Page 217 of I Will Break You

NINETY-TWO

AMETHYST

I stare at the crime board, not knowing what the hell to think.

Scraps of paper hang on the wall, showcasing splintered pieces of my past. From the missing person reports, it looks like Sparrow and Wilder disappeared after leaving a college party with an unidentified drunk girl.

The dates line up with the weekend Mom and Dad burst into my dorm room and whisked me straight into 13 Parisii Drive. There’s a prescription pinned to the board for a variety of drugs with complex pharmaceutical names. The signature at the bottom belongs to Dr. Saint.

Palpitations pound through my chest with a force that reaches my fingertips. The question isn’t whether I killed the brothers or even why. It was probably self-defense or righteous retaliation—same way I dispatched Mr. Lawson. I can’t remember them because Dr. Saint plied me with enough drugs to wipe out the memory.

My gaze wanders to the notes scrawled in writing too psychopathic to be legible. The author of them hates me with an intensity I feel in the inner workings of my gut. How have I never seen these?

Did Xero intercept these letters?

Did Xerowritethese letters?

If so, why would he arrange for the first of them to be sent before the wedding and not after? I shake my head. He couldn’t have. The handwriting doesn’t even match what I know of his penmanship, nor does it sound like anything he’d ever put down on paper.

If he isn’t the acrimonious author, then why are the notes even in my crawlspace? And those terrible pictures… I can’t bear to look at them, and not just because they depict a child suffering the worst kind of torture. They give me vertigo. It’s the same jumping-off-the-dive-board sensation I get that prevents me from staring at my face in the mirror because I can’t bear to look at the reflected monster.

My breath shallows, and I turn my back to the board. Maybe there’s a perfectly innocent explanation. Maybe the person behind the first threatening letter and photo sent more, and Xero’s people intercepted them at his command.

I nod, my chest loosening.

Xero wouldn’t fuck with my mind for kicks… Would he?

But he would do it for revenge.

Xero built an entire complex of chambers and even a control room so he could have somewhere to relax while he doled out a cocktail of torture, gaslighting, and mental abuse. Hell, a few feet away from this space is a secure prison where he kept a quartet of men he transformed into a human centipede.

If Dale and his cohorts hadn’t broken into my house to spoil his fun, then that torture room would have been occupied by me.

Realization squeezes my lungs, and I double over with my forearms resting on my thighs. What’s the difference between being stuck here with Xero and being in the clutches of X-Cite Media? One of them wants me dead and defiled while the other wants to imprison and torture me for eternity.

Shivers seize my skeleton. I want to fall to my knees, but I’m afraid I’ll never be able to rise. Gripping the edge of Xero’s chair, I ease myself up to standing and sit at his desk.

“What would Rapunzelita do?” I mutter.

One, she’s fictional. Two, she blacks out and wakes up to find her problems solved. Three, it’s not even a full moon.

I glance across the surface of the empty desk, my gazeskimming the monitors broadcasting all corners of my home. A slight figure exits number eleven with a trash bag and disappears out of range. Judging from the black hair and glasses frame, I imagine it’s Ezekiel. Does that mean Relaney’s also out of jail?

My fingers drift toward a drawer, and I slide it open, finding a bottle of chloroform and a manilla dossier. I pull it out and spread it open, uncovering a selection of letter-sized photos. The first is of a group of boys sitting on tiered benches. They’re all dressed in gray t-shirts, matching shorts, and sneakers, looking to be from the ages of ten to fourteen.

Standing behind them are stern-looking men in black, who appear to be either teachers or camp counselor. My brows crease. Is this Xero’s child assassin facility?

The next photo is of a family whose faces I mostly recognize. The blonde woman is Xero’s stepmother, Bianca Greaves, and the two older boys look like younger versions of the brothers Xero murdered. So, the man must be Xero’s father.

I compare his face to the group photo, finding him standing in the back among the adults.

“Wow,” I whisper.

The other photos in the dossier are of the same man at social events, shaking hands with dignitaries and posing with people I don’t recognize. Tuning out, I shuffle through until I spot a picture of the man outside a nightclub with someone who resembles Dad so closely that I flinch.

It’s a less beaten down version of Uncle Clive, which must have been taken before he went to prison. Dad didn’t have that slight overbite, while Uncle Clive’s is still visible through his scraggly beard.

But how the hell would a man like him know a monster like Xero’s father?

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