Page 17 of Black Hearts

“It’s why I left. Why I didn’t trust you for so long,” I said softly. “When the power went out that day, I found a box in your study, and I thought… I thought….”

“That I lied.” Alex ran a hand through his hair, and his entire body seemed to deflate. “That I had her there before you?”

“Yes. And then Dwyer told me you murdered her. That they found her body in the backyard at one of your other places. I know it’s not true now.”

“No, it’s not.” He shook his head. “Jesus, all those questions you asked me. The distrust. It all makes sense now,” he muttered. “It’s my fucking fault. You wouldn’t have left if I just fucking told you.”

“Told me what?”

“The whole story.” For the first time in weeks, I saw vulnerability in Alex’s eyes. He shook his head slowly, then spoke up again. “I was going to tell you one day. I knew you were curious about how I discovered the Circle, and how I knew who some of them were. I always planned on giving you all the answers, but I stalled. I hate talking about it. It’s… hard. But it’s my fault you left. Jesus, I should’ve just fucking told you….”

“You can tell me now,” I said in a pleading voice. I hated seeing him like this. I needed him to stop holding back; needed him to open up.

“Evangeline was my half-sister. We all called her Lina,” he began in a soft voice, not meeting my eyes.

All the air in the room seemed to evaporate. I felt like I’d been punched in the chest.

How could I have been so stupid?

Alex told me his sisters’ first names a long time ago: Abigail and Lina. Of course they had a different last name to him. Alex’s stepfather wasn’t a Magnusson, for obvious reasons, and when his daughters—Alex’s younger half-sisters—were born, they must’ve been given his last name. That had to be Gibson.

When Alex told me his sisters ‘weren’t around’ anymore, I assumed he meant they’d left the state along with the rest of his family. It hadn’t occurred to me that one of them might actually be dead.

“What happened to Lina?” I asked in a small voice.

He looked down at the photo of her again. “This was taken at our old house. She always loved this rug,” he said, seemingly not hearing my question. “I suppose that’s why you thought I had her at my current house at some point? Same rug. I took it with me when my parents left the state. They didn’t want it anymore.” He looked up at me, waiting for me to confirm his assumption.

I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered, my cheeks flaming with shame. If I’d only asked….

“Lina and Abigail were twins. Four years younger than me. I loved them both, but I was always a bit closer to Lina. She was just so….” He trailed off for a moment, staring into space. “She was fiery. Confident. Abigail was more of a shy bookworm. She preferred to keep to herself.”

“Uh-huh.” I nodded, prompting him to continue.

“When they were around thirteen, Abigail was still very much a quiet thing, but Lina developed a bit of a wild streak. She used to sneak out of the house, get in trouble at school, get caught smoking… things like that. So young but so desperate to grow up. I kept telling her to calm down, enjoy her childhood, but she didn’t want to. This photo was actually taken around that time.” He looked down at the picture again.

My eyebrows shot up. “She was only thirteenthere?”

He nodded. “She loved makeup, as much as our parents hated it. It made her look older. But yes, she was essentially still a child. Barely weighed ninety pounds.” He was quiet again for a long moment. “Not long after she started to get into trouble, she vanished. Everyone assumed she ran away, being a wild child and all, but I always knew something else happened to her. I knew as much as she wanted to grow up, she wouldn’t just disappear like that. Then one day, two years later, she was found.”

I exhaled, having only just realized I was holding my breath. “Was she….?”

“No. Not dead.” Alex shook his head. “She’d been found on the edge of a road somewhere. They thought she was dead at first, and I think for a while, she was. But somehow, they got her breathing again. Took her to hospital, where they eventually identified her and called our family.”

“So what happened?”

He held up a hand, silently asking for me to give him more time. “She was almost unrecognizable at first. She’d suffered from massive internal bleeding, fractured or broken bones, lacerated kidneys, bruised lungs, and head injuries. Some of her other internal organs had actually almost been crushed, but they hung on by a thread. Everything was consistent with being run over by a car, which as it turned out, was exactly what happened.”

He paused to take a breath, and I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“You will. When the doctors had her stabilized against all odds and at least some of the massive bruising had started to fade, they started to notice that she didn’t just have new scars and wounds from whatever accident she’d been involved in. That’s what those other photos in the box were. I’m sure you saw them. They were taken in the hospital weeks after she was found, once she was finally able to stand up. The doctors took them as proof that she’d been terribly abused long before she was ever hit by the car.”

“Yes, I saw the photos,” I murmured.

“She had old scarring on her back, buttocks and legs consistent with being severely beaten and burned with cigarettes multiple times. There was also a circle carved into her.”

I shook my head. “But there was no circle in the photos. That’s why I thought….” I trailed off. I didn’t want to say it out loud; that I thought she’d been a victim of Alex and not the Circle.

“I know. I’ll get to that,” he muttered. “She didn’t speak at first. She just sat there in the hospital bed, staring into space for weeks. I sat with her every day, waiting. I had to know who hurt her. My baby sister….” He swallowed hard, hesitating. “Then, finally, she told me what happened. She said she tried to sneak out one night to a party with her older friends, but before she could get there, she was taken off the street by some men. They drugged her and took her somewhere. She wasn’t sure where; all she remembered about the first few weeks was that she was in a dark, gray room. Probably this one.” He looked around, his eyes filled with cold fury. “They hurt her. Drugged her. Raped her. Men with little tattoos on their arms, all the same.”

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