Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

NEO

L yla reads from the folder in a hushed whisper, and there's a sense of urgency in the way she's breathing as she does so. She'd cried for the little bit she read before I tugged her into this closet, and I knew some of the tears were for me. For the little boy who resonates with the things on the pages of this folder. The boy who grew into a psychopath bent on revenge, even after his mother's blood splattered his skin nearly twenty years ago.

As much as my mother's psyche was broken and the reason for her maltreatment, she created my tattered psyche.

She made me in her image.

Much like I did Lyla.

She's shaking when I fist her hair and turn her around, tugging her closer. Her back hits my chest, and I lean over her shoulder.

I open my mouth against her ear to taunt her back to reality.

The door to the room opens, and the sounds of someone entering and then closing it have me halting.

The edges of the wooden barrier light up as someone flicks the light above the bed.

"I don't know why you have to fuck with her like that, Ada. You know she's not like you."

It's Carl Hatt's voice.

"She's a weak fucking whore. I don't know how she's my mother."

Ada Hatt.

Lyla shakes in my hold, shifting as I hear her hand grip the folder tighter.

I snake an arm around her center so she doesn't get any bright ideas, holding her to me as I whisper, "Hold."

They don't know that we're here. This could be the golden opportunity we've been looking for to glean information about what the fuck is going on in this household.

"She's your mother. I watched you come out of her."

Carl's words send a sickening shiver up my spine. It's all I can do to steel myself against the answering quake in my muscles.

They beg to be free of the feeling, but I can't move.

I'll alert Lyla to my distress, which will only worsen hers.

"And did you know then?" Ada asks her father, her voice dipped in something lecherous.

Carl laughs, and it's full of loathing. "Did I know then that I'd be madly in love with my daughter and sneaking around my own house to sink my cock in her body? No, Ada. I don't think I did."

"You say it like you're disgusted by me. Like you're disgusted by us. "

"It's only nature. To be disgusted by what you're doing against the social norm?"

This is disturbing, and part of me is realizing that Lyla was fucking right on the money with her gut feeling that something else was going on here.

We're killers, her and me. Yet, the things we're listening to Ada and Carl say have us both inching back toward the back of the closet as if we can disappear through its wall.

"Society doesn't know what they're missing," Ada says.

"It's not like I had a fucking choice, either," Carl all but whispers.

I barely catch it.

Lyla stiffens against me before leaning her ear against the door.

The fucking minx.

"Oh, you're going to go on about that again, are you?" Ada spits back.

"No. I'm sorry. It was a low blow. I'm just… a lot is going on lately, Ada. Can you blame me for feeling as I do? Your mother getting out of lock-up was unforeseen, and now our life has been flipped on its head."

A shuffle of movement has me reaching for Lyla, only to fling her behind me if this closet opens.

She keeps her ear firmly pressed to the door, however.

"Well, you can blame Jack for that, can't you? If the little shit wouldn't have recanted his testimony and then Cecily with her refusal to recertify her statement. What did you think was going to happen?"

"I know, love. But I can't protect you if the truth ever comes out. If she ever talks…" Carl's words are cut off, and I can see why.

I'm thankful for Lyla's ear pressed against the door.

Through the edge of the door, I watch as Ada steps into Carl, looking up at him with her hands on his chest like like two lovers would embrace one another. His demeanor changes, and I wonder if Ada realizes he doesn't want her touching him.

Even so, he leans down and presses his lips to his daughter's.

Ada takes the contact deeper, and Carl gets stiffer.

When Ada breaks the kiss, there's a nauseating feeling floating through the room, and everyone, including my Lyla, might be unable to suss it out. But I know exactly what it is.

I've just met my next victim.

And she's formidable.

Lyla and I remain in the closet for hours after Carl and Ada clear out, only to ensure that they're gone before we leave the residence.

Neither of us speaks until we're back in the hotel room.

Lyla sits on the edge of the bed, dropping the file we took from Carl's office next to her.

I'm pacing before her as my mind tries to work over the truth of what's going on.

"He's her father, right?" I ask her.

"Yeah… I mean, I think so."

"Biologically?"

She stands, sidestepping me to get to her computer. She shakes her Apple mouse and then works her fingers over the keys .

"Shit," she mutters under her breath, and it stops me in my tracks.

"He's not their father."

"Their? Did he father any of the three?"

Lyla turns in the chair. "Jack. He's only Jack's father, the youngest son. Cecily's father isn't listed, and Ada's father is listed as one," she turns back to read the name on the screen again, "Edward Dashall."

"He said he was in the room when she was born. He called her his daughter," I remind her.

She shrugs. "I mean, he could've been in the room. Carl and Anne were married six months before Ada's birth. She was likely already pregnant with Ada, and Carl assumed responsibility for the girl."

"Do we think she knows?" I ask her.

She shrugs. "We'd have to tie the girl up and question her to find out what's running through her sick head."

I don't immediately toss the idea out as I mull over all the information.

I thought London would be a fun, easy trip away for Lyla and me. We'd come here, vacation, fuck like rabbits, kill Anne Hatt, and go home.

It seems, however, that this case is one more entangled than I've ever worked.

Half of me wants to walk away and leave the Hatts to their depraved lives. The other half of me has Cecily's tear-filled eyes floating through my mind and wants to kill the three of them, Carl, Ada, and Anne, and be done with it.

Give the fucking girl some peace.

"I don't know how we missed it," Lyla says. "I missed it, more like."

"Stupid girl, these people are more fucked up than even you and me, don't beat yourself up about it. We'll get to the root of it. Is there any more in Carl's journaling to tell us where along the line Ada became his lover?"

Lyla wanders over and grabs the file, sitting on the edge of the bed. She opens it and begins sifting through paper after paper.

"Maybe…" she finally says.

I sit beside her on the end of the bed, looking over her shoulder.

Ada walked in on me today. When I turned around from dosing the children's food, she stood at the door's threshold. I don't know what she saw. She acted as if nothing was amiss, but what if she saw me? She's such a strange little girl. I don't know if she'll tell, but I know she suspects something is happening because she asked me once why all the kids are always sick.

It's not as if I do it for Anne. I don't know if Anne even realizes I'm why her children need her so much. Some days, it feels like I'm doing my wife a disservice because she looks so tired and browbeaten. But she's the one who said once they're grown, none of them will need her. She worried they wouldn't think she was a good mum, but how can they not now? She's always beside them, nursing them back to health and taking them to the doctor when I slip too much chemical in their food.

I'm allowing her loving side to shine through.

She'll thank me one day .

"What the fuck?" Lyla whispers.

"Anne knows now, obviously," I tell her as she flips the page.

"Well, yeah. She served fucking time for this man's delusion."

We keep reading, and the next page is more disturbing.

She said it was only the one time. Since Ada caught me with the cleaner last week, she's been acting strange. She came into my home office the other night and solicited me for sex. She said she wouldn't tell her mum what she saw me doing if I touched her and made her ache go away.

I did.

But now, she's holding it over my head like an anvil she's waiting to drop on me at any moment.

I can't have Anne knowing what I've been doing. She loves the kids too much.

She'd be devastated.

She wouldn't understand.

She'd have me arrested.

The more I do for Ada, the more I lick her virgin pussy, the more I want to sink my cock in her.

I'm becoming as deluded as she is.

More so than I was before.

I have to get her help.

I have to get her out of this house.

"So, he pushed Anne to commit her?" I ask Lyla .

"Seems like it. Anne's signature was required for the intake forms."

"So, Carl kept his portion of the fucked-up situation going on with Ada to himself and outed her as a peeping Tom, then."

"Probably. Kept himself out of it."

I nod toward the file, and Lyla turns to the last entry.

They know.

The world knows that I've been poisoning the kids. Cecily told on me, and there's no going back now.

By the grace of God, they think Anne is the one doing it. She doesn't realize it's me. She won't let herself believe it.

She thinks it's Ada.

Even so, she got the little psycho out of the institution, so Ada's instability doesn't look bad on us while we're under investigation.

Anne convinces herself that because there's insufficient evidence to prove the children have been poisoned, this would all go away.

I don't think she realizes how long I've been at this.

All for her.

Ada's very nature is likely a symptom of my work.

The fucking bitch cornered me last night, too. Spewing vile words at me and empty threats. Empty because she'll no more confess to knowing it's me than she will stop lusting after me.

I gave her what she wanted and gained her silence.

I fucked her tight little pussy so hard that I nearly passed out afterward.

She called me father when she came, and my sick soul purred at her obedience.

Now, the only thing I have to face is the likelihood that my wife will go down for my crimes. In all my attempts to keep her happy and caring for her children, now she will be ripped away from them.

But there's nothing I can do about it.

Men like me don't last in lock-up.

Anne's the strongest woman I know.

She'll be fine.

It will all be okay.

"It's the last paper," Lyla whispers, closing the folder.

"I'm surprised he let these survive and didn't shred them. The ignorance of some people astounds me."

"Carl is our target," she says, and finally, something shifts in my chest as the objective becomes clear in my mind's eye.

Even if it doesn't sate my perfect need to kill someone who looks and behaves like my mother, it will fulfill the urge for blood.

"What do we do about Ada?" Lyla asks.

I shake my head, my mind trying to puzzle all this shit together .

It's so tangled, however.

"She knew her brother and sister were being poisoned and used it to gain something for herself," she says.

"She survived, though. No matter how she did it. Sometimes, survival isn't pretty, stupid love."

Lyla looks at Ada's picture pulled up on the screens across from us and nods absently.

"Carl Hatt," she mumurs.

"Carl Hatt," I confirm.

"Feels good to have a name."

"Indeed."