Page 82 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

Henry Pierson has always been a conventionally attractive man. A man you might see out at the grocery store with bright blue eyes so clear it might cause you to take a second look. The fit dad with well-styled blond hair across the street who smiles as you jog by. Maybe even the blind date your friend set you up with who dresses nice and carries an air of approachable confidence.

Likable, digestible, average.

Prison air and time have not been kind to him, not that I expected it to be.

“You have twenty minutes,” the guard behind him reminds me before shoving the inmate into the cell and shutting the door, effectively locking us in here with one another.

Silence crackles in the air like dry lightning, ready to strike at any second. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up in warning as I take in the man standing in front of me.

With all the time spent in here, it looks like he’s found time to keep up his physique. Still tall and lean, just as I remember. The mangy beard, however, is new. Wrinkles around his nose and mouth have aged him, or maybe it’s the solitary confinement.

But his eyes.

They haven’t changed a bit.

“Hello, Henry.”

He tracks me, the changes over the last several years since he saw me painted in the blue-and-red hue of police lights. I’d been a child, standing at the front of the house, watching him being taken away.

“Alexander!” His voice is silk, a snake waiting in the grass. I used to tremble when he spoke. “Look at you!”

He clasps his hands together in front of him, shaking his head as if he’s so overjoyed to see me, so overwhelmed by parental admiration.

I realize I stand a few inches taller than him now. He no longer looms over me like he did when I was a kid. This was the man that held power over me growing up? The one who controlled my every move?

“You look strong,” he says, nodding his head with approval, a smile on his face. “I did quite well, didn’t I?”

It’s not unlike him to take credit, the grandiose sense of importance that entitles him to everyone’s success regardless of his involvement. Narcissistic tendencies die hard.

I decide to ignore the comment entirely, not giving him the attention he seeks.

“Forgive me if I don’t repay the sentiment,” I hum in the back of my throat, rubbing my thumb and forefinger together. “Orange doesn’t suit you.”

Henry laughs, a cackle. It’s a whip against raw, wet skin.

It’s in his nature to remain calm, steadily unaffected, because he cares little about the sentiments of other people. An aloofness that made him scary, made people fear him.

That laugh used to seep through the walls of the shed while heworked.I listened to it in tandem with bloodcurdling screams for hours, waiting for him to finish so that I could clean up his mess.

Always cleaning up his messes.

“Have you finally come to apologize for leaving me to rot in here?” he asks, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs keep him shackled. “It’s been how many years since I last saw my son?”

Not long enough.

“I wasn’t aware I was the reason you were thrown in prison.” I cock my head to the side. “Had I been murdering all those women that whole time?”

The thing about Henry is he loves to play games with your mind, gaslight and manipulate until all you believe are the words that come from his mouth. He’s smart that way, but all psychopaths have a weakness.

His is his ego.

“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, son. You left that rat of a girl alive, a witness. Now this”—he shakes the chains keeping him locked in as if I can’t see them—“is what I’ve been reduced to. I’m owed an apology from you, at the very least.”

My molars grind together, and I bite down on the hot streak of anger that wants to lash out of my mouth. Of course he’d blame his downfall on me. As if he hadn’t killed Phoebe Abbott out of pattern, in a fit of panic because she was going to tell the police all about what she’d seen him doing in that shed.

No, of course he’d never admit he panicked. Not Henry Pierson. This man is perfect, unaffected—he would never be his own downfall.

“I didn’t come here to talk about the past with you,” I say instead, my tone level.

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