Page 9 of Black Hearts
I stared into his eyes, eyes I used to think housed love for me. Through the choking, I sputtered out, “Is that the excuse you used when you killed those other girls?”
He let go of me, practically throwing me back to the bed before pacing the space in front of me. One of his hands slipped inside a pocket. “I killed them because I had to, just like I have to do this.” Daddy pulled out a small knife, revealing its shiny silver metal to me. His legs stopped pacing, and he turned to stare at me again, gripping the knife so hard his entire arm shook.
“I wanted you to grow up, free of the burdens of the world. I’d failed to find a suitable wife, so I’d hoped…” He stopped and shook his head once. “If you were a part of me, surely you’d be exactly what I wanted.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The implications of that made me even sicker inside. He kept me, raised me, molded me how he wanted me, so I could take my mom’s place? So I would be the meek, innocent wife he so clearly would do anything to have?
Swear words were so often overused, especially by the Scott men, and I used to think they were too vulgar to get any sort of point across, but what the actual fuck?
What the fuck? What. The. Fuck. What in the fuck? It was all I could think: what the fuck, what the fuck, on literal repeat, and no matter how many times I thought it, as I stared at him, at my dad, my father, at the man who had given me life, it still didn’t get the point across.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked him point-blank.
He frowned at me. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.” He pointed the knife at me. “The dirty language, the sex, the—”
“The dirty language? You called me a whore any time I brought up wearing nail polish. A word doesn’t have to be a swear word for it to be dirty—and as for sex—” I swung my legs off the side of the bed, getting to my own two feet. Though he was a few inches taller than me and still holding onto the knife, I held my head high. “—I know what you do with the girls you kill. I know what you did to my mom.” I breathed hard, fiercely, staring daggers at him. “I should’ve helped her that day. I should’ve gotten her out, and together we should’ve left you. You’d be in jail, she’d be alive, and all those other girls would be, too.”
I walked as close as I could to him, so close that when I pulled at the chain on my wrist, the damned thing was taut. My heart beat a mile a minute in my chest, and still I did not back down. I couldn’t.
No longer would I stand back and play the whimpering, scared little girl.
“If you’re going to kill me, then just do the fucking thing already,” I hissed out, “because the more I look at you, the more disgusted I am.”
My father—Fred Osborne, the man I used to adore over my own being—lifted his free hand and cupped my cheek. His fingers stroked me, weaving into my hair. “I love you,” he whispered, “and I am sorry I failed you.” He then pulled me in close, hugging me to him.
It was the only action he needed to take. Sometime during the final farewell, he’d moved the knife and pointed it towards me, so that when he brought me in close, the knife pierced me in the same movement.
Pure, undiluted pain blossomed in my gut, spreading throughout my body like a virus. I gasped, unable to stop myself, from the shock of the knife in my gut. It wasn’t like a papercut. It was much, much worse, worse than anything else I’d ever experienced before. Nothing could amount to this—fitting, in a way, since this was the end for me.
He hugged me to him for a few more seconds, and then he let go of me. I stumbled back to the bed, barely able to catch myself on the edge, too busy glancing at the knife in his hand and the blood on it.
Mine. That blood was mine.
“Goodbye, Juliet.” He didn’t say anything more. He dropped the knife and simply turned to walk away from me, leaving me to bleed out, alone, trapped with nowhere to go, no one to call. As I watched him walk to the stairs, as I watched him leave the basement and therefore leave me to my fate, I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was it.
I was going to die.
I brought my hands to my stomach, where he’d stabbed me, and I did my best to press down on the wound, but the blood had already bloomed across the nightgown I wore, and no matter how hard I pressed, it seemed to flow out of me just as easily as before.
When it had happened, I’d felt it, the pain, the knife sliding into my gut like it impaled nothing but butter. But now… now, as I gazed down at the red on my nightgown, I didn’t feel it. Was it adrenaline, or was it something else? Did you stop feeling pain when you were dying? All these questions and I had no one to ask.
No one to ask, and no one to comfort me. The cold walls of this basement were my only companion, and I slowly lay back down on the bed, hands pressed up against the wound. A single tear escaped the corner of my eye, and I wondered if there was any point in trying to slow the flow of blood. All it did was prolong the inevitable, and the inevitable was the opposite of me surrounded by a host of handsome—if slightly crazy—men.
The inevitable was me dying at the hands of my father.
I wanted to fight. I wanted to break out of this cuff and run out of the house, find someone to help me, but… the more realistic part of me knew that was just a daydream, a wild fantasy in my head that would never come to fruition. Everything I was, everything I could be, would die in this basement.
Chapter Two – Jaxon
Will, Bennet and I had been gathered into one of the lounges in the house. Doc—or Theo, I guess I should use his name now, since I’d come to respect the man and his affection for Juliet—walked into the room last, just before Stella.
“What the fuck is this about?” Bennet harrumphed, his muscular arms folded in front of his chest.
“Yeah, I mean no offense,” Will started, a dimpled grin on his face, “but I would rather be with Juliet right now, especially if I have to stand the company of these guys.” He flicked his thumb at each of us, causing Stella to roll her eyes.
Stella looked bored with their questioning. “I didn’t bring you guys here to talk to you about how much you love that girl.” Those mismatched eyes surveyed us, moving from person to person until they landed on me. “Your father’s here.”
I blinked. Will said nothing, nor did Theo. Bennet, on the other hand, scowled and said, “The big man’s here? Why the fuck should I care? It ain’t like I’m going to throw a party for the fucker. He’s no more a father to me than you are my mother—and you’re not my fucking mother.” His voice dripped venom, and I couldn’t blame him. His father, our father, even though I was technically adopted into this family, had abandoned us all years ago when he left Markus in charge.
