Page 51 of The Hand that Frays

The one she’s here to defend is me.

She can’t have her revenge on my mother; I’ve already dealt with that. But she can have her revenge on Carl.

This is my kill, but even knowing that I want to sit back and watch someone else protect me, kill for me.

Even while I’ve witnessed her kill on command—mycommand—it’s wholly different from her slaughtering in my name.

To defend the innocent I once was.

The damaged little boy in my psyche wants to cling to her leg as she spills Carl’s blood in my defense, worshiping the ground she walks on like she’s the angel of death.

I created her, but she invoked this in me.

This love that now drives me to look at her over all else.

Even while my prey sits before me, I can only focus on her.

“I did it for Anne. She’s the one you want.”

I scoff, returning to reality as I push off the sill. “So you’re still going to let your wife take the blame? I came here to kill her. I’ll not deny it, but she’s not the blood I’ll end up slathering on my skin tonight, Carl.”

My words have tears springing from the man’s eyes. They roll over his flushed cheeks, and the blood pooling in them calls to me.

It’s like a morning songbird calling to the rising sun, this twisted need in my gut.

And tonight, I’ll answer it.

“I would’ve never done it if Anne didn’t need to always feel loved so often. She wanted her kids to need her more, so I made that happen.”

His defense is weak, and it only makes anger unfurl through the cords of muscle in my neck as I roll it.

Lyla looks at me, never dropping her gun away from Carl; in fact, I hear the moment she squeezes the trigger harder, and so does Carl because he straightens in his chair. “Want me to bring her in?”

“Bring who in?” Carl panics.

I smile, lifting my hand and tucking some of Lyla’s hair behind her ear. “You’re so beautiful tonight, stupidgirl.”

She preens, closing her eyes and allowing my touch to ground her.

“Bring her in,” I answer, giving my command as I take her gun and point it at Carl.

Lyla steps into the hall, grabbing Ada—who’s strapped to a rolling desk chair we’d found in her bedroom.

She’s gagged, but the screams behind the gag are incessant once she’s in the room with us.

Lyla pulls a blade, brushing it over her face. “Quiet, toy. Too much screaming makes me giddy. When I’m excited, I can’t be trusted to keep my cool,” she tells the Hatt girl, and my cock twitches as I groan.

“Fucking her daughter. Was that for Anne’s benefit, too?” I ask him, and he grips the arms of the chair in his hands, knuckles turning white.

He’s a fit man—in his forties—with a full head of blond hair and a sculpted body. I can see the appeal his stepdaughter had for him.

Even if I still find the game these two have been playing sick.

How Ada could turn the other cheek and allow her siblings to be continually abused is the thing that Lyla couldn’t let go of. So, we captured, tortured, and questioned the little beast.

Our findings were that the girl had no soul, likely because of whatever the concoction of cleaners and poisons had done to her gray matter over the years.

“That wasn’t my fault!”

---