Page 22 of Devil's Riches

I felt a surge of rage inside me. “I have a right to know what happened and why,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Did your sister help you?”

Greg let out an amused snort. “You really want to know what happened, huh?”

“Yes.”

He tapped the tip of the blade on the family photo again. “You want to know what I did to your dear old dad?”

“Yes,” I repeated impatiently, eyes narrowing. “Tell me what happened to him and where he is.”

“He’s right where the cops always said he was,” Greg said, smiling that same old wicked smile. “In that national park up north.”

“Where’s his body? Did you bury him?”

He shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t have a fucking clue where he ended up.”

“How is that possible?”

“Well, I took him up there after we broke him out of jail, and I did him like this.” He waved the knife at the side of my neck, making me flinch. “Opened the carotid. Quick and easy. Watched him bleed out for a minute, but then I needed to piss, so I left him there.”

My stomach lurched. “You left him there to die alone?”

Somehow, that vile act seemed worse than the act of sticking the knife in my father’s neck. It was so cold; so beyond anything even remotely human.

“He had no chance of survival, so I didn’t need to stand guard and watch him die,” Greg said. “He asked me to, though. Practically fucking begged. Told me he didn’t want to die alone. But like I said, I really needed to piss.”

Bile rose in my throat as I pictured my father lying in the snow in that rugged park, bleeding to death by himself. I couldn’t even imagine the terror and loneliness he experienced in those moments, or how weak and pitiful he must have felt when he begged his killer to stay with him just so he could have another human by his side as he took his last breaths.

“What happened to his body?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“I told you, I don’t fucking know,” Greg said, rolling his eyes upward. “After I left him there, the wildlife must’ve scavenged everything.” He paused and bared his teeth in another twisted smile. “I bet if you went for a walk up there and looked around, you’d find some of his bones up in old bird’s nests. The cops never searched properly. They found all that blood and a few teeth after he went missing, and that was enough for them to decide he was dead.”

My blood pressure was rising quickly; my rage ready to ignite. “So you never buried him. You just left him there for fucking animals to chew on.”

“Why does it matter?” Greg asked, cocking his head. “He wasn’t alive when those animals showed up, so he didn’t feel anything. He was just a piece of meat.”

“No, he was my father!” I said, hands balling at my sides. “My family deserved something to bury, at the very least. But you…” I trailed off and shook my head, lips stretching into a snarl. “You couldn’t even let us have that. You took fucking everything from us!”

Greg rolled his eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. You asked to hear what happened, and I told you.”

I took a deep breath, trying my best to get myself under control. He hadn’t told me the whole story yet, and I needed to get it out of him before I lost my shit entirely. “Who helped you?” I asked in a hollow voice. “And why were you locked away in the bunker for ten years?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” I said, setting my jaw. “I came back to this island for answers, so you might as well give them to me before you kill me. What do you have to lose?”

Before he could respond, a short thumping sound echoed through the hall. It died away before I could discern its exact origin or nature, but I thought it sounded like a person bumping up against a wall somewhere.

Greg grabbed me and pulled me to his side, fingertips digging into my arm again. “What the fuck was that?”

“A branch probably hit a window,” I said. “It’s windy outside.”

“It wasn’t that.” He pulled me forward, pointing to the living room. “It sounded like it came from somewhere in there, and there’s no trees outside that front window. I know because I checked the whole place out earlier to make sure it was safe.”

He took another step forward, eyes narrowing with suspicion as he cast his gaze over the dim space. Everything was still and silent.

“Maybe it was a mouse,” I said. “No one’s been here for years, so pests are probably running all over the place.”

“It wasn’t a fucking mouse,” he hissed. “Someone’s gotten in here.”

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