***
Afterward, I leave James to handle the cleanup. He's done this before—knows how to make a body disappear, how to erase all traces of what happened in this room. By morning, there will be nothing left of Zach but memories, and those will fade soon enough.
I climb the stairs to the main house, my hands clean but my mind still bloody. I should feel something—satisfaction, perhaps, or the righteous calm that usually follows a kill. Instead, I feel hollow. Incomplete.
Because Zach was right about that, too. Killing him doesn't undo the damage. Poppy knows the truth now—about Dwayne, about me, about the twisted thread of fate that bound us together before we ever met. She knows, and she left, and I don't know if she's coming back.
I pour myself a whiskey in the study and stand at the window, looking out at the darkness beyond. Somewhere out there, she's with her mother. Learning the full story of where she came from. Deciding whether she can live with what I am.
I should give her space. I should let her come to her own conclusions without pressure, without manipulation, without the overwhelming force of my presence.
But I've never been good at letting go. I won't let her go without a fight.
My phone buzzes. James, reporting that the cleanup is complete.
Then, a moment later, another message. Security alert from the main gate.
Vehicle approaching. License plate matches the subject vehicle.
Poppy.
She's coming back.
I set down the whiskey, something unfamiliar spreading through my chest. Not triumph—it's too fragile for that. Not relief—there's too much uncertainty.
Hope, I realize. This is what hope feels like.
I've almost forgotten.
I straighten my shirt and check my reflection in the window glass. There's no blood visible—I was careful—but I wonder if she'll sense it anyway. She's always been able to see through me in ways no one else can.
Let her see, then. Let her see all of it—the monster and the man, the killer and the protector, the darkness that will never fully lift and the desperate, consuming need I have for her.
If she can look at all of that and still choose to stay, then maybe—just maybe—I'm not beyond saving.
And if she can't...
I hear the car pull up to the front entrance. Hear the engine cut, the door open, footsteps on gravel.
I go to meet her.
Chapter 33 - Poppy
The estate looks different at night.
During the day, it's imposing—all that stone and history bearing down like a weight. But in the darkness, with only a few windows glowing against the black, it looks almost vulnerable. Like a creature holding its breath, waiting to see if it will be abandoned.
I know the feeling.
I park in front of the main entrance and sit for a moment, my hands still on the wheel. The drive from my mother's apartment took forty-five minutes. I spent every one of them thinking about what I would say when I got here, and I still don't have the words.
I know what he is. I know what he did. I know that the man waiting inside that house killed my biological father—killed him brutally, deliberately, when he was barely more than a child himself.
And I know that I'm going back to him anyway.
My mother would say I'm repeating her mistakes. Walking into the arms of a dangerous man, letting myself be consumed by something I can't control. Maybe she's right. Maybe this is some twisted inheritance, a pattern encoded in my DNA—the daughters of monsters drawn inexorably to monsters of their own.
But Gabriel isn't Dwayne. I have to believe that, or none of this makes sense.
