Page 161 of Beautiful Liar

My heart shreds as the name registers. Adele. Quinn’s mother.

The camera cuts to another, similar footage of Adele with other men. On and on. Six in total. Then to a different scene. Maxwell is sitting on a sofa with Adele. He’s wearing a suit, she’s in her nightgown. Again there are hints of a drape in the corner of the screen. He talks in a low, insistent voice. She’s weeping softly and nodding. After a minute, he nods to someone off camera. A woman walks onto the screen and hands Maxwell a vial of pills.

As she turns away, I see her face and my breath catches.

It’s Quinn’s stepmother, Delilah Blackwood.

Maxwell carries on talking to Adele, one hand soothing her back. The footage is fast-forwarded to where he sets the pills down in front of her and kisses her temple. She rises, goes to a drawer, and returns with a black clothed lump. When she sits down, he pats her hand.

“You’re doing the right thing, Adele. It’s for the greater good,” he says.

He leaves the room. Adele reaches for the pills, shakes them out into her palm and swallows them with a glass of water. Her movements are slow when she parts the black cloth and picks up a gun.

No!

The camera wobbles. “Mama?” The cracked voice of a boy not quite yet a man.

Adele’s head turns slowly toward the voice, the gun rising in her hand.

The camera swings downward, then falls to the carpet. Feet rush in and out of the shot.

“No, Mama! No!”

The still rolling camera records the sound of the shot.

Then the endless screaming starts.

I absently note the sobs ripping from my throat, the wetness on my face. Somewhere beyond the buzzing in my head, I hear Earl chuckle.

The footage moves on. Quinn in his early twenties, sitting on a sofa. He’s being asked questions by a woman with her back to the camera. They’re about the state of his mental health.

His shrink.

His answers are monosyllabic. Every now and then, he smirks at the camera over her shoulder. The video rolls forward, until, unbelievably she gets up and begins to undress. Quinn issues instructions, which she follows, all the way through giving him oral sex. And through it all, his eyes stare soullessly into the camera.

Fast-forward again through the shrink’s footage. At one point it stops at a plaque in her office. Adriana Nathanson.

Then comes the one that sends a spike straight through my gut.

Quinn and Delilah. Nausea punches through my diaphragm. My whole body heaves and I prepare to hurl. At the last instant it subsides, but I can’t take my eyes off the depravity happening onscreen.

Delilah and Quinn.

Sometimes on their own. Other times with multiple partners.

Fast-forward to two days ago. Breaking news. Maxwell and Delilah’s ashen faces when the footage is projected onto a large screen at a gala they’re attending. Friends being interviewed. The mayor giving his opinion on the scandal. The footage shown again.

The police leading Maxwell away in handcuffs. Then Delilah in handcuffs.

Different footage of Quinn. He’s also with the police, but there are no handcuffs. Cameras are shoved in his face. The look in his eyes…soulless.

Then Q, masked. Q, unmasked. Q with other women.

Q with me.I have my blindfold on for all of the footage, unlike the other women.

I now understand the need for the blindfold, but that brings zero relief.

A sound bubbles up from my throat. My vision blurs with raw tears and burning humiliation. The footage rolls forward and ends with the caption: The Life & Times Of The Notorious, Murdering Blackwoods.

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