Page 13 of Wild Devil

“I thought it would be prudent to inform you myself,” my father says. “So that you can prepare yourself mentally.”

Trying to keep my voice steady, I take a deep breath. “Prepare myself for what?”

“For your marriage,” Father replies. “I’ve decided that you will marry Colton tonight.”

A crushing disappointment washes over me, and it’s all I can do to remain standing. I knew this was coming, and I knew that I would have to face this challenge alone.

That doesn’t make it any easier to keep my head held high, knowing what they have in store for me. They want to see me cower and plead. I refuse to give them the satisfaction.

“Where?” I ask dryly. “I would think you would want it to be here in the church.”

His smile widens, and I feel a genuine stab of fear and panic. My father may have intimidated me my entire life, but I’ve never felt this darkness in him before. Not even when he whipped me. His ultimate aim is far more sinister than trying to control me.

What is it? I have no idea.

“It will be in a house of God,” he says cryptically. “Which is far more than you deserve.”

A house of God. I ruminate over those words, seeking out the obvious clue hidden within them. His cold gaze suggests he doesn’t expect this to be the grand social event he had envisioned just a few weeks ago.

It’s more like an execution, if not of my life, then my very freedom.

“Where,” I repeat.

His head inclined toward Colton, he ignores me. “Leave us.”

“But sir, I?—”

“Now.”

Colton retreats down the hall with one last frustrated glance at me while Father remains at the doorway. For a long few seconds, he just stares at me as if he’s trying to reconcile the figure he sees with the little girl who used to follow in his wake, hanging on his every word.

The memories hurt to relive. We were so happy together, the three of us. I hadn’t even picked up any change in him when he married Catherine. While running the church and his political campaigns, I wrote up his increasing sternness as misplaced stress. Now, however, it’s easier to pinpoint the various moments where his true colors began to emerge, long before these last few years. Among all the signs, the clearest stands out like a neon sign.

The day of my mother’s funeral.

“It hurts me to see you like this, Frances,” he says, scanning my rumpled clothing and disheveled hair. In his eyes, I see emptiness, not pain. He lingers on my bruised, swollen face, and I swear the corner of his upper lip twitches into the shadow of a grin. “So lost amid your own sinful ways,” he continues. “Unable to see the righteous path shining before you. A lesser father would have already turned his back on you, but I refuse to do so.”

“A lesser father,” I repeat hoarsely. “A good person would have never resorted to kidnapping and threatening a little boy just to get his way. He wouldn’t have killed his own son, and he certainly wouldn’t have murdered his first wife.”

I don’t know how I expect those jabs to land, but I figure that nothing I’d imagine could ever come close to the reality. In the face of the truth, he never recoils. He doesn’t even glower in anger. His only response is to stare, as if he has become so numb to violence that he isn’t even aware of its horror.

It’s a detached apathy I never even saw in Daze—as if he has lost all humanity.

“You are so misguided, my dear child,” I hear him say as he strokes my hair without warning. His fingers tug and snag on loose stands, pulling at my scalp. Suddenly, he captures my chin in a rigid grip and angles my face so that our gazes meet. A cold stare greets me in return. “So long in the darkness that you can’t find your way back with prayer alone. No more will I ignore your plight. Just as I intend to save this entire city, I will make it my mission to save you as well.”

His tone makes me shiver. He seems to be referring to a lot more than just marriage. Something more twisted than that, but I can’t even open my mouth to ask what it is. I’m paralyzed.

“After tonight, you will fulfill your final duty to me. Then, I will fulfill my obligation to you. I see the truth now. What you really need.”

An icy, creeping sensation washes over me, starting at my head and crawling downward. With it comes a wave of nausea and a sick sense of foreboding that urges me to run. Now. If I don’t, I may never get the chance to do so again.

Instead, I hold his gaze and croak, “What is that?”

“Salvation,” he says. “After some reflection, I realized that there was only one clear path. You think I failed your mother, but that is where you are wrong. She failed you. It was my duty to make you see that, and I failed. It’s only logical that you would follow in her path, devoid of proper guidance. I should have seen then what I do now. There is only one way to break the cycle and salvage this family line. One way to save your soul, and I refuse to lose you to the devil.”

“Like you lost Hale?” I ask.

“Hale? He was a test of my faith, much like the one God himself presented to Abraham, but you… You are a mission. One I have gravely neglected. The path to hell began with a mere apple from a poisoned tree. To prevent such an insidious force from taking over his garden, it wasn’t enough for Adam to merely prevent Eve from eating the forbidden fruit. By then, it was already too late. He needed to chop down the tree at its root and stop Eve’s corruption before it was too late. For you, it is not too late, Frances.”

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