Page 44

“When I became the boss, I gained access to a safe with all the evidence I needed. It was his confession to me. I guess the Catholic runs deep in all of us. I can’t think of any other reason he would have kept all of it.

He’d had explicit instructions for how and when it was to be given to me after his death—my twenty-fifth birthday—the same day the business was turned over to me. ”

I take a deep breath, trying not to lose control of myself.

The fact that my father needed me to know has made me wonder over and over if he ever felt any remorse for what he did to her, or if he just wanted to twist the knife… or brag. As a child I didn’t understand how many people were afraid of him, or how dark he truly was.

“Come with me, I need to show you something.”

Maddie gets up, cautious, and I don’t blame her. I’m sure I look like a mad man right now. I can feel the crazy trying to claw its way out of me. I take her hand and guide her down the main staircase, to the back of the house, and down another more narrow staircase that leads into the basement.

I’ve never brought or allowed anyone down to the basement room. Someone comes down to clean the bathroom, but that’s it. No one but me has ever been inside the secured room. Until now.

Maddie looks uncertain as I allow the scanner to take my fingerprint and then scan my eyes, and the steel door slides open with a sharp metallic sound.

“It’s okay,” I say, knowing that it absolutely is not okay, and isn’t going to be okay ever again once she sees all this.

But how can I hide it from her? I won’t be able to hide it forever.

And I need so much more than a fake surface relationship.

I can’t craft a stage of perfect lies for her. I need her to know… everything.

She takes it all in. The weapons, the big board, the photos, the notes, the red X’s over faces. The list. “What is all this?”

“The men who hurt my mother. I only have one more left, and I’m sorry, Maddie, but I have to complete it.”

She moves closer to the board and the list, her eyes widening with horror when she reads the last name. “No, Aidan, you can’t! He’s my father.”

“I really thought I could take you in trade and let it go, but I can’t. I have to finish it.”

“No! I don’t believe he’d do something like that. He wouldn’t! He loves my mother. He wouldn’t cheat like that…”

I wince at her calling raping my mother “cheating”, but I know she’s not processing the full weight of everything and just the fact that her father was married and she was a kid like me at the time all this happened.

It’s hard enough for her to imagine her father cheating let alone the horrors of what he was actually doing to my mother.

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.

She’s shutting down on me. She’s scared of me again, probably more scared than she’s ever been because she knows far more than a wife should know. But there is no omerta to keep. This is my business and mine alone. I can tell whoever I want about it, no matter how ill-advised that choice may be.

I open the folder with Maddie’s dad’s name. “Are you sure you want to see this? Once you do, you can’t unsee it.”

Maybe I should go easy on her and just show her one of the other videos from someone else. But probably not Father Rossi.

I start to click on one of the videos.

“No, I believe you,” she says.

I don’t know if she does. I don’t know if she’ll ever believe it or truly get it if she doesn’t see this, but if I force her to watch her own father rape my mother, I’m just as bad as he is. It’s just too fucked up.

I remove the flash drive, and I can tell she’s still not sure if this is all some trick.

But why would I kill her father of all people if I wasn’t absolutely sure?

Does she think I want to drive a wedge between us I can’t ever undo?

I know what I’m sacrificing to follow through on this.

If I could stop this compulsion I would.

She’s crying quietly now. “Please, Aidan. I know it’s bad, but he’s still my dad. I can’t… you can’t… please…”

“Let’s go. I can’t leave you down here. I’m the only way out.”

She follows me reluctantly out of the secured room and out of the basement.

When we reach the entryway on the main level I head for the door. Now that she knows, it’s best that I just get this ugly business over with. I don’t think this kill is going to be nearly as satisfying as all the others.

“Aidan, wait. Just… don’t do it tonight. Sleep on it. Come with me to bed.” She holds out a hand to me as if she can summon me like some ancient witch.

I’ve already slept on it for far too many nights, and I just can’t do it again.

I know what she’s doing, and I’m so tempted, because I know if I walk out this door and kill her father right now, things will never be the same between us. The fragile trust we’ve built, the love that could blossom with just a little more patience will be impossible after tonight.

I go to her and thread my fingers through her golden wavy hair. I grip the back of her neck and pull her toward me for a kiss while she’s still pliant enough to be receptive to it.

Even though she spit on me just a little while ago, she’s realized the one possible tool she has to make me stay, and she’s willing to use it now.

She opens for me, her tongue moving desperately with mine.

I know this is the last time she will ever kiss me this way, but I’m too much of a greedy bastard not to take it and give her the small hope that she can seduce me away from my mission.

I just want to feel her welcoming warm mouth against mine one more time.

I may never be able to win her back after this.

And I already know I can’t force her. I can’t be like the men who hurt my mother.

I can’t drive her to that same kind of desperation. I can’t restart the cycle again.

When I finally pull away, she takes my hand in hers. “Just come to bed.”

I sigh and stroke the side of her cheek, soaking up everything about her in this moment. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Maddie.” I turn to my guards. “Don’t let her out of the house until I return.”

“No! Aidan, don’t do this! Please, I’ll do anything. Please,” she’s sobbing, and I can’t stand to see her cry.

I turn away. A vase crashes into the wall, narrowly missing my head as I walk out the door to take the last name off the list wishing it was anybody in the world but Albert Prescott.