I caught movement just ahead of us and stood frozen in my spot. About thirty yards away from us, Aunt Marlowe leaned with her back against a tree and a leg wrapped around some guy. I turned my head slowly to look at Lars. A look of shock covered Lars’s face as he stood there watching his wife getting fucked by another man. He motioned toward the direction of the house and we walked back to the party in silence.
“Let’s talk in my study, Griffin,” Lars suggested while we climbed the steps that would take us up to the patio deck.
Once we were inside the study, Lars shut and locked the door, then went to his wet bar and poured two glasses of scotch. He handed me one before we sat down, facing one another. His eyes shifted back and forth slightly as he stared in the direction of the window. His silence told me that he was deep in thought, and after a few lengthy minutes, he took a long sip of scotch and looked at me.
“Griffin,” he began, but paused. He frowned and looked at his drink and rubbed his finger along the lip of the glass. “Griffin, I need you to help me.”
“Of course. What do you need me to do?” I asked.
His blue eyes darted up to mine as he said, “Her name will go in the book. Your father and I had always handled the … removing of those who needed to be removed.” Lars set the glass down on the round antique table and then leaned forward and laced his hands together. He continued when he looked up at me. “We never had outside help. We always did it alone. I was so angry with your father for asking you at age twelve to do what I’m about to ask you.”
I leaned back against the cushion of the chair while I wrapped my head around this. He was asking me to help him murder my aunt, my mother’s sister. My mouth had grown dry, and I sipped from my glass.
“I knew one day you would have to step into this role with me if our beliefs would go on. I’m not a young man anymore, Griffin. You can carry on our legacy, and Riley will follow you if you mold and shape him.”
Though I had never actually participated in any of the disappearances, I wasn’t naïve to what my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and Lars did. My parents had a large estate and lots of land that backed up to my aunt and Lars’s property. The very woods where we fucked just today was also used for “removing” the cheaters. My father and Lars had the Grand Rapids police chief, a few investigators, and patrolmen in their back pockets. Any reports of missing people simply went unsolved while the pockets of certain department members grew thicker and thicker. Greed overrode ethics and morals, and for the right price, everything could be overlooked and explained.
At age twelve, I had learned what my father and Lars had done with the bodies. I remembered that small cabin in Clark’s Mills, Wisconsin like the back of my hand. I hadn’t been back there since I helped my father bury my mother, and now it looked like I was going back—this time with Lars to bury my aunt.
“Forgive me for asking this of you, Griffin. I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Why are you sorry? If things are to continue, as you said, you knew I would have to begin to take a more active role,” I stated.
“Because I’m asking you to take part in the death of yet another family member. For that, I am deeply sorry.”
“I want this, Lars,” I insisted.
Lars’s eyes searched mine and then he nodded.
“After this, you’ll have more than earned your father’s office.”
