“Keep looking outside and tell Daphne to wait in the dorm room, just in case Blair goes there. If you don’t hear from me soon, come down and look for me.”
“Be careful, man.”
I ended the call, threw the diary across the room, and left to search the rest of the tunnels.
I needed to kill Blair’s father if his plan was to hurt her.
Even if he wasn’t responsible for her current disappearance, he was too much of a liability.
And if he did hurt her, if he had her now, I’d rip the motherfucker apart limb by limb.
Then, for fun, I’d dump his dead body into the water, just like he said he’d do to my precious Fawn.
Forty-Four
Blair
During my childhood,the fear that my father might kill me had been a constant companion.
He’d threatened to do it countless times.
His attempts to drown me outnumbered his hugs.
And he vowed in the courtroom that he’d do it if they ever freed him.
After his arrest, I’d tried to assure myself I was safe now. He was behind bars and across the country from me. But now, he was free, and I knew he’d fulfill that promise to himself.
No one crossed my father without paying for it.
The nasty taste was still in my mouth, so I tried to swallow as little as possible. My head still felt fuzzy and heavy, like I was wading through a thick fog as I tried to connect clues that didn’t fit.
My father continued his incessant, irritating speaking, making my headache worse. The bastard couldn’t simply take my life. He’d always been a fan of making people listen to his drawn-out rants.
Over it, I groaned. “Just kill me already,” I spat at him, the chemical hitting my lips. “No one believes you’re special. You’re a loser and mad that your brainwashing didn’t work on me.”
My words were risky. Ballsy. But I knew there was no chance I’d leave here alive, so it was time I said my piece.
A wave of pain shot through my jaw again at the force of his second slap. The sharp edge of his wedding ring cut into my lip, breaking skin, and I could taste my blood.
He stepped behind me, grabbed a handful of my hair, and dug his fingers into my scalp as he tugged my head back so far that an aching throb ran down my neck. The scent of raw tuna wafted from his breath when he got in my face.
“You should be happy they forced me to keep you down here,” he snarled. “I wanted to stay true to my word and drown you.” He yanked my hair back again, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying out in pain. “Every day in that prison cell, I fantasized about killing you. The only thing that kept me breathing there was knowing I’d get that someday.”
He released my hair, but the pain didn’t lessen. It came from everywhere. My cheek. My jaw. My head.
Closing my eyes, I struggled against the rope, and when I opened them, more men in masks formed a circle around me. They all wore robes like the Sons had during my Initiation.
The masked man who stood by my mother unmasked himself. He shook out his blond hair, but I wasn’t surprised by him.
I always wondered why the Arizona senator—now vice president of the United States—had come to my mother’s rescue after my father’s arrest.
Always wondered why my father’s arrest never made headlines or was talked about.
Especially because the public loved stories about cults.
They consumed documentaries and podcasts about people like him. Experts did interviews about the leaders’ mental psyches.
But my father’s name was never mentioned on those cult-leader lists. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t in exchange for my testimony against him.
