Page 51

CHAPTER 51

REDLEY

My hands shake, but I don’t dare turn. I don’t have a gun or any weapons on me at this moment other than the diamond in my hand and the lamp, but I’ve already tried that before with very little success. I should have taken my gun, but my wretched curiosity got the better of me once again.

All but a couple of the last pieces slide into place. This is exactly what they wanted all along—diamonds, but I still don’t get the why of how they’ve done things. I don’t get how they found it to begin with. Great-great-granddaddy’s journal might have had a lot to say about the mountain and distrusting his yellow-eyed friend, but he and Daddy both died without learning these secrets. I hope Wolf will at least tell me the truth before he ends the Littles once and for all. Really, that’s all I want at this point. I want to be able to take the truth with me into the afterlife in case I have any more ancestors who are still confused about what’s happening out here in Grimm Groves.

“You’ve been stealing from me? That’s how your family got all that damn money? The house, the clothes, your entire life? You stole it from me?” I ask as I roll the diamond around in my hand.

“Yes.” He doesn’t bother to deny it, and I’m not sure if that makes me angrier. How dare they? I thought they stole my life, but dear lord, I couldn’t have guessed just how deeply that ran.

“Why make up a ghost story? Why not just end us all and take our diamonds? Diamonds? ” I repeat because it doesn’t make any sense. There have never been diamonds in West Virginia except when Old Punch Jones found a giant one in his horseshoe pit.

“Most of the diamonds are deep inside the mountain, Red. The ones we’ve stolen have been carried out in the stream. The real treasure is still locked deep inside and can’t be cracked open if it belongs to you.”

I turn over his words for a minute before it all snaps into place.

“It was better to steal what you could than it was to let us know what we had. If we knew, we would have mined the diamonds ourselves and your whole game would have been up. So why haven’t you done that, then? Why haven’t you just killed me and stolen everything?”

His arms wind around my waist, and I gasp at his touch. I still haven’t turned to face him, and dammit, I just don’t want to. How can I look him in the eyes, knowing everything we’ve done together, all the ways he’s pleasured and hurt me, and now knowing this. He’s lied to me about every single thing. He’s a thief and a rake, and… I suddenly understand exactly why he proposed to me. My jaw drops open, and with what he made the offer.

“You proposed to me. With a diamond you stole from me.” My whole body shakes as rage and something like generational agony sweep through me. “And you asked me to marry you because you needed to legally own my property to break it open and take the rest from me.”

A long moment passes before he says, “Yes. I was going to marry you to steal more from you.”

His words are like a knife to my heart. I thought I had already known all the greatest pains imaginable, but Wolf quickly taught me just how wrong I was. You can be ended in so many ways, and your heart will still beat. I didn’t realize it until this moment, but I must have let myself love him, even if just a little bit, because this type of agony, this type of betrayal, doesn’t come without loving the person first.

“Where the hell did the legend you got your name from start? What’s the damn truth, Wolf?”

“Our great-great-grandfathers were friends, and they moved out to this area together. Each of them used their savings and bought the mountains beside each other. They were hiking together when they found this place, found the diamonds. Mine killed yours right here as he was holding one of the rocks.”

I swallow hard as I keep hold of it. Is he just telling me a story or suggesting what may happen to me too?

“After he killed him, my great-great-grandfather tore him up real good, took him home, and told Old Netta a story about a Wolf, an inhuman monster that had descended upon them in the woods.”

Netta . He only mentioned her name a few times in his journal, so I didn’t realize she was his wife, but he said one thing about her I’ll need to check if I make it out of here alive.

“But why? ” I insist.

“He didn’t know where the deeds were, and he knew the only way to get them out of Netta was to get her to fall in love with him and marry him. He thought if she considered him a companion in her grief, she would happily take him.”

“But she didn’t.” It’s not a question. We wouldn’t be here today had she taken the bait. Netta never remarried, though I didn’t know her by name, only Great-great-grandma.

“No, Muffin, she didn’t.”

“So is this the part where you replay history and kill me in the same spot my great-great-granddaddy died?” I ask.

His nose skates against my neck. “Would you like that? You seem to enjoy painting me as the villain.”

“You are the goddamn villain, Wolf.” His legend wasn’t just a lie. Everything about him was. “Have you ever cared for me?” The question feels so profoundly stupid, but it’s all that my torn-up heart really wants to know. “Did any of this mean anything to you?!”

“Ever since I watched Granny beat you, I’ve cared, but the night that I climbed into your window, I wasn’t there for any good reason. I was there to kill you both and find the deeds to your land so I could finally end this game. Everything changed when I saw you.”

“Nothing changed! You’ve been killing all these people all this time. Why ? What the hell did any of them have to do with it?”

“They were the ones who found this place or came too close. Anyone who came within spitting distance has died for more than a hundred years. My family makes sure of it. I make sure of it.”

“So you kill people to make sure you can keep stealing from me?”

My fingernails dig into the arms wrapped around me, trying my best to cut into him and hurt him in some way, but he doesn’t move at all. Am I so useless and ineffectual he can’t even feel it when I make him bleed? I dig deeper.

“I’ll never steal from you again. I swear on my life.”

“Why the hell should I believe you?” I shout.

“You have no reason to believe me, and you’d be stupid to anyway, but I love you. Redley, I fucking love you.”