Page 135 of Kept in the Dark

She huffed and pouted at him. That look had always gotten her what she wanted but she had an inkling that it wouldn’t work here.

She groaned and tossed her head back. “Fine. I’ll tell you.”

“Start from the beginning, before you came to Auburndale.”

Lauren waved him off. She hated talking about her parents; she was glad they were dead. They had been her first kill, at the mere age of sixteen.

“I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version. I was sleeping with a teacher for a better grade. That’s how it started, anyway. But, like all good love stories, it developed into something more and we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.” She sighed. “My parents found out and forbade me from seeing him. They said they were calling the police and having him arrested.”

She conjured up his face. Young and handsome. He had a five o'clock shadow that she loved to stroke. He was a man, and she had been tired of all the little boys who were pining for her. Even at sixteen she had been far too beautiful and sophisticated for the boys her age. None of them were good enough for her. But he was. And she wasn’t going to let anyone keep them apart.

“I walked into the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife and slaughtered them right in my living room. The mess was far more than I had anticipated.” She giggled. “I put on my cute little pink dish gloves and tried to scrub everything with bleach, but that only made it worse.”

David shifted in his seat. “What happened next?”

“I knew I wasn’t going to get the blood out and I had no idea how to dispose of their bodies, so I called him for help…except he didn’t help me.”

Her eyes glazed over as she allowed herself to get lost in the memory she had pushed out of her mind for so long. The moment that made her into the monster she is, the moment that released The Beast from his slumber.

Her cries for help had alarmed him when she had called. He had rushed over, thinking she was hurt. When he had seen what she’d done, he had been mortified.

She still got enraged every time she remembered his face in that moment.

“Allison, what did you do?!”

“I did this for us! They wouldn’t let us be together and they were going to call the police. I saved you.”

“You’re crazy! We were never going to be together; it was just sex! You’re a damn sixteen-year-old. You’re one of my students.”

He had left then, vomiting outside the house as he did.

She continued, “I knew he was calling the cops to arrest me, so I got all the money out of my parents’ safe and left. I quickly learned how to find people with connections in order to become someone else and disappear. It’s thrilling what a little manipulation and a small favor will get you in the criminal underworld.”

“What happened to the teacher?”

Lauren lifted a brow and smiled. “An anonymous tip came in about his…extracurriculars with his students. Last I heard he survived a prison jump…much to my dismay.”

“Is that when you came to Auburndale?”

Lauren nodded. “It was nearly four years later, but I needed a small town to blend into.”

An alarm screamed and she slammed her fist onto the table, anger burning inside of her.

She hated it here.

David leaned closer to her. “Was I just a pawn to you? Did you use me for some sick game?”

She scrunched her brows together and gasped. “Darling, I’ve loved you from the moment we met. You were never a game to me.”

She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but her chains restricted her. She wanted to scream with rage at the shackles she wore and the cell she was now confined to. She wanted revenge for Hailey and Sara destroying what she and David had built.

But more than that, she wanted Trinity dead for taking away her freedom. If she hadn’t been shot, she could have gotten away.

She inhaled deeply, calming herself. Everything will be fine.

Nothing could ever come between her and David. Their love was far stronger than any prison cell or the shackles that bound her hands and feet.

“Then why were you with Ryan?” he asked.

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