And I fucking despise her for it.
Resent her for this deep, dark thing that breathes under my skin, begging to be let out. It’s sick. The bone-deep need to touch her, smell her, surges through me so intensely at times, it should scare me, but I think part of me wants to let it free.
Let myself consume her as a punishment for breeding this grotesque thing inside me.
This obsession to own every minute of her existence.
Stain her with every vile and dark thing inside me. Fuck her. Taste her. Ruin her pure innocence the way she’s ruined me.
“You know I have everything under control, Father.” Except my damn thoughts. My eyes drag along the countless pictures we’ve taken of the girls, the printout of their work schedules, and the sticky notes pinned to the board listing their favorite restaurants, movies, and books.
Four years is a long time to watch someone. To collect information.
Four years is so long that it’s fucked us all in the head. Especially when it became clearer and clearer with each passing month, with each additional detail, Rune’s two daughters lived in utter ignorance of the evil surrounding them.
Well. At least one of them is naïve to the truth. I have a feeling Cora Julian is well acquainted with the sick shit Rune is capable of, though I have no evidence. Just a hunch. This twisted needling feeling in my gut whenever I see him with her.
She’s too much like us.
Hard. Even though she covers it up with a candy-coated exterior, Cora is brutally damaged inside.
Pain and fear will do that to a person. Leave them covering up scars with bubbly personalities and laughter. I’m all too aware of what having a nightmare for a parent can do to a child’s psyche. And Caroline was a terrible parent. Which says a lot considering my father is Fallon Byrns.
“Reaper,” he says, his voice sharper, angry at my dismissiveness.
“Yes, I’m paying attention, oh Father dearest.” I lean back, crossing my fingers behind my head and propping my ankle on my knee, schooling my features into the same hard mask as his. “I don’t need to remind you I was the one who planned this, so I’m sure I can execute it without your endless chatter in the background.”
The video distorts, but I catch his glare before it ripples and cuts away, pulling him apart into tiny little pixels.
“Oh dear,” I say, leaning further back in my chair. “You’re breaking up. We should end the call.”
The video distorts again then snaps clear. My father’s stern face appears in high definition. He’s aged well. While his black hair has turned completely white, his high cheekbones and strong jaw remain sharp as a blade. The fact that I look almost exactly like him breeds the self-hatred festering inside me.
The idea that I have any bit of Fallon in me makes my skin crawl.
“—and I know you’ll follow the plan we’ve agreed upon,” he’s saying. “The girl needs to be trained before we can trust her with—”
“I said I have it handled,” I snap, interrupting his tirade. “We’ve been over this a thousand times. We will be waiting in the van outside. Clyde will notify us when they are in the lobby. If we can take out Zane, we will immediately, and in the event of—”
“There is zero room for mistakes,” Father cuts in. “You go in, remove any obstacle, take the girl, and make sure Rune stays alive.”
“Rodger that, yes, sir, and all that bullshit,” I say. Reaching for the keyboard, I drag it closer, ready to end the video call, but my father says, “One last thing,” and I can’t help the heavy sigh that leaves my lungs.
Behind him, Mr. Carrington enters the room, carrying a black leather case. My father turns slightly and waves him away, but Carrington leans over and whispers something in his ear. Father shakes his head and takes the leather case as Carrington catches my face in the video feed, shooting me a wink and a grin, and my irritation melts.
I’ve always liked my father’s assistant. Whenever we visited the States, he would be the one to pick us up from the airfield, then escort us by chopper to our Father’s home along the east coast. He calls himself a butler, which elicits an irritated sigh from Father, but I think Fallon secretly enjoys his eccentric personality.
He has to. He’s been with him long before I was born.
“Clyde sent new intel,” Father says, shooing Carrington away. He disappears from the screen as Father pulls a thick red file from the case and holds it up for me to see clearly. Then, hepulls a small drive out of the case. “He hacked the USB Rune has locked in his desk.”
My heart does an odd flip. Clyde has been trying for years to gather evidence, risking his life to feed us information on Rune’s sick activities. And fuck, they are depraved.
The first image he smuggled out of the hunt sent a wave of horror over me that drowned any hope my father’s old friend held on to a fragment of who he was before. While we knew Rune was hunting people, seeing the images of what he did stays in my nightmares.
Then, months later, came the ledgers. The list of names and the notes. The evidence that Rune killed all members, whether it be because they defied some code or wanted out, we’re still unsure. Though the details are scarce, the one thing that was evident was that Rune developed a twisted system that kept members deeply intertwined in his hunts.
Ever since that first time Rune hunted Caroline and Drake Julian, his best friends, Clyde is hesitant to step foot on lodge grounds. If he does, it’s only to keep Rune from being suspicious, and he remains in the lodge, never taking part, so gathering evidence is hard.
