“Why did you let it happen?” Cara asks, genuine curiosity filling her voice, the visual hurt laced in her expression at my outburst from moments ago dissipating.
“Raven was all used up, and I needed another girl, subscribers want young fresh meat. You have no family, no friends, no one to come looking for you when you are no longer useful to me.”
“Too old to star in your little movies huh, Lenora?” I bite with a satisfied grin when she balks at my question. I can’t rip her head off like I want to, so offending her is the next best thing, I guess.
“Where is Raven?” Cara stutters, the colour draining from her face as she pulls her lip between her teeth to stop it from trembling.
“Sold to the highest bidder and on the other side of the world by now, I suspect. Probably getting railroaded by a hundred men a day in some shitty doss house—how the fuck should I know? Once the girls no longer tickle the online subscribers’ fancy, Isell them. I know your past Miss Morgrieves—I had planned to do the same with you, but I can’t see you being very…what’s the word…willing.”
“There’s always a market for snuff films,” Simon interjects. The need to flay him alive making my fists bunch. I should have ended that fucker when I had the chance.
“Snuff films are how people get caught. If I sell her to our Russian connection, she’ll be pumped full of drugs and used daily like the little whore that she is.”
Cara doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that Lenora seems to know so much about her. I had found the DVD in the records room with Cara’s name on it after she arrived; I’d watched enough of it to know the life she had been forced to endure before coming here. All the men who hurt her, their faces were seared into my brain as I silently vowed to enact my revenge in her honour when we escaped this place.
“You were destined to be here, Cara. I had originally organised with Doc to purchase you; we had business meetings before his untimely death. So how lucky was I when you happened across the advertisement and applied for the position? I felt like all my Christmases had come at once; a minimum wage whore is much better for my bottom line.”
As misguided as this moment feels with Lenora prattling on, one thought keeps rattling around in my head—the knowledge that she’d always intended to bring Cara here. That we were meant to find each other. I glance at Cara, aching to soothe the sorrow I know is piercing her chest as she holds back the tears. She had found a genuine friendship with Raven, only to learn her fate like this. Until Cara, I hadn’t felt much of anything since my mother’s death—maybe even before that; I wasn’t exactly a poster child for healthy parental figures. But now, the need to reach for her has my jaw clenched, my teeth grinding as I tug at my restraints. They don’t budge.
“You could let us go; we won’t say a word,” Cara pleads wide-eyed. I know it’s useless, Simon knows it’s useless, even the twins know it’s useless. Lenora bends down to face Cara, mimicking what she’s seen of affection as she strokes her cheek.
“If you’re trying to appeal to my better nature, I’d give it up; I don’t have one.” She smiles, the warmth in it all a show. “What you see is what you get.”
“What? A haggard, greedy, washed-up psychopath with an unnatural porn addiction?” I blurt, garnering her ire as she turns to flash the gun in my face. I’d happily open my mouth and welcome the barrel of her weapon if it meant she’d leave Cara alone.
“You’d do well to shut your mouth, or I’ll string her up just like I did your mother and let her watch as Simon carves out your insides like he did your father.” She rises to her full height with a look of slick satisfaction gleaming in her soulless eyes. The anger gone from her smiling face as the earth shifts beneath me, and she watches hungrily as what she’s said lands like a boulder in my gut. My heart breaks anew as images of my mother flash through my mind. All those moments I thought she had chosen to leave me, like bullets from a firing squad as they pierce my chest.
My pulse thumps in my ears, my heart battering against my ribs as I reach for Lenora. She doesn’t need to set her dog on me this time. She knows she has the upper hand when I stop dead as she levels the gun against Cara’s forehead and cocks the hammer, her finger teasing the trigger in warning.
“You killed them?” I ask, already knowing the truth to my pointless question, but feeling the need to ask it anyway as tears well up in my eyes—the show of emotion is not for the cruel man that sired me, but for my innocent mother and for the freedom I lost when Lenora had me believe I had murdered my father in cold blood.
“Take a seat and let Auntie Lenora tell you a story,” she titters, like she’s about to break out a copy of theSecret Gardenand tuck me into bed with a cup of warm cocoa. When I don’t immediately follow her command, she presses the barrel of the gun into Cara’s eye socket. Cara winces, crying out in pain when she jabs it deeper. With an even voice and an arched brow, Lenora says softly, “Do it, or I’ll have the boys strap you to that table, staple your eyelids open, and make you watch as Simon plays out his little snuff film fantasy. You want to watch him fuck your beloved in every painful way possible before slitting her throat?”
That order I follow without contest. Lenora is many things—psychotic most notably—but she isn’t lying. I don’t doubt for a second she will follow through with the threat, and right now, I have no way of stopping her. Watching someone hurt Cara, I couldn’t survive that.
Crossing the room towards me once I’m seated, her expensive alligator skin heels tapping on the beaten-up linoleum floor, I listen as she tells me every sordid detail of her wicked past.
“Your mother found out about what your father and I were doing here. Always did have a conscience, my sister—more fool her. Once that idiot started beating her enough that she couldn’t hide the bruises anymore, your mother put into place that if anything should happen to her, your father would get nothing. Everything would go to you. As the older sister, she had financial monopoly over our family’s money too. I had been cast out years before you were even born. Your father was never the wealthy one; he was a back-alley bookie when they met, a degenerate gambler who found a way of charming my sister into marrying him. Killing her and marrying your father myself should have ironed out this little mess.” Her smile is broad and unnerving, anunnatural show of endearment that has a shiver running down my spine.
My fingers tingle as I consider how quickly I could cut off her air supply—if only she’d step a little closer. She must see the shift in my expression because she takes a few steps back, waving the gun in the air as she continues her story.
“I never did find the loophole I needed. But I did learn that if your father died, everything—this place, the money—it would all become yours, just as my sister wanted. But if I could have you admitted as a patient…then everything would go to your guardian, and you know what we call that?”
“A loophole,” Simon chirps. If it wasn’t for his stench, I would have forgotten he was still standing there.
I stare up at her, my voice steady, “Why didn’t you just kill me when you killed my father? Wouldn’t the marriage have ensured everything go to you that way?”
“Hangman’s Law, dear boy, everything would have gone back to the Wolfe estate by default. After my parents disowned me, I had no say. Some distant second cousin of your father’s from bum fuck nowhere would have inherited it all. Guardianship states a minimum of six years’ incarceration where the offender—you—is unable to make sound choices of their own, that their legal carer—me—has the ability to do with the funds as they see fit. You were my key to getting it all.”
“If you think I’m signing my inheritance away to you willingly, you’re fucking crazier than I thought.” I laugh, but her steely composure doesn’t waiver like I’d hoped it would.
“When you thought you slaughtered your father, you happily signed your life away—numerous documents that you didn’t even read when they carted you back here on the court’s orders. It helps to have a judge in your pocket.”
“Your dick-sucking skills are clearly on point to have a judge willing to break the law for you.”
“You wouldn’t believe my reach, Ezra. It pays to have the right people owe you a favour. Just ask your mother’s driver. Oh no, that’s right, you can’t—you killed him.”
My eyes go wide, unable to hide my shock as she smirks.
