Page 85 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

I’m met with emotionless eyes.

“There it is,” he breathes. “My beautiful, perfect monster. This is your birthright, Alexander. You can’t run from it. You and I are the same.”

“We arenothingalike.”

“Careful, son. It looks like you’ve given her the power to end you.” He scoffs. “Lyra Abbott cannot fix what you were born to become. She will run from it like they all do. No one will ever be able to love what I have created in you.”

It wouldn’t matter to me if Lyra could love me or not.

I would take her obsession. I would take it and feed it every day of our lives.

And if she is the reason for my downfall? So be it.

I’d let her do it. Hand her the knife myself and let her finish this legacy. The Pierson line could die with me.

It could only ever be her that gave me my ending, because it had been me that gave Lyra her beginning.

“I made you perfect, and look what you’ve let her turn you into.”

I tug him forward, sending him right back into the solid barrier in front of me. Bones rattle, and he winces in pain. Again, again, and again. All I see is red as I sling his body into the concrete until his shirt is in tatters, shredded in my fingers.

His body slinks onto the floor, coughing as blood splatters onto his chapped lips. He heaves for a breath, groaning as he looks up at me.

“You ruined me!” I scream, my voice rattling the walls. Spit sprays across his face. I press my hand into my chest. “You took a healthy, normal child and turned me into this.”

“Dig, Alexander.”

His fingers wring the life from my mother’s eyes.

“If you feel, you kill it, son. Kill it.”

Sweat gathers at the collar of my suit, my large frame looming over the person who torments my dreams, who took away all hope of a regular life and forced me into becoming a monster.

“You were born this way. I only nurtured what was already there. I tried to make you into something great. It’s not my fault you failed.” He wipes the blood on his mouth with the back of his hand.

I squat down so I’m at eye level with him.

“Do you know how I repay you for all that nurturing you did, Dad? All your rules? All the cleaning?” I grab his face in my hand, squeezing his jaw between my fingers. “I kill men who are just like you. Sad. Pathetic. Weak-minded scum. I outsmart them, overpower them, I butcher them. Every single time I watch the light drain from their eyes, it’s always you on the table. When I skin them, remove their organs, it is always you dying at my hand.”

The reality of my words drowns me. Acceptance rattles in my stomach, and something inside me shatters open. It’s like I’ve been staring at a mirror my entire life and see only a dark, ominous figure staring back.

No facial features, just a picture of a bleak, shadowy presence.

I finally can see myself in the reflection.

“You did not train a protégé. You created your demise.”

I stare down at him for a moment. This feeble man. Hair thinning, aged, creeping closer and closer to his final day, where they will end his reign with a lethal injection.

Coming here, I wasn’t afraid of him regaining control. He has no power because I refuse to give it to him. I’m better, stronger than he could have ever imagined.

I feared coming because of what it would make me remember.

All the skeletons of my past are coming back to life, breaking free of their unmarked graves and crawling to the forefront of my mind, and I’m not sure how I’ll deal with the aftermath of this.

I turn from him, spitting on the ground of his cell as I walk to the door and knock on the thick metal.

“Alexander,” he coughs, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of turning around. I simply pause. “I may have done a few bad things, but I never hurt you. That must count for something.”