Page 74 of A Light in the Darkness
“Yes.” Victor whispers slowly, trying to grapple with that information. “But not…identical…”
A sob rips through the musty air, and Claire’s eyes turn to the senator. But he’s already turning his back to her, striding toward his wife, who sits motionless in the chair he left her in, her useless attempts at escape having been quelled. Maybe seeing them together gives her a moment of remorse—ripping a baby from a woman’s womb and killing her is awful, but then to separate the babies on top of it? It’s unnecessarily cruel.
“You vicious bitch!”
For one second, I think Victor is going to strike his wife across the face. Instead, he stops just before her and spits in her face. “You fucking vile pig!”
Addison’s shoulders straighten as she struggles to keep her head up from where it’s falling forward. I can see her eyes rolling already. It’s too soon for that, so I turn to find the bottle of epinephrine, while Victor continues to scream at her, agonized cries tearing his words to shreds.
It’s been twenty-one years, and yet I’d wager that he never moved on from his first love. That, or he just never realized he was married to a monster.
Addison’s eyes are unfocused as I draw closer to her. No one seems to see me coming, and nobody cares enough to stop me when they do. I stab her none too delicately with the needle right over where her heart should be, despite not being convinced she has one, and ignore her gasping, shuddering breaths as the drug works its way through her system rapidly.
I drop before her just long enough to look into her cold eyes. “Tell them what you did, Addison. Tell them how you betrayedtheir mother… them.” I get a handful of her hair and yank her head back, giving her no choice but to look at Claire and Violet. Black streaks from her makeup run down her neck, but I know she’s not crying with regret. I see her throat working to swallow her anger and agony. She starts to shake her head, but her hair is still tangled in my fingers, so I give her a sharp tug to set her straight.
“Please!” She sobs. “You’re going to kill me!”
“Not me.” I tell her softly. “See, I’m a man of taste. Art, poetry, music. I appreciate symmetry… you understand, right? You’re a woman of taste, too, aren’t you, Addie? That’s why you aligned yourself with people who could get you the furthest from your past.”
Fresh tears roll down her face, but they do little to win her favor with any one of us. “Please…”
“Please what? Please don’t tell them that you grew up here? You’re so ashamed of your childhood, Addison, when it’s your adult life you should be ashamed of. What kind of woman has another sold off to a pack of wolves in Gucci? Or was it the Armani that you did it for?”
“No!” She pleads, snot dripping down her face.
I never particularly enjoyed ruining a woman’s makeup, but this is a definite improvement for her.
“If you don’t want to use your tongue, we can cut it out.” I let go of her all at once, her head falling forward before she catches herself. “You won’t be needing it anyway.”
I’m already lifting the serrated blade, admiring the wicked teeth, by the time she screams, “Okay! Okay! Stop! I’ll tell them!”
It takes another moment, and a flash of the blade, before she takes a shaky breath. “I helped Senator Massarini get rid of her!” Her desperate eyes shoot to me, seeking praise or maybe just confirmation that I haven’t moved any closer with the knife.
“Myfather?” Victor’s voice is cold and shaky, his disbelief thinly veiled. “No, he… he wouldn’t.”
“Your father was a fucking menace!” Addison spits, blood flying from her lips. “He didn’t want you saddled to that bitch for the rest of your life because of some stupid fucking mistake. You’d already gone back to wherever the fuck you were, and he found out she was pregnant. She was stupid enough to take the test at your house and one of the housemaids found it. They thought it was your sister’s, but your father knew better because he knew your sister was into girls. It was early, so he tried to pay her to terminate, but Lauren wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t, so we had to get rid of her. I helped him, and in exchange, he helped me win Victor’s favor.”
“You…” Victor’s laugh is unhinged. “Youhelpedhim?”
“It’s easy to erase people when you hold their records. The world forgot about Lauren, and we moved on.”
“You’re just going to gloss over the details?” I snort.
Maybe the details are too gritty for the delicate company I’ve gathered, but I’m not going to stand by and let her act as though she was little more than a spectator.
“Do they matter?” Addison growls, glancing up at me with violence in her eyes. She doesn’t have to tell me what she did to Claire’s mother, because that look tells me without words just what vicious things she is capable of.
“It’s your last chance to confess your sins.” I tell her calmly. “Maybe you don’t believe in a higher power, but you must know the devil is real. You’ve aligned yourself with him for years, but do you think he’ll have pity on your soul because you’re one of his?” I laugh as I watch the panic play on her face. She clearly believessomethingcomes after this, and that’s enough to make her comply.
“My mother owned horses.” She says suddenly. “Before she withered away, she used to show them. Every time her daddy hurt her, he’d buy her a new pony. But she wasn’t capable of caring for anything, so they’d die out there and he’d hurt her again, and she’d get another just to watch it slowly die. You know how you break a wild horse?”
“Snap its neck?” Wes suggests, crossing his arms. He looks bored, but I don’t miss the way he keeps glancing out of the corner of his eye at his wife, or the way his jaw is tight like he’s working hard to keep his anger in.
“You exhaust it.” Addison explains. “That’s what we did to Lauren. We had to take her down a peg, show her that it was useless to fight. So, we exhausted her… I mean,Iwas exhausted just watching. I thought for sure one of the men that night would fuck the little bastard out of her. As much as she bled, I thought they did.”
There’s a moment of awful silence that wants to smother every last one of us. A glance at Claire assures me she’s watching, listening to Addison’s every word, processing.
“You’re a monster.” Violet says quietly. “An absolutely despicable monster.”
