Page 179 of Hell and High Water

Like he can read my mind, Marco turns back to me, a disgusted smile splitting his weathered face. He stalks toward me again, making me cower away from his touch.

“You really should have ended it back then. Even if your soul would burn forever for the sin. It would have saved all of these people you know from their fates.”

“You want to talk about sins? You’re a monster, Marco.”

“I am what I must be. You are the real monster, Elena. You are the harbinger of the sinister cloud that looms over this whole city now. You are the reason all of this is happening. Your selfishness, your manipulation of your mother to flee from your home, from me.”

Any argument I try to come up with falls flat. He really believes his own words.

That I was his property. That my mother was.

And that I took from him when I left.

Just as my mother withheld this place from him for so long, secrets he could have used to gain power and money.

“You can’t hurt her anymore, at least,” I bluster, trying to laugh in his face.

“I inflicted enough pain on her to last ten lifetimes. Until I was bored with it. Good try, though.”

I want to puke.

Even as I try to justify the fact that he’s only trying to get under my skin, only trying to break me, I know there has to be some truth to what he’s saying.

My mother died a gruesome, unthinkable death.

For me.

I won’t let him hurt anyone else. I can’t

Rage bubbles up, overtaking every other sense. Snatching it up, I use it, driving away the queasiness, the despair.

“Do whatever you will. I won’t give you shit.”

“Thank you, hija. I was hoping you’d say that.” He waves, signaling someone behind me.

The door clacks open, and for the first time, I realize where we might be. Boxes line the walls, the shelves. It’s a basement. Someone’s house basement. Marker shows on most of the old cardboard, labeling the contents.

Vanderberg Family Photo Albums.

Oh. Oh, no.

But it’s not the location that suddenly has me shaking. It’s the painful cry of anguish that announces Tell stumbling into the room, bloody and beaten, driven forward by one of the soldiers, forced down onto his knees with a sickening thud.

“Tell!” I sob, regretting my loss of control immediately.

“H–Hella…” His lips are so swollen he can barely speak, blood dribbling down his chin. Sliding down against the wall, he falls to his side.

“No, no, no,” I sob, sagging under the pressure of the fingers locked onto my shoulders.

The hands go slack, just as I do, collapsing to the floor and trying to crawl toward Tell’s broken body. He’s still breathing, still watching me through slits of bruised eyelids, one of them almost swollen shut.

“Baby, please, no,” I whimper, hesitating to touch his battered face. His hand grazes my knee, one of his fingers bent at an odd angle.

“He put up a fight. I’ll give him that,” Marco announces, sitting down in the chair I just left behind. “Not much once we told him that I was going to start chopping off pieces of you if he didn’t settle down, though. Then we beat the fuck right out of him, didn’t we?”

A couple of his men chuckle, elbowing each other.

“Why? Why do this? Any of it?”

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