Page 110 of Under Your Scars
I’ve always wanted to do something for him to say, ‘thank you for not giving up on me’, because without him, I would have no one. The only thing I can think of is taking him home. To Ireland. He hasn’t been there in fifty years.
As much as I hate to think about Edwin dying, he’s fucking old. He’s eighty-seven and has about eight hundred different health issues. Just about the only thing he can do is take a lap around the mansion once a day for exercise. He uses a walker, and it takes him about half a century to get from his bed to his bedroom door, but the last time I tried to get him a wheelchair he threw his dentures at me. Took them right out of his mouth and hit me in the forehead with them.
The point is, he can’t do anything on his own. He has nurses to take care of his every need. I would have to arrange for an entire flock of them to come to Ireland with us which seems like a logistical nightmare, but I’d love to see the smile on his face when he gazes upon the beautiful green hills of his home country one last time. I think it would make him happy.
I care about Edwin. Deeply. I love him. I wouldn’t consider him my father, but he’s damn close. He raised me and taught me how to be a man. He did his best with me, but sadly, I still ended up really fucked in the head. I don’t blame him for that.
When I was younger, I fought him tooth-and-nail about going to therapy. I didn’t want to. In fact, I had such a strong aversion to it that on the one occasion he managed to get me into a room with a professional, I was so awful to the poor woman that she left the room in tears. I was only eleven.
He never tried again after that.
Now that I’m older and have real life experience under my belt, I regret not talking to him about what I was going through or how I felt. I would never entertain the idea of talking to a stranger, but I wish I had talked to him all the times he begged me to.
I talk to him now, though, not that he remembers anything I say. I tell him everything. I hold nothing back. Not even the ugly truth about the monster I’ve become. I talk about Elena—God, I talk about Elena so much that I think her name is permanently glued to his ears, even if he can’t remember it.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.
I swallowed my pride and promised Elena I would come with her to Texas to spend the holiday with her family. I’ll get to meet her brother, Travis, and his soon-to-be husband, Justin.
Unfortunately, I’ll also be trapped in a house with her father, who is not my biggest fan and frankly, I’m not his either. All the times Elena talked about how he was controlling and overbearing, I always thought she was being dramatic. It only took about twelve minutes in that hospital room with him to realize that wasn’t the case.
There are pros and cons to leaving Meridian City for a few days. The pros: it will be good for Elena. She needs time away from this city. Her life has been a rollercoaster since we met, and some normalcy will undoubtedly breathe some life into her. If Valenti is still lurking in the city, she’ll be far, far away from him. I don’t know if he’s done any research on her or her family to be considered a threat to her parents or brother, but it’s not on my list of worries at the moment. The cons? I’m spending two days away from Meridian City, which means I have two less days to track down the fucker.
I go out every night looking for leads. Old business associates. Regular club patrons. Even a few corrupt police officers and judges. I promised Elena that I wouldn’t kill anyone else except for Frank, but my methods of interrogation aren’t any less bloody.
Not that it’s done me any good. It’s like he vanished into thin air, and it’s really starting to piss me off. The urge to commit homicide surges through my veins like it’s my life’s essence. It’s so strong that I’ve even considered not claiming my kills with red tape so Elena doesn’t find out and I can sate the desire for blood wrapping around my spine like lightning. I can’t do that though. I feel like life would give me the middle finger and she’d find out somehow, and I’m on such thin ice with her that if I betray her trust again, I really will lose her forever. Maybe not physically, because she’ll never escape me, but emotionally? I’d never get her back.
I have what I call a workshop hidden in the basement of my home. It technically doesn’t exist. I paid a shit ton of money to falsify the property records to indicate the basement was sealed off a decade ago. I did seal it off, in case anyone ever comes snooping around, but I opened up another entrance just a few short feet away from the original, behind a false bookcase.
To get out of the workshop and into the city, I jackhammered into an abandoned sewer tunnel from the nineties that runs below the property.
With the exception of my guns, knives, and explosives, everything I use when I’m the Silencer has been made and forged by me, from my mask, to the hidden knife in the sole of my boot, to the clothes I wear.
Yes, I learned how to sew clothes for the Silencer. After I got an unexpected visit from the CIA a year and a half ago about my ‘suspiciouspurchases’, I couldn’t risk buying things anymore, so I had to learn to make them.
The things I do purchase off the dark web are paid for with a foreign bank account that’s connected to so many false identities that there’s absolutely no way to trace it back to me, and I always meet my sellers in person so there’s no risk of packages getting intercepted at my front door. I’m very careful.
I’ve been out all night. It’s six in the morning when I arrive back to the mansion sweaty, covered in blood. I take a long shower in my workshop, wiping away the black paint from my eyes and the blood splotches covering my body. I watch it all get sucked down the drain before drying off and dressing in a hoodie and jeans.
It's still early on a weekday. I gave most of my staff an extra day off since I won’t be here, but a few of them are still lingering around. Mostly the maids, making sure the mansion is spotless before heading home. I sit on a stool at my computer desk in my workshop while I wait for everyone to clear out of the library so my sudden reappearance goes unnoticed. I throw a stress ball at the wall with my feet propped up on the table, scrolling through my phone while I wait.
The only form of social media I have is Instagram, and I’m rarely active. I only follow six accounts. Reeves Enterprises, POTUS, Hugo Boss, Armani, Lamborghini, and Elena. The internet weirdos who have no life instantly took note when I followed a person instead of a company, and God help me, her life story popped up so fast on Reddit that it gave me whiplash.
Prior to meeting Elena, my last post was of me cutting the ribbon to the new administrative wing on campus at the orphanage seven months ago. Now, my most recent post is from our trip to Mykonos, where the world lost their shit when they found out I was with a woman, and then subsequently lost their shit again when photos emerged of my brand-new yacht which was clearly named after her. I got tagged in so many articles and posts about it that I had to mute my notifications because they were driving me nuts.
I still can’t believe posting a picture of Elena is what pushed my net worth over 500 billion. An astonishing number, even for me.
Believe me, I thanked her for it very thoroughly. With my mouth. And my fingers. And my dick. And a twenty carat Harry Winston necklace.Andthe entire Chanel catalog that was waiting on the jet for her the morning we left Mykonos.
And then she thankedme, wearing nothing but that diamond necklace and a fresh coat of red Chanel lipstick that ended up smeared all over my cock.
I squeeze that stress ball so tight it bursts. I can’t be having these kinds of thoughts. Not now. Not when Elena was fucking gang raped less than a month ago because I couldn’t keep a lid on my violence. I take a deep breath.
Thanksgiving in Texas will be good for her. Everything’s going to work out; even the weird standoff between her father and me.
I’ve been hanging on to the last thing he said to me.
I’ve had a sour taste in my mouth about it ever since he left. The manner of my parents’ deaths isn’t any secret. Everyone knows they were shot. Everyone knows I was there.
