Page 74 of Forbidden

Chapter Fifteen

Layla

I knew this day would come, but I thought I’d be in my twenties or thirties. And over those years I would gain strength, wisdom and have a life that he would never know of. I knew that, according to his sentence, he would never be walking around a free man again, so really even that fear of him getting out shouldn’t have been there.

And then this happens.

“We can’t stay here, Cyrus!” Mum lit up another cigarette. She was chain-smoking and her stress showing. “If Rex knows where she is, he will come for her.”

Cyrus’s face tightened. “You really think I’d let him take Layla?”

Mum got up abruptly. “You don’t understand! Rex will take her! He cares about one thing in this world and that’s Layla! He doesn’t have feelings for anything else. Just one person. That he loves. That he wants.” Mum inhaled sharply on the cigarette, panicking. “If the police hadn’t caught him that night, Layla would be gone.”

Rex had known he was going to prison the next day and wouldn’t be getting out. He expected a life sentence; actually, he was meant to be getting two life sentences because he killed a whole family. He was facing the charges of four murders.

The only reason he was caught was because he went back in to save the kids. He didn’t know the children were in there. He was told it was just a man, his target. The security was tight at the house, so he’d faked being a plumber and started a gas leak.

It was reported in all the papers.

After he started the gas leak, he expected the man to die that night in his sleep. He thought it was an easy kill; no bullets, no blood and no link back to him. He always made sure there was no link back to him, even when it came back to brutal and bloody murders—there was never a trace back to him.

His kills often made it in the paper, but no one linked them back to one person.

Anyway, when he was going to drive away that night he saw the family van in the driveway. Without thinking about what he was doing—well, I assumed he wasn’t thinking—he broke into the house to get the kids out.

But it was too late.

The neighbors called the police, seeing him break into the house. They thought they were reporting a burglary, not a homicide.

All four died that night.

The night before his trial, he took me from my bed in the middle of the night and said he was going to run away with me.

I don’t remember much of that night, apart from being surrounded by police cars.

Mum woke up, realized what he was doing and we were caught a block away from the airport. Dad was caught with fake passports and a huge amount of cash—he had every intention of taking me that night and I would have grown up with him as a parent and never knowing I was a missing child.

Before he was dragged away by the police, he gave me those words I lived by: judge their actions, not their image. He also said he would be back for me. And he reminded me of that promise every week when I got a letter from him. Every week for twelve years I got a letter, reminding me he was coming for me and begging me to not give up on him.

The letters increased after I stopped visiting when I was ten. I still opened them. I was guilty of that. Over the years, he pleaded with me to write back, as he just wanted to know if I was okay. I ignored it for three years, and then, when I was fourteen, I asked Cyrus if he could tell Rex I was okay.

After that, his letters got more direct. He stopped telling me how much he loved me, how much he missed me, how I was the thing keeping him breathing. His last letter which came last week was made up of five words: I am coming for you.

I didn’t take him seriously. Till now. Till Cyrus was told that Rex was getting early release. An early release we weren’t to know about. Cyrus had Rex being watched by Deadly Dozen members that were in the same prison as him—maximum security—where men went to die and never saw the outside world again.

All the Deadly Dozen members in there were sentenced to life without parole.

And as far as I knew, the last time I checked Rex had the same conditions: life with no parole. Actually, he had two life sentences! So how the hell was he getting released?!

“The only solution is for Layla to go. Leave. Like we planned if this happened.” Mum nervously rocked from foot to foot and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you, Layla, but you won’t have a life if he finds you. He won’t stop till he has ruined everything you’ve become.”

I knew that. I knew Rex would make sure my world was empty and then, when I had nothing left, he would expect me to turn to him.

I think in his twisted mind he wanted me to follow in his footsteps.

He wanted me to care about him, and only him—and be cold to everything else. If he did come into my life, he would turn and twist me till I was as cold as him.

“I’ll put a hit on him. Fuck, I’ll do it myself! Layla isn’t leaving! I’m not losing my daughter!” Cyrus’s voice went up in rage. “He can come here and he can see that Layla wants nothing to do with him! And then if he doesn’t get the message I’ll put a bullet in his head.”

---