“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t want to. Because seeing it would have meant admitting I’d failed as a father so completely that I’d raised a monster.”
The words taste like ash, but they’re true. I taught Dante to be ruthless in business, to see people as assets or obstacles. I never taught him empathy or respect or basic human decency. I was too busy building an empire to notice I was creating a psychopath.
“He didn’t become this because of you,” Kasimira says softly.
“Didn’t he? I showed him that taking what you want is more important than asking.”
“You never taught him to torture and murder women.”
“I taught him that people are disposable if they don’t serve your purposes. He just took the lesson further than I intended.”
We sit in silence for a long time, processing the weight of twenty lives touched by evil. Through the stained glass window, afternoon light paints rainbow patterns on the marble floor. Beautiful and normal, while upstairs my men catalog evidence of systematic predation.
“Sarah Carson teaches third grade,” Kasimira says suddenly. “According to her file, she volunteers at an animal shelter on weekends. She likes romantic comedies and Thai food, and she’s afraid of being alone.”
“We’ll find her and make sure she’s safe. But we can’t help her get justice. That would bring unwanted attention to the family.”
“I understand.” She nods quietly.
She stands and walks to the window, her reflection ghostlike in the colored glass.
“For two years, I survived him. That was my only purpose—staying alive from one day to the next. Now I can do more than survive. I can help people. We find out if they’re safe first. Then, if they are, we help them quietly.”
“Help them how?”
“Dante’s money. The fifty million we found. Use it to help these women anonymously. Pay off their debts, basically give them money. All done through shell companies so they never know where it came from.”
The idea has merit. Clean money helping victims without exposing our operations or traumatizing the women further.
“Anonymous support,” I say, understanding her logic. “No direct contact, no explanations they wouldn’t believe anyway.”
“Exactly. We can’t bring them justice. But we can give them better lives with his own stolen money.”
“And if some of them are already dead?”
“Then we make sure their families are taken care of. Same principle.”
This makes sense—using Dante’s ill-gotten gains to quietly help his victims without involving law enforcement or exposing the family to investigation.
I walk up to Kasimira and pull her against my side, feeling her lean into my strength. The gesture is automatic now, natural as breathing.
“You know this changes everything,” I say quietly. “Once we start investigating these women, once we confirm who’s alive and who isn’t, we’ll know the full scope of what he did. We’ll have to live with that knowledge.”
“Was it ever going to be easy? Living with what he did to me, to them?”
She’s right. We were already carrying the weight of his crimes. Now we’re just choosing to do something about it.
“No regrets?” I ask.
“Only one.”
“What’s that?”
“That I can’t kill him myself.”
The savage satisfaction in her voice makes me fall in love with her all over again. My fierce, complicated wife who survived a monster and came out swinging.
