Page 160 of Sinister Legacy
He lifts his chin toward the house and says in a voice laced with something nefarious, “Take a look, baby.”
Casting a glance at the house, goosebumps raise the hairs on my arms when I shiver. There’s something in the air tonight. “What have you done, King?”
As I look back at him, he cups my cheek and strokes his thumb over my reddened skin in a ghostly touch. “I told you, I will always look out for you. I fucking hate seeing the demons in your eyes and the way you try to hide that jagged crack in your mask. Everyone deserves justice, Keira. Even you. Society won’t give it to you, but I will.”
My body gravitates closer to King the way it always does, and he leans down to cup the back of my neck, his warm palm engulfing my shivering skin. He presses his soft, damp lips to mine and nips me with his teeth. A playful, quick nip that shoots tingles straight to my core, and a delicious promise of what’s to come later.
Untangling myself from his gravitational orbit, I walk up to the house with hesitant steps. The ground is soft from all the rain we’ve had this unusually mild winter. Not snowy like that day ten years ago when I stared up at the Death House. I never set foot near that town again after we left Blackwoods and went to university. But whenever I encounter an article about their infamous death chamber, my heart twinges. Even to this day, ten years later, it’s working through inmates.
King came with me to my father’s funeral, and Cassie was there, too. It was the moment I decided that she was worth our imperfect friendship. No matter how much we dislike each other at times, she was there for me when others shunned me. I had no one besides her and King. Not even my mom. That’s how you weed out the bad eggs from the good ones.
The few people who crawl out from the woodwork to actually support you. She was that friend to me when I had to bury my father and lay the past to rest. Unlike the world, she didn’t tell me my father was a monster who didn’t deserve a funeral or to be mourned. King’s father took care of the costs. He even let me stay with King when I had nowhere else to go.
King and I have been inseparable since then. We went to university together, then moved far-fucking-away from our past and bought our first house. King followed in his father’s footsteps, working remotely for his father’s company while I stayed out of the limelight as much as possible, turning down countless book offers and tell-all interviews. Even now, my father’s legacy is a stain on my record. But I never changed my surname. Even when I wanted to. It’s the last thing I have of my father, and I stubbornly cling to it as an honor of the small little light in his otherwise dark soul. The light only I saw through my innocent young eyes.
In order to move on, I’ve had to embrace my inner child, that young girl who had her entire world thrown upside down. King paid for therapy for a while, but I spent most of it staring through the window while the therapist tried to prod me with questions.
I don’t like talking about my father or my inner struggle with my own urges that won’t stop whispering in my head. I only open up late at night, wrapped up in King’s arms as the moonlight shines through the half-closed blinds. Only then do I dare whisper aloud about my desire to do unspeakable things…
King never judges.
Never tells me I’m sick.
Demented.
Evil.
All the things my mind screams at me.
I stop in front of the rotten steps, looking back at King, who watches me from beneath his dark lashes with a sinful smirk. A vagrant breeze moves his hair across his forehead, and he looks back out at the forest when a wolf howls at the moon.
I turn too, gripping the railing as more wolves joins in with the haunted sound that somehow speaks to the ache in my soul.
When King looks back at me, there are glittering tears in my eyes. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Bypassing the rotten steps, I jump up on the porch and slowly make my way inside the derelict shed. Much to my surprise, it has electricity. And when I press the switch, the living room floods with light.
I gasp at what I see: a chair in the middle of the room, and a tied-up, naked, struggling man with a burlap sack over his head.
As I step back, the plastic sheet on the worn, wooden floor crinkles beneath my boots. I’ve been here before. The same unwelcome excitement I felt then floods me now. It terrifies me. Staring unblinkingly, I startle when King puts his hands on my shoulders.
“Aren’t you going to see who it is?”
“This is wrong,” I whisper.
“Depending on who you ask. But in our fucked-up world, this is justice. No one fucks with my girl and lives to tell the tale.”
My heart gallops wildly in my chest as I step forward, inching closer to the naked man. His hairy beer gut is bruised, and it’s evident by the marks on his arms and torso that King had fun with him before tying him up and offering him to me like a sacrificial lamb.
Looking back at King, I hesitate.
With a quirk of his sinful lips that reveals a hint of sharp incisors, he slides his dark gaze past me to the struggling, sweaty man in front of me. “Ten years ago, this sorry excuse of a man added to your trauma. Forcing more skeletons to crowd in your closet. I’ve waited patiently, letting sufficient time pass to stop suspicion falling on us, but even the mostrighteoushave to face the reaper sooner or later. And this man will pay for his sins tonight. I would have liked to bring you the governor on a platter too, but unfortunately, that pig died of a heart attack two years back. Unluckily or maybe luckily for him, depending on how you look at it and how vengeful you feel.”
“King,” I whisper, swallowing around the thick lump in my throat. “It won’t bring my father back. It won’t erase the past.”
“True, but it will give you closure. An eye for an eye. Isn’t that what we teach our kids? This is no different. One man’s justice is another man’s crime.”
Inhaling a shaky breath, I reach out to pull the burlap sack from his head. I know I must face this part of me sooner or later. Repressing it won’t work much longer.
