel myself against the lies these men would tell me to save their own skin.
“Father Rossi?” she says in response to his labeled folder. “You killed the priest who married us?”
“Didn’t you think it was weird that he just disappeared right after the wedding and didn’t even perform the Mass the next day?”
Clearly she didn’t read every name on the list. Her gaze must have gone straight to the only one that wasn’t marked out yet.