Page 41 of Scarred Sins

He ordered a whiskey neat for himself and sparkling water for me.

Sparkling fucking water.

“Am I a child?”

“You’re acting like one,’’ he rolls his eyes. “As I’ve told you numerous times, I need you to be focused. Now, what did you want to talk about?”

“How much do you know about Blair and why she was in prison?”

“Everything that was on the record, why?”

A scoff of disbelief comes from me.

“I thought it was a ‘no questions asked’ situation.”

When I first called Dad and Mom to help me out, only after I committed the massacre, they promised they weren’t going to ask any questions or pry into that. All they told me was that something like that mustn’t be repeated because the risk was too high.

“You massacred an entire prison,’’ he hisses under his breath. “Did you really think you had the decency of privacy at the time?”

“Clearly not,’’ I draw out.

“But yes, I know the basic details only. Why?”

“At the time of the massacre, I had already hacked into Blair’s files and removed some very important details.’’

Dad’s eyebrows narrow at me suspiciously for a moment. He whisks out a pack of cigarettes, puts one in his mouth, and lights it. He takes a long, casual drag before exhaling the smoke right into my face.

Asshole.

“What kind of important details, Arlo?”

I swallow, desperately trying to keep my anger at bay. “Blair was practically sold to Simmons by her parents in exchange for money.’’

His face slowly loses color, and he puts the cigarette in an ashtray, blinking. It takes him a moment to grasp the full meaning behind my words, then he exhales deeply.

“Excuse me?”

It takes me a while before I give him more information.

Earlier tonight when Blair opened up, I didn’t expect it to be like that. In my eyes, it was the worst possible thing, yet it wasn’t even half of it. She was just fifteen. Fucking fifteen years old, a child, when her parents started selling her off. Paul Simmons was the first man to assault her, the one to start it all.

Blair wasn’t crying while telling me her story. She was almost expressionless, aside from a few cracks in her voice. And with each new piece of information, my blood boiled more and more. I was barely able to contain myself from doing something reckless and going right into the Simmons’ house to end him.

But I couldn’t.

His life isn’t mine to take.

It’s Blair’s.

She mentioned Adams, too. On her record, she mentioned him twice during the testimonies. He never touched her; he was just there with his buddy, Simmons. He was getting off on her suffering, laughing at her pain.

For Blair’s sake, I mustered the courage not to snap and do something she’d end up hating me for. After the long, gut-wrenching story, a small smile tugged on the corner of her lips.

In detail, she described how she planned and executed her mother’s and stepfather’s murder. She told me how it felt to watch life drain out of their pathetic bodies, what it was like to be soaked in their filthy blood.

That was the first time in her life she’d decided for herself and dealt with the consequences.

She shouldn’t have had to deal with any punishments.