Page 68 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions (Till Death Do Us Part #7)

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Holly

I didn’t like the fishery as much as the bunker. It was always the plan to move here once Atelihai Valley became too much of a hotbed of media, police, and wannabe serial killer hunters. With the ferry and the way the peninsula was, it was easier to move away.

Plus, not all my victims were meant to be staged in Atelihai Valley.

A couple, particularly Kaylee and Rachel, had bigger parts to play.

I knew this was coming. The closer we got to the end of my plans, but it was still sad to let the bunker go.

It had been the place I thought of as ‘home’ for so many years.

The fishery would never be ‘home’. Besides, it would be a pile of ash soon enough.

Personally, I’d never be able to live with the old fishy smell, anyway.

Jason was spending the day with Roman. He’d earned the break, and I did not want to see, hear, or know what it was he was doing to his ‘gift’.

When we’d moved to the mainland two days ago, I’d been shocked and horrified at the physical changes in Roman.

It did not pass my notice that Jason also referred to him as her now.

Apparently, I’d overestimated Roman’s homophobia versus his will to live.

When Jason had started his wrestling match between Roman and Jerald, I’d been so sure that Jerald would win because Roman would rather die than risk being ‘gay’.

I’d been wrong, and Jerald had been the one with the bullet in the brain.

I’d had to leave my cell when things had gotten…

more intimate between the wrestlers, but the evidence of who had won and who had lost the challenge was still very prominent when I’d reentered.

Roman had actually looked victorious—but then I doubted he had any comprehension of the depravity in store for himself.

Emmet and Rachel were currently bound to support beams. I’d removed Emmet’s clothing, because he didn’t deserve any, but allowed Rachel to keep her bra and panties on.

Kaylee, however, was enjoying the accommodations of the iron maiden.

The hollow cabinet was a torture device with a hinged front and a spiked interior.

In olden days, they were generically made to hold any adult human, regardless of height or weight.

This one, however, was designed exactly for Kaylee’s specs.

During our surveillance of her, I’d been horrified to learn what Kaylee was doing to her niece on their ‘special’ spa trips.

I would have killed her then, but Jason, of all people, convinced me to wait.

Claimed it would be sweeter if she died for both her sins, rather than just the one.

Maybe it was selfish, but I chose to wait.

However, I was not about to let her continue to molest her seven-year-old niece, so I mailed all the evidence I had to the girl’s father’s office.

While unfortunately it wasn’t much evidence, it was enough to get Kaylee arrested, which then resulted in her house arrest.

Now she was mine. The iron maiden was for everything she’d made her niece suffer through.

The cat hair I continuously shoved into the hole at the top of the iron head was for her participation in my attack.

Her cat allergy was not as severe as Wyatt’s had been to bananas, but she was still a sniffling, coughing, itchy mess.

Due to the iron cabinet bolted closed around her, she couldn’t even scratch herself to try to relieve the pain.

When I was ready for her to die, the pulley system we’d rigged up would allow me to lift the iron maiden into a vat where she would be steamed alive. It took longer than boiling and was more painful because the nerves stayed alive longer.

Rachel had been the school gossip in our school.

True or not, Rachel knew everything about everyone and spewed her venom for all to hear.

Too bad for her that the one time she’d stayed her vicious tongue was about my attack.

On her knees with her hands and feet bound behind her around the support column, she now had a forked tongue to mimic the snake she was.

Blood dripped down her chin and throat from her reconstructive surgery done with a rusty pair of scissors I’d found on the floor of the abandoned fishery.

I didn’t mind her screams of pain. They did not distract me from answering Master Mal’s text messages.

And then there was Emmet. The mastermind.

The arrogant prick. Atelihai Valley’s own hockey star.

Years ago, I had stolen the fucking trophy he’d won the weekend after orchestrating my rape and still had staged front and center in his fucking home, along with his letterman’s jacket preserved in a shadow box.

I let him hear everything happening around him, but I’d blindfolded and gagged him. I wasn’t ready to hear his screams yet. But he knew why he was here. By now, everyone knew why they were all here.

My phone rang. Expecting it to be Master Mal, I was surprised to see it was Jason calling me. That couldn’t be good.

“What happened?” I asked in lieu of answering. I did not need to step away from Rachel’s or Kaylee’s screams to speak to Jason. He would actually enjoy hearing them.

“Lover boy’s been removed from the case. They’re bringing in the big guns.”

I was conflicted by this news, because I was glad Master Mal was no longer the one investigating my murders, but I felt bad that he might be in trouble at work because of me.

Given our current conversation, it didn’t sound like he cared that much.

I’d never had a boss or a job, but I doubted it felt good to be in trouble whether you liked your job or not.

“Who are the big guns?” I asked, curious.

“Deputy Director and his personal agents.”

“Oh, lovely. Is there a brain cell between any of them or are they all just a bunch of pretty faces?”

“We’ll see, but we might want to move things along. There’s talk of bringing in the National Guard.”

Shit. I still had to make it back to Atelihai Valley at least one more time for the Grand Finale.

Principal Hagley owed me a fucking explanation.

Throughout everything over the past fifteen years, there was one question I’d never been able to answer: why?

Why had a State Championship meant so fucking much that he’d covered up my attack?

I was owed the truth.

And I planned on making it very public.

I also did not want Master Mal around for that.

Even if he didn’t know I was me, his little owl, I didn’t want him to see me like that.

Not if I wanted a future with him. There was so much he couldn’t know, could never know.

I’d given up my claim on Roman’s life to save Master Mal’s.

But I could not, would not, give up Master Mal.

I didn’t know how to make my two lives mesh. But there had to be a way. I couldn’t have finally gotten my revenge, freed myself from my past, only to be denied a future.

The world couldn’t be that cruel… Could it?