I squeezed my injured hand. I felt the blood pumping, oozing heat coating my palm.
“He’s a monster, Layna. He’s not a father. He’s the fucking devil!” he spat out. Revulsion, disgust, falling to the floor. We left them there. With the dirt and dust and other things to throw away.
“He’s my father, Elian,” I repeated, a bit more emphatically. Understand. Don’t make me say it.
Elian gripped his head in his hands and looked as though he were going to be sick. I was making him sick. My father, who he was, what he had done, was making him sick.
I felt him so strongly in that moment.
My father.
He was there in the empty beating of my ravaged heart.
Thump. Thump.
Daddy.
Stories and stars and rides to nowhere. Things I couldn’t stand to remember and things I would never let myself forget.
Daddy.
I shivered again.
“Blood is thicker than all things. It’s syrup and strings and tattoos and nightmares. Elian, he’s all I have. All I’ve ever had. Don’t you get that?” I asked, becoming frustrated. Understand. Don’t make me say it.
“That’s bullshit, Layna. Are you saying you don’t blame him—?”
“I blame him, Elian. I blame him for all of it! All. Of. It! He is a horrible, horrible person. He did horrible, horrible things. I know that!” My voice rose. I couldn’t control it. I was being driven to the brink. I wasn’t ready.
I wanted him to know.
But I didn’t want him to see.
Some things were unavoidable. And even as I fought to hold on to the secrets, I wanted him to have some of my truth.
Incontrollable. Inconsolable.
“I feel it, in here,” I patted my chest. Just over my thumping, thumping heart.
“The monster. My father. It’s all here…” my voice drifted off, landing somewhere out there. In the dark. Where it was safe.
Not safe enough.
“What are you saying?” Elian asked, bones broken, hushed silence.
I looked at him. Stared hard. Deep inside. I wanted to reach in and pull out his guts and let them drip between my fingers. To keep it always. For me. Mine.
“I’m his daughter. He’s my father. We are one and the same. The compulsions—the need to…hurt—it’s there. I’m not sure how to fight it. If I want to fight it.”
I felt panicked. I couldn’t breathe. The room was closing in around me.
The pounding of my heart calmed me.
It devastated me.
I was destroyed.
Elian deserved more than that.
Elian deserved exactly what I wanted to give him.
I was ripped in half. The devil and the girl. Both fighting, kicking and screaming, for supremacy.
Elian grabbed my hands and wrapped them in his, lifting them up to his mouth.
He kissed each knuckle. One. At. A. Time.
“Don’t say that. You’re nothing like that. You’re soft. You’re gentle. You’re sweet and light. You are nothing like that darkness. Nothing.”
I wanted to have his confidence. I wished I could look at the woman I had become and feel anything like hope.
Delusions. Fantasies. Madness.
He kissed my hands. Delirious. “Don’t let me drown, Layna. And I’ll keep you out of that dark, dark place. I promise. I won’t let you down. We owe each other the chance to have the best we can give. Just please don’t let me slide under the water. Don’t let me suffocate. I need the air. I need you.” His eyes beseeched. His lips moved over his words. A prayer. A demand.
“I need you.”
He needed me.
I needed him.
The Nautical Killer.
Cain Langley.
The man responsible for every bad, awful thing in my life was also the man responsible for my only happiness.
Layna. Beautiful, enigmatic Layna was the daughter of the man who killed my sister.
Amelia James.