“He wanted affection. Love. Attention. And when he tried to find what it was about Gates that enamored his father so much, he became ensnared and clearly, fell down the fucking rabbit hole.”
I am very still, because other pieces click together. Sanford told me hewantedto try the experiments on Stein, but he neverbit the apple.Yet it was there. The desire. Stein must have felt it; the psychopathy of a disconnected father’s cruelty. And maybe he did not hate me in the incomprehensible manner I always assumed.
He once wanted love from his own father. That path carved us both up.
“Why the fuck would Sanford tell you any of that?” My voice is hoarse as I wonder why my grandfather would bother and why it tookmeso long to find a reason.
“I mean, I probably threatened him while you and Karia have been edging each other.”
I ignore that. “He said Stein did what he did because he wanted his attention?” How could he be so self-aware? Neither of them has struck me as that.
Cosmo sighs. “He didn’t put it in so many words. Both your father and grandfather seem to have the remarkable ability to frame themselves as victims while admitting they were perpetrators; I’ve heard how Stein operates.” He blows out a breath and takes another drink right after. “And they all fucked us entirely.” He growls the last words.
He has no fucking idea, but I don’t say a word. I perversely want to hearmore.
“Stein metKlein,”his tone hardens on his father’s name, “at a prep school. Klein was always interested in the medical field and Sanford believed Klein could help in the implementation of Gates’s methods. The three of them, as weird as it is, were close.”
Sanford lied to me, when we spoke in Dreary. He claimed the doctor who tortured me my entire life was someone he did not know.
Cosmo forces lightness into his next words I know he does not feel. “Then Stein killed Juliet. His own mother. And Sanford realized he had passed down his beliefs in a much more twisted way than he assumed.”
I think of the tunnel under Hotel Number Seven. The words Sanford spoke to me in the dark.
You are not the only one Stein Rule has cursed.
I did try to stop it when you were much younger.
Then, about Karia…Take care of her.
He didn’t try. He ran. He chose self-preservation in fear of the monster he had created.He looked at Karia and saw Juliet and what hedidn’tdo for his own wife.
And under the original hotel, he performed for me. Told me what I needed to hear so I would follow him down. Duplicity. He is full of it.
I brought Karia here because he wanted it, too. Was it always to get me in a place they could both carve my life from me, and see if Gates was right about some things?
The rage builds hot under my skin.
“Karia never trusted him.” I have to say it out loud, because I should have listened to her more.
“Writhe has tried to strip it from her, but she is so fucking smart.” Cosmo doesn’t smile when he says it.“I should have told her that more instead of the opposite.”
“I already knew it,” I snarl back. I remember the ways we both called her pathetic and how far it is from the truth. He deserves to hurt for that, and so do I.
His brows lift as he looks at me then. “Yeah. I believe you. You’re kinda obsessed.” He stands slowly and sets his drink on the island and I enjoy the fact that no matter how he has always seemed taller than me in my mind, he fucking isn’t, in reality.
“They will be here sooner than later.” He stares at me. “What are we going to do?”
There is no time for me to hurt over what he’s revealed to me. I left Karia sleeping not for childhood trauma, but for this: “I have something of a plan.” It sounds foreign, saying it out loud, because I have never really been able to create one of those. Butthis time, I have someone worth living for, and now, I have all the answers I care to get.
My father is a piece of shit, no matter his reasons for it.
Cosmo arches a brow. “Not to fuck Karia again because the whole house heard her and it’ll give us away too quickly.”
“I am not above decapitating you.”
He jerks back an inch. “Okay. What is this plan of yours?” He sounds skeptical, but between us, I am the only one wearing the scars of the men who deserve to die.
But he would kill them for Karia too, even without his own personal feud in mind.
