Page 6 of Broken Hearts

He chuckled. “No. It was like that, at a time, when I was younger.”

I frowned. “Is that when you seemed to go on a break from killing?” I remembered from all my studies of the case that after the first few murders, the Heartbreaker had stopped killing for several years. At the time, investigators thought he’d died or moved on from the city, until he finally resurfaced again in late 2006. He’d continued his off-and-on pattern of murders ever since.

Alex nodded. “That’s right. I was very busy pursuing my career. It’s not easy to work almost a hundred hours a week as a surgical intern at a hospital and track down potential marks at the same time.”

“I guess it was worth it, though. Now you’re a rich doctor,” I said softly. And a serial killer, but you know, that’s totally par for the course….

He smiled gently. “I can’t take credit for all of it. My mother and stepfather helped me out a lot and made some investments for me and my sisters, Abigail and Lina, when we were very young. It paid off a lot in recent years. That’s how I could afford this place.”

My brows rose slightly. In all the time I’d been here, I hadn’t even considered that Alex might actually have a family somewhere out there. I was glad he was opening up to me, though, even sharing some of their names with me. It seemed intimate, made me feel closer to him.

“Do your parents live near here?”

Alex frowned and shook his head. “My mother and stepfather moved to Maine years ago. My biological father lives in California, but I never saw much of him anyway.”

“And your sisters?”

“They aren’t around either. It’s just me here.”

“That must be lonely.”

“I don’t mind it.”

I looked down and chewed my bottom lip. “I wanted to ask about my mother,” I said softly. Thoughts of her and her role in my father’s sick lifestyle had plagued my mind for a while now, but I never got the chance to ask about it yesterday.

Alex finally sat, his forehead creased. “What do you want to know?”

“Dan sort of put some ideas in my head—”

He interrupted. “I know. I was listening.”

“How?”

“Via a tiny recorder I stuck to a wall, unbeknownst to either of you,” he said. “And for the record, I’ve never drugged your water.”

“Oh. Right.” I nodded. Of course he was listening. “Then you know he also… he said you would want to punish my whole family for what my father did. He said you probably sped up my mother’s death.”

Alex’s lips were downturned as he listened. “That’s ridiculous,” he replied, his tone no-nonsense. “I helped your mother as much as I could. She was very sick for a long time. I helped her pain as long as she could stand it. When she died, that was all natural. I didn’t help her along. If I wanted her dead, I could’ve done it years ago.”

“That’s what I thought, but….” I nibbled my lip again, trying to find a way to piece together my fearful thoughts. “Why didn’t you kill her? I mean, you knew she knew about my father. Didn’t you view her as guilty? And… was she?”

The question made me feel sick. My mother hadn’t been perfect—in fact she was downright awful for a large period of my childhood due to her drinking—but the idea that she could’ve been complicit in my father’s activities made bile rise in my throat. Sure, she screamed and argued with my father when he announced his intentions to give me to the Circle, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t already aware of his lifestyle. Maybe she was okay with him doing what he did to young girls, and only started to argue when her own child was at stake.

At least I knew why she drank so much, though. It was pure guilt. It wound up killing her.

Alex sighed and rubbed his chin. “I had a feeling you’d ask that first.”

I crossed my arms. “And?”

“Your mother tried her best. She wasn’t one of them.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I heard everything that day. She wasn’t aware of his secret side at all. Not until the day he informed her what he was doing with you on your next birthday. She knew less than you did before that. He took you to all those parties, after all, but never her. She was clueless.”

“How could she not know anything?”

“He was the Police Chief. Always out, always busy, always invited to lots of events. She had no reason to suspect anything, and he hid it so well. She thought him taking you to all these so-called social events was just him being a good father and being very invested in his relationship with you.” He looked down for a second, then frowned, his forehead creasing into deeper lines. “Your father was ruthless. I can honestly say I saw and heard true evil that day, Celeste.”

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