“Ryder told me twice to stop being a little bitch.” He laughs. “I didn’t realize how much until in the basement. I was listening to you, but I didn’thearyou or him. You just didn’t want me to see what was going to happen.” He looks at me again. “But I can handle it, Baby.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “There are parts of me you will see and don’t understand. I never want that look in your eye that you had today.”
“What look?”
“The one that said you were disgusted with me.” My eyes fill with tears. “You looked at me like you didn’tknow me at all.”
He swings his legs over to sit up, his knees bracketing mine. “Baby, I wasn’t disgusted with you,” he runs his fingers through his hair, “I was disgusted with myself because I wasn’t disgusted with you. Does that make sense?” I shake my head, and he sighs, “When you turn into the Queen they all call you, it does something to me. I wasn’t raised around this stuff like you guys were. I was raised by a meek schoolteacher in a rural country setting and shouldn’t be this accepting. I should be questioning everything, including us.” My eyes widen at that admission, afraid that he’s going to tell me he can’t do it anymore. “I’m just trying to come to terms with the fact that I don’t care about any of it. The killing, the money, the status. I just care about you, and I will do everything to stay here, but you have to give me some credit too. Let me decide what I can and can’t handle.”
“I can try,” I promise, knowing there are some truths that still need to be told. One I’m not sure he will be so accepting of. “That’s all I can do.”
He squeezes my hands. “I need to understand you better.”
“What do you mean?”
“The more conversations that go on in that house, the less I feel like I know.” He steels his spine. “I need to know what Frankie did to you.” My first instinct is to pull away because opening that can of worms opens many more. “Please trust me with that.”
“It’s not about trust, Leo.” I pull my hand away from his, ignoring the hurt look on his face. I wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts. “What Frankie did to me is something a thirteen-year-old should never have to go through.” I pull my legs underneath me. “He ordered his men to take me. They called me the Poletti cunt while they raped me. There were four of them.” I swallow back the bile, flashes of those days popping behind my eyes. “One of them would rape me with any object he could find; it didn’t matter if it was sharp or not or which hole he was sticking it in.”
“Alessa…” I hold up my hand, cutting him off. I started this, and I’m going to finish; I refuse to look at the pity all over his face. I can already hear it in his voice.
“My dad found me covered in blood from various wounds. He had to listen to the nurses and doctors detail everything that wasdone to me. I think that’s the part that hurt the most. I know deep down he blamed himself, but it wasn’t his fault.” I finally dare to look at his face, and he has unshed tears in his eyes. “I found out at thirteen that I would never be able to bear children because of that sick fucker sodomizing me. Frankie took my childhood from me, so at twenty-two, I took his life from him.” I scramble back off the lounger when he reaches for me. Every word just comes pouring out, and I can’t stop it. “Micah and Ryder grabbed him one night and locked him in the basement. Micah told me I could finish what he started when I was ready. I went down to that fucking basement, andeverythinghe had done to me, I did to him. Four days because that’s how long he kept me. For four days, I tortured him the same way he had me tortured.”
Dad never went after Frankie because I made him promise he wouldn’t, telling him it would start a war, but in reality, even at thirteen, IknewFrankie was mine to kill.
“Baby, I didn’t…” He rakes his hand through his hair. “Fuck I didn’t know.”
I shake my head because I’m not done. “Leo, I’m the Black Demon.” He frowns for a second until I can see the lightbulb click on. “Frankie wasn’t my first victim. I had my first kill at seventeen, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“Baby, I don’t understand.”
“I’m the female serial killer who takes out the ones who were never convicted of doing horrible shit to innocent people.”
That is how the cops have pieced it together that the Black Demon is responsible for all the disappearances; the motive. They won’t ever find the bodies or the pieces they are hacked into after I’m done.
I can feel the tears falling down my cheeks, and in a way, it’s like relief. Relief that he knows about Frankie and relief he finally knows about the Black Demon. “I can see the look on your face, Leo. Take that information and do whatever you want with it. But now you know the truth. Thefulltruth.” His face is a mixture of pity, sorrow, and revulsion. All of them aimed at me.
Everything slams into me at once, and I feel like I’m sucked backinto that night, the night they grabbed me. A whimper escapes my mouth before I can stop it; I slap a hand over my mouth and take off toward the house.
“Alessa!” Leo yells, but I can’t stop.
Visions of the four guys who took everything from me blind me one by one, making me stumble into the house. I told Holden this story; it hurt, but it didn’t affect me like this. I feel like the walls of this house are closing in on me, and the only thing that keeps rolling through my mind isrun.I haven’t had a panic attack in years, but you never forget the feeling of one. I know that is what’s happening, but I am powerless to stop it.
My lungs are starting to seize, and I can’t get a full breath. My vision is beginning to black out around the edges. I stumble the rest of the way through the house and jerk the garage door open.
Run run run!
I smack the garage door button and fumble for my Ferrari keys. After I drop them for the third time, I can’t stand up anymore. My knees hit the concrete in the garage so hard it jars my whole body; I slump down, trying to yell for help, but nothing will come out. Memories start assaulting me.
“Remember what your dad said,” Garrett, one of my guards, says.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah yeah. Don’t leave the bowling alley.”
I am on my way to meet Ryder and Gage; we’re notorious for sneaking away from where we’re supposed to be.
“Seriously, Alessa, it’s not safe,” Garrett reminds me for the thousandth time.
I snort. “Nothing has happened before.”
