Dante catalogued these women like specimens, rating their “potential” on various criteria I don’t want to understand.
Twenty women total. Three confirmed missing. Two found dead under suspicious circumstances. Fifteen are still alive, as far as we know.
“Jesus,” I breathe.
“There’s more.” Benedetto clicks through folders on the desktop. “Video files. This bastard had cameras everywhere.”
I close the laptop before I see something that will make me dig up my son’s grave just so I can kill him again.
“Destroy it. All of it. After we’ve documented the ones who are alive and safe.”
“What about the police?”
“What about them? Half these files show crimes in multiple jurisdictions. By the time they sort through the bureaucracy, more women die.” I turn away from the evidence of my son’s depravity. “We handle this ourselves.”
In the hallway, I find Kasimira sitting on a bench beneath the stained glass window, staring at nothing. She’s been here for two hours while the search continued, processing horrors I can’t begin to imagine.
“How bad?” she asks without looking at me.
“Bad.”
“How many?”
“Twenty total. Seventeen more files.”
Her shoulders sag like I’ve placed a physical weight on them. “Twenty women.”
“We’re going to find the ones who are still alive.”
“And the ones who aren’t?”
The question hangs between us like a blade. What do I tell her? That my son was a serial killer who happened to keep her alive because she served his purposes? That she survived by being useful when others died for being inconvenient?
“Kasimira—”
“I want to see the files.”
“No.”
“They were his victims too. I need to know?—”
“You need to not destroy yourself with guilt over crimes you didn’t commit.” I sit beside her on the bench. “You survived him. That’s what matters now.”
“Is it? Because twenty other women didn’t.”
“Three others didn’t. The rest are alive because he fixated on you instead of them.”
The logic is brutal but true. For two years, Dante’s obsession with controlling and breaking Kasimira kept him occupied. While he was busy torturing her, other women went about their lives unaware of how close they’d come to disappearing.
“That’s not comfort,” she says quietly.
“It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be truth.”
She turns to look at me then, and the pain in her eyes cuts deeper than any blade. “How did you not know? How did you not see what he was?”
The question I’ve been dreading. The one that’s been eating at me since I opened the first folder and saw my son’s handwriting documenting systematic stalking.
“I knew he was dangerous. I knew he had no regard for other people’s lives or feelings.” I lean back against the wall, suddenly exhausted. “But this level of…depravity…I didn’t see it.”
