Page 67 of Beautiful Beast

“I killed someone.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I demand. “Today? We need to get a lawyer. And you shouldn’t be telling me on a cell phone. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You need to–”

“No, no, no, though I’m honored you would save me even if I was guilty of murder, no questions asked. This was self-defense. A long time ago.”

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

She’s seated in the library, her happy place. Nothing brings a smile to Belle’s face quite like a room full of books, and I’m not surprised it’s where she went to ground herself.

I don’t speak and just stare at her beautiful face that’s deep in thought, knowing she’ll tell me the story in her own time.

“My mother… She’s a train wreck. After my dad left her, she didn’t go crawling to my grandmother for money, even though we both would have been better off. Instead, she jumped from man to man. And, unfortunately, when I hit puberty, some of her boyfriends started to take an interest in me, which she blamed and hated me for.”

Rage simmers to a boil in my gut because I know where this story is heading.

“It’s not your fault. It’s their fault for being pedophiles, and her fault for not protecting you. Being jealous of her twelve-year-old daughter shouldn’t have been a thought in her head.”

Anger has me seething and pacing the balcony, the familiar burn of rage brought by injustice flowing through my veins.

“I know that now, after a whole whack of therapy,” Belle says, giving me a small smile. “But there was this one boyfriend in particular. Donny. He would ‘accidentally’ walk in on me while I was showering. He would barge into my room when I was changing. He stared at me in such a lewd way that my skin crawled. When I told my mom about it, she said that I should stop dressing like such a whore.”

Despite being stunning, Belle wears modest, conservative clothing. She’s so beautiful that she doesn’t need to try because she’d look sexy in a paper bag. I always assumed that was why – it wasn’t necessary.

But the reason goes much deeper.

“I knew she wouldn’t protect me. As much as I tried to stay out late and be away from home as much as possible, I also knew the time would come when he’d try something. And I was prepared when my bedroom door opened at 2 am. I still remember the time. I turned my head and looked. It’s funny the memories that stand out to us like shiny pennies when others just fade away. I wish the rest of it would go away.”

Fury builds to epic proportions in my chest, making it hard to breathe. If Donny wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him with my bare hands.

It’s a shame I can’t kill him again.

“Did he…”

“Technically, but not for long. He climbed on top of me, grabbed my wrists, and overpowered me way faster than I ever imagined possible. It was the sharp bite of pain, the loss of my virginity, that gave me the strength to fight like hell.”

My stomach rolls because I can’t even imagine the depravity in a grown man’s brain to prey on an innocent child.

Belle deserved rose petals, candles, and a man who loved her and cared about her pleasure when she chose to gift her virginity to someone. Not some sick old pervert who just took what he wanted and left her in pieces.

“I got my hand free and I… Adam, I… I literally stabbed him in the throat. I wasn’t even aiming. I just wrapped my fingers around the handle of the knife and threw my arm anywhere it would connect to get him off me. I didn’t mean to kill him. At least, I don’t think I did. I just wanted him to stop.”

There’s horror in her voice, and I intimately understand exactly how she’s feeling because the horror never leaves you.

Taking a life is an out-of-body experience. When I’m going to kill someone, my mind switches to autopilot and I only focus on the immediate next step, not on the end game.

Reflecting on doing something so violent and final is like remembering a movie you watched, except you actually did the thing that most people never will.

It changes you, no matter how much of a piece of shit the person you’re killing happens to be.

And I hate that Belle had to do it.

“I told the police that I didn’t clean up after eating dinner in my room and that I just grabbed a knife that was handy in self-defense. Truth is, the knife was under my pillow. Waiting. They must have pieced it together, but nothing happened to me. I still think about it every day.”

And she’ll never stop thinking about it.

“They didn’t remove you from your mother’s custody?” I ask.

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