The first piece of shit to touch her.
I was aching with the need to destroy someone when I checked out Reverend Lynch online. Interestingly enough, he wasn’t all that far from Bishop’s Landing. He was at an abbey down at Renyard Lake, only twenty minutes down the road back toward New York City.
Hmm. Maybe there was such a thing as fate after all.
As soon as I saw the details of his manor online I felt the surge of evil in me down deep. There was no way I could fight it, not even for a single minute longer. The man had to suffer, and he had to suffer soon. Him and the others, one by one. I’d enjoy destroying every single one of them.
I checked that Elaine was still sleeping like a baby and headed on out to the car in the middle of the night. I left a scrawled note on the kitchen counter with a Be back soon, baby, sarcastic, like I really was going to get any good at being a boyfriend. The roads were empty as I sped toward Renyard Lake. My brain was churning like an evil bastard as I plotted the ways I was going to hurt him. So many options, so many of them appealing enough to make my pulse race.
I’d packed a blade from the kitchen in my glovebox. A gun would be far too impersonal. I wanted to get up close. Pointed and sadistic. I wanted to see the fear in his eyes as I exacted Elaine’s revenge.
The manor was on top of me before I’d even registered I was there. It was a sprawling thing, slightly back from the lane. It was the easiest thing in the world to pull into the driveway. It would be the easiest thing in the world to kill him too, considering the security around this place was non-existent. Still, it would be, wouldn’t it? Who would ever be heading out here to kill a reverend?
I felt sick in my gut as I waited for an answer, imagining all too clearly how Elaine’s sweet little body must have been shaking when she arrived at this place every weekend. When the door swung open it was an old woman standing there. Her expression was little more than a scowl.
I remembered Elaine’s secret. I remembered the nasty woman who’d led her through the house. “Margaret?” I asked, and the old woman nodded.
“Yeah…” she said, with a tip of her head. “And you are…?”
“Lucian Morelli,” I told her. “Reverend Lynch should be expecting me.”
She stared at me with piercing eyes under the porch light. “At almost midnight?”
“Morelli,” I reminded her.
“Hmm. Come inside then,” she offered, and I did it. I stepped over that threshold with a smile on my face.
I could’ve taken her out along with him, breaking her neck in a heartbeat, but I didn’t. I wanted to use her to scope the place out for everything it was. My eyes were fixed on our surroundings as we passed by, my head still full of everything Elaine would have been seeing and feeling when she was walking the same road. It was a disgusting façade of religion. I hated it with every fucking bone in my body. This was a new thing for me. I’d never hated anything with such vigor as I did this shithole and everything it stood for.
“Wait here, please,” she told me, and stepped away along the hall once we’d turned a corner.
I was expecting it when she came gliding back out of there with a puzzled expression on her face.
“The reverend says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” she told me. “He has no recollection of any appointment with you.”
“It will be a shame if I came all this way for nothing. I suppose my assistant didn’t make the arrangements correctly. It wouldn’t be the first time. Good help is hard to find.”
She was the one to buckle. “I guess you should head in and speak to him yourself. He’s right up the hallway to the right.”
“Thank you,” I told her. “I’ll most certainly speak to him myself.”
She didn’t hang around to watch me make my move. She was off in a flash as there was a clatter from the floor upstairs. I wondered just who was up there and whether he still had a whole host of pure, sweet girls being used for his fun.
I guessed I’d be finding out soon enough.
The knife was already in my hand by the time I knocked on the door.
“Enter!”
I stepped over that threshold with a grim smile.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Elaine
He was gone when I woke up in the middle of the night. A terrified part of me thought that he’d come to his senses somehow and walked out of my hopes and dreams. That’s what I was having—hopes and dreams that I hadn’t had since I was a little girl.
I may have joked about marriage and kids with my boyfriend, Lucian, but it wasn’t such a joke inside. I did want it all with the monster. The monster was everything I wanted and more.
I called out Lucian’s name before I switched on the bedside light and looked around me. He was definitely gone. I slipped out of bed and checked the bathroom but nothing. He wasn’t downstairs in the living room, and the kitchen was empty to match. I was reaching for a glass for some mineral water when I saw the note on the counter—scribbled, just like the one I’d left on mine. Only Lucian’s scribbled note was hilarious. It lit me up inside.
Be back soon, baby.
I could imagine the smirk on his face as he wrote it. I was getting to know his expressions so damn well. Smirk, frown, scowl—and sometimes, like a ray of sun through his dark demeanor, a smile. Only for me.
Going back to bed was an appealing option, but I couldn’t do it. My brain wouldn’t have switched off enough to let me sleep. I flinched as I dropped onto the sofa and curled my legs up tight. I was still hurting, my flesh sore from the monster’s touch. It was magical in the very best of ways. He’d made it feel as good for me as it could possibly feel.
The TV was full of crap that didn’t interest me. My mind was full of Lucian. Lucian and me, Lucian and life, Lucian and our future.
How the hell could we have a future?
We’d never be allowed to have a future. If anyone ever saw us together, they’d kill us for our betrayal.
I’d never really thought about just what was so unforgivable between the Morellis and the Constantines. I knew we’d hated each other since long before I was born, but the logic had never really been explained to me. I guess I’d asked when I was still young enough to ask such questions, but likely got the same universal response.
The Morellis are worthy of nothing. They are our enemy. They’ve been out to destroy us for all time.
I knew they had made every effort to undermine us in New York City life, and business, and deals. There was more to it, too. So many people believed it had been a Morelli who had killed my father. There was no doubt about it to any of my family—it must have been one of the Morellis. They’d been assholes at every opportunity—despising us as much as we despised them, enough to murder the man at the very top of the family tree—but why? I wasn’t sure I really knew why. It would have been so bad if the hate was based on the very first thing I’d ever heard of between us—one original act that caused a divide between two men and the one woman they wanted. My mother. But it was that…of course it was…both men had fallen for my mother to the point they’d destroyed everything else for the chance of having her. Two men, one prize, and no damn way of sharing it.