Page 222 of His Pretty Little Duet

Wariness ripples through me.

As he moves around the all-white and grey bedroom, his gait is slow—meaningful. Two walls have 3D embossing—geometric patterns in the white plaster. No room in this house is boring and flat. They all have dimensions.

He scans the lavish space, looking at nothing and everything as though for the first and last time. I came to tell him he hurt me, but find him suffering more pain than I’m in.

He stops by the closet door and runs his palm down the red material of a dress hanging on the door. It’sherdress. I can tell by the fabric, the column style.

I try to keep my breaths shallow, concerned my panting will stir, awaken, or spook whatever dark entity is circling him. “What happened tonight?”

“She confessed,” he hisses out, stopping to touch a bottle on the bedside drawer. His touch is stiff. “To beating my brothers,” he continues. “To despising them.” He winces. “Christ.She hated them. How did I not see that before?”

Past tense—hated.“Hated?”

I hardly have the will for words, feeling his testimony on his tongue, hearing it in his deadly timbre, seeing it before me as he touches things, his fingertips collecting memories.

“She was the informant, sweet girl. She told Nerrock—your father—that his son wasn’t his.”

Rounding the bed now, he stops. He sits on the edge, facing the door and stares at me frozen in the jamb. I straighten under his gaze.

Where is she?

Clay makes a pyramid with his hands, resting his fingers on his lower lip. His gaze is vacant.

A swamp of darkness moves across his eyes, growing the pupils until nothing but thin rings of blue remain.

Where is she?

This is where she was staying, but it’s after midnight and the house is quiet. Even the halls were empty of house staff. I blink at him.

My heart tells me to go to him, cradle him, kiss him, use my voice, but something stops me.

He eyes me. “She… was responsible for it all. She was the reason Konnor was locked away. The reason Dustin loathed us… but she was still my mother, little deer. Just like Jimmy, I had affection for her.”

I swallow over the lump in my throat.Past tense—was. “Wasyour mother?”

“Yes,” he says, a chilling utterance that slithers inside my ears and delivers the answer without further words.

Yes—was.

“She asked me to dispose of Konnor,” he states adamantly. “She wants thebastardgone.”

“Oh my God,” I gasp. Wrestling with my feet, I will them to move towards him. They do. Taking me closer, steady and slow, and I feel the way he tracks my movements.

He is too still now that I am closer, as though he is unsure whether it is safe for him to move. “She told me to make my sons hard,” he mentions, emotionless.

No.“No,”I say, taking another small step, my eyes unwavering from him. “Don’t do that.”

Heat radiates from him, hitting me from across the room as he says, “I killed her.”

I stop mid-stride, my tippytoe on the floor, my heel raised, my pulse screaming through my veins to use that foot to run away. “Clay.”

“I killed her,” he says again, each word punching the air. He starts to vibrate with rage, his eyes locked on mine, his anger brewing. “I made the tough call,” he preaches—chants—a line from a book or story, and not his own natural words. “I weeded out betrayals. I made her liable. I protected my brothers. I?—”

I cover my mouth, gaping at him over my hands. He shoots to his feet, lunging for the bottle by the bedside, hurling it at the wall, the pieces shattering, the crash echoing down the hall.

I jump back.

He doesn’t stop. He reaches for another, pelting it at the dress he fondly touched earlier, breaking the canister open, spilling its contents all over the fabric.

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