Page 192 of Under Your Scars

He gives her a sad smile. “You asked me to chase away the monsters under your bed. But the monster was never under your bed, was it? It was in your heart.”

She shakes her head again, this time from denial. “Dad, you tried to kill him.You killed mom.”

She keeps calling him dad, but the man lying there isn’t her father. It isn’t Elliot Young. They may look the same. They may sound the same.

But her father died the moment I pointed that gun at him on Thanksgiving.

“I just wanted to save you.”

Elena shudders as she violently sobs. “I never asked you to save me.” She turns to look at me, pleading for me to help her.

I’d do anything for her. But not this. He killed his wife and four innocent people. All for what? To send a message that he doesn’t like me?

She looks down at her father again, and his eyes plead for mercy that he doesn’t deserve. She knows it. I know it. He knows it, too.

Something off-putting crawls through my veins. I don’t like this situation.

I see a tiny shred of humanity in his eyes when she helps him sit up next to me against the island. Both of us breathe shakily through the pain. Elena once again begs with her eyes for help.

“Christian, I don’t know what to do.”

“Sweetheart,” Elliot says as he presses her head to his chest. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“I shot you!”

He laughs dejectedly. “Yeah, you’re still a good shot after all these years.” He strokes her hair. “I’m proud of you, baby, you know that? So proud.”

She whimpers and hugs him with the same fervor she hugged him with in the hospital. Filled with love and sorrow and hope. Filled with forgiveness.

Not that he deserves it.

Elliot pulls away from her, holding her cheeks in his hands and giving her a sad smile. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t realize until this very moment that killing him won’t save you.” The gulps. “The only way I can save you is by letting you go.”

He presses his forehead to hers as she cries, and then softly kisses her cheek before turning his head to look me straight in the eyes.

“How’s this for misery?”

He reaches for the gun Elena dropped, and before I have a chance to comprehend what he’s doing, he places it at her temple.

And he pulls the trigger.

My entire world goes red. My body goes numb with rage. I’ve gone deaf. My only working sense is sight, and I watch in horror, unable to move as Elliot lets Elena go, and her lifeless body slumps directly into my lap.

I see her dead eyes staring straight up at the ceiling, and I snap.

Without thinking, without caring, without feeling, I lunge for Elliot, grab him by the throat, and land my first punch. Then the second. Then the third.

I stop counting after I hit twenty, and I use all that uninhibited feral rage coursing through my veins to land punch after punch after brutal punch directly into his face. Elliot doesn’t bother fighting back. All he does is sit there and take it.

And I kill him.

I kill him with my bare fists. Beat him until his skull is deformed into useless shattered bits of bone, and until his soft tissue and blood squelches under my hands, splattering back into my face with every reel back of my fist.

I beat him until he’s simply an unrecognizable limp mound of blood and tissue under my fist.

I let out a heavy sigh followed by a loud, unhinged, blood-curdling scream. I catch my breath, and then crawl back to Elena’s body, sitting in a pool of her blood. I pull her body into my lap and kiss her forehead, and then I reach for my gun.

“Daddy?”