Page 65 of Hell of a Mess
Mommy,
I’m sorry I haven’t written in a couple of weeks. I’ve not been to the basement. Father has had me sleeping in the nurse’s room beside Dalia’s room. He has also started calling me Dalia. I don’t understand it, but he told me I had to answer to it, and if I didn’t, he’d lock me in the basement forever. That I’d die down there. I don’t want to die. But I don’t want him to call me Dalia. I want to be called Lace, but he hates that name. Only you called me Lace. I wish everyone else would. Even the nurse called me Dalia today, and she called Dalia Lassandra. She knew those weren’t the right names, but she looked at me like I was a brat when I said so. She then told Father what I’d said, and he slapped me in the face and put me back in the basement. I heard him lock the door. I’m afraid he is going to leave me down here forever.
What if I die? Will you be there?
I love you.
Lace
Footsteps on the stairs tore me from the horrific words I had been reading, and I closed the notebook and tucked it under my arm before reaching for the pistol at my back. Without makinga noise, I killed the light on my phone and moved behind the privacy screen.
“Luther?” Bane’s voice hissed into the darkness.
I tucked my gun back while pulling out my phone and turning back on the light.
“You almost got shot,” I muttered, stepping out from behind the screen.
Bane had his flashlight on, too, and he looked at me, then behind me before frowning. “What is that?”
I glanced back at it one more time. “A bed,” I said through my teeth.
“For who?” he asked, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You need to come with me. We found her.”
My eyes snapped back to his face. “Dalia?” I demanded.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Take me to her,” I said, stalking past him on my way out of the hell I’d unraveled down here. When I burned this place to the ground, I was lighting the match down here first.
“Luther, she’s comatose.”
I stopped and let that sink in. Lace’s words ran through my head.
“I took care of Dalia.”
Jesus, what had happened in this house?
Twenty-Eight
Luther
“How original,” I muttered as the hidden door behind a bookshelf in the library opened when Bane pulled out the correct book.
“The fact that the spine is red and is titledDaliadoesn’t give it away at all.” Bane’s tone was laced with sarcasm.
Not waiting for him, I stepped into a short hallway with low lighting. There was one door at the end, and it was already open. Locke stood just inside with his arms crossed over his chest. His gaze swung to meet mine, and the reality of what we’d found was etched in his grim expression.
After reading from the notebook I carried under my arm, I was more prepared for what I was going to see than they had been when they found her. The pieces had all fallen into place for me now. Except for one thing: why? If Halsten hated Lace so much, then why make her pose as her sister? What was the point?
The bedroom was one fit for a princess. I was sure it would be any little girl’s dream room. Dolls lined the wall. A huge-ass dollhouse, which looked like a replica of the house we were in, stood open with working lights and a tiny fucking water fountain outside with real running water.
When I was fully inside, my gaze went to where Locke was looking to see a woman lying in a frilly white-and-pink bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. She was frail and looked older than Lace, not younger. But that most likely had to do with the unhealthy pallor of her skin. It was hard to see any similarities between the two sisters. Where Lace shone so brightly that she made it impossible to look away from her, this one was a shell. Nothing more than a body, it seemed.
“What do you think happened to her?” Locke asked in a raspy, low voice.
I shrugged. “Not sure. But I don’t think it was an accident.”
One of the notes Lace had written to her deceased mother talked about Dalia scaring her. The “fit” she’d also mentioned Dalia having after the horse became nervous around her led me to believe that this was connected to a mental illness.
