Page 86 of The Dirty Saint

I wince as a shot connects with my nose.

“You promised me answers,” Michael yells, slicing through my flesh with the blade of his knife.

“Argh.”

“Fuck you,” Ezra yells, yanking and tugging on her chains, trying to get closer to me. “Fuck you!”

Killian holds Ezra down in an attempt to control her.

“What do you wanna know,” she shouts.

“Ezra, don’t!”

“I will tell you everything. Just stop hurting him…please.”

“Ezra!”

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

And then she opens them.

“It’s true. It’s all true. I killed your son. I killed Caleb Santo, and I buried his body in the small park near the church.”

“Ezra, stop,” I whisper.

“His blood was all over me. Stained my clothes and my fingernails and even got all tangled up in my hair. But even when he screamed and begged for mercy, I didn’t stop. I didn’twantto stop.”

“You fucking bitch,” Michael hisses.

“See, that’s justit,” Ezra barks. “You don’t know the whole story. And yet you blame me as if you do. Your son, your pride and joy, yeah, he took me behind the bleachers after school, where he raped me. He also broke my nose when I told him to stop. Oh, but the real cherry on top is that he got me pregnant. With a baby boy, one you seem to believe you have claim over. So you have no right to lay a hand on me. Or to sing praises about your child.

“Do you think I care that Caleb was a good boy when he was barely three months old? Or that he helped old ladies cross the fucking sidewalk? Your son was asickperson.”

The gasps in the room can be heard from miles away. No one dares let out a breath too loud or too intense.

“There,” she lays back. “You get what you paid for? That the confession you so desperately wanted, Michael? Well, congratulations. You got it.”

“He was supposed to go to college,” Michael screams.

“Guess what? So was I. It’s a little hard to do, however, when you are pregnant with a child, but you wouldn’t understand that.”

“He had dreams, Ezra, and you stole them from him.”

She nods.

“And you wanna know how much I regret that?”

She makes the letter O with her fingers.

“Zero.”

* * *

Ezra finally admitted it.

I don’t know why I’m shocked. I had a feeling.

There was just something so final about listening to her confess her actions to Michael. Hearing her recount Caleb’s sins. She barely even batted an eye. Never even let out a single tear.

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