Page 34 of Wicked Riddles & Bitter Heartbeats (Till Death Do Us Part #1)

Chapter Thirty-One

Lilah

I’ve never been so nervous in all my life.

Not only about seeing my uncle, but everything …

the murders, the plan, seeing my uncle. Atticus is calm and certain everything will go well, but I can’t help the fear that’s crawling through my veins like a venomous snake.

This is dangerous, and though his plan is solid, it’s not a guarantee.

I don’t want to get caught. Not only because I don’t want to go to jail, but because I can’t be away from him.

Atticus is my life now. Being without him is not an option.

The next few days are going to be rough as we wait for things to play out.

This doesn’t end tonight. It’s going to take time for the bodies to be found, for police to put the pieces together—or try.

And they will try because these aren’t just ordinary people.

They aren’t Boston’s finest mobsters or drug dealers.

James Erickson is a cop. My uncle is an FBI agent.

This is going to make headlines all over.

It’s going to catch the attention of a lot of people.

I’m not sure Atticus understands that. Not because of ignorance but because he’s so caught up in the outcome that he isn’t paying attention to everything else.

The warehouse is freezing, and being on the top floor makes it worse.

The windows are busted open, so the wind blows in, biting at my exposed skin.

It feels like we’ve been in here forever by the time I see the first flash of lights coming down the dirt road.

My heart jumps into my throat as I wait for it to get closer.

Not a cop car.

At least, not a marked one.

From up here, on the fourth floor, we can see a good distance out.

There isn’t much around here other than trees.

There’s another abandoned building across the lot, but there’s only the one road in and out.

These buildings were used to store furniture, and when the place went out of business, these buildings became forgotten.

During the warmer weather, you’ll find homeless people, drug addicts, and teenagers fucking.

The cops try to keep the riff-raff out, but it’s the least of their concerns on most days.

The SUV parks, its lights shut off, the door opens and then it echoes loudly as it closes. I take a slow, deep breath, trying to keep myself calm.

This isn’t even the part that should give me anxiety. We’ve killed enough people already, and none of them have made me this nervous. Atticus has killed ten times what we’ve done together. Probably more. No, this part, the killing part, should be easy.

There’s so much to lose here, tonight. More than ever before.

“It’s okay, Kitten,” Atticus says as he turns toward me. “Everything is going to be fine.”

I stare into his dark eyes, his face shadowed by the moon.

I hope he’s right. After my father was taken away from me, I almost didn’t make it. I’m not sure what I’ll do if I lose Atticus.

He leans down to kiss my forehead, his lips lingering for a long moment, before he steps over to the chair and the duffel back of equipment we brought. Handcuffs. Chains. Zip Ties. Rope. Duct Tape. A screwdriver, nails, and a hammer. The list goes on…

Atticus hasn’t told me what he plans to do with all this stuff, and I didn’t ask, but I’ll find out soon enough.

As I watch Atticus walk across the large, empty space, another thought comes to me.

What if this doesn’t go the way he planned? What if my uncle gets the upper hand and Atticus—I can’t even think about it. It makes me want to throw up. I’ve been so focused on what happens after, that I didn’t even think of everything before going wrong.

I’ve been through a lot of things in my life. I’ve dealt with death, murder, and abuse. But my uncle…

I’m not sure why it affected me so much more than anything else. Maybe because I was so young, or maybe it’s because I never told anyone? My uncle isn’t the only person to have sexually abused me, but it’s that time that sticks with me the most, that terrifies me to my bones.

I’ve never spoken what he did to me out loud.

And I won’t until I tell Atticus. It won’t be easy, but I promised I would do it.

Considering he’s saving me yet again, ridding the world of a man who destroyed parts of me I’ll never get back, it’s the least I can do. Once he’s dead, maybe it’ll be easier.

But I have to let Atticus know, that under no circumstances, does he repeat this information.

I can’t have it getting back to my father.

Not that it’s probable, I doubt Atticus will ever talk to him, but you never know.

I’m not worried about what my father will do, I’m worried about how it will make him feel.

I can’t hurt him because none of this was his fault.

He’s already spending the rest of his life in jail, miserable, I don’t need him carrying about this burden too.

My uncle used to watch me while my father worked, when I was just a little girl.

The abuse didn’t start right away, not until I was nine.

He experimented with his fingers first, maybe because he wanted it to be easier when the other stuff came.

I hated all of it, of course, and nothing about it was better or good.

It wasn’t only vaginal rape, either. In fact, he used my mouth the most. And he’d put things on it to make it taste better, as if that made a difference.

He used his power as a police officer to scare the shit out of me.

He told me that if I didn’t do what I was told, or if I told my father or anyone about what he was doing, that he would take my father and put him in jail.

I didn’t know any better when I was a kid.

I thought he could do that. I thought it was up to him to put people in jail.

That he would arrest the bad guys and throw them in a jail cell, then go on to find the next one.

I did not understand the judicial system, and that things went through judges and laws and sometimes juries and trials.

He scared the ever loving shit out of me, and so for years, it continued.

It continued until the day I ran away, a few weeks after my seventeenth birthday.

He was who I went to live with when my father went to jail, and those years were the worst of it all. He had free rein of me and my body. No father to send me back to. He didn’t have to worry about bruises or marks or bleeding.

The worst part of it all was him taking away my ability to have children.

There’s not a lot of that night I remember.

Only that whatever he did hurt a lot and he wasn’t the only one there.

He’d brought a friend to help. A doctor.

I don’t know why he did it, whether it was accidental or purposeful.

I don’t know who that doctor was or where he is today.

And I’m worried that if I tell Atticus about him, he’ll fixate on finding him and killing him, and I’m not sure that’s possible because I have nothing to go on.

It’s strange because when I think of my childhood and my teenage years, there are two things.

Happy memories and black spots. My brain is really good at pushing away the bad stuff I guess, because I have so many happy memories of me and my father.

The stuff with my uncle only comes up when I see him or when I specifically think about it.

Just another reason I should have gone to therapy.

Oh well.

“Are you okay?” Atticus asks.

I blink a few times and look up at him. I didn’t realize he was so close…

I smile and nod. For the first time tonight, I feel like maybe everything is going to be okay.

“Don’t lie to me, Kitten,” he says firmly.

I take a breath, my gaze going to the door. “I’m scared but… I’m okay.”

Atticus watches me for another moment, kisses my lips, tells me I’m perfect, and then disappears into the shadows. With another deep breath, I put one foot in front of the other and walk toward the door to go into the hall and wait for my uncle to get up here.