Page 50 of To Love a Monster
I don’t speak right away.Instead, I reach into the folder and pull out the next set of documents.Another grainy photo from a satellite timestamped three years ago.Carl at a private military airstrip in Dubai.Another image follows, a surveillance shot from a week later.Carl again, just in a different suit with a different name.
I slide both toward her and she stares at them, her lips parting.
“His real name is Jakob Friese,” I say.“German-born.Operated under at least six aliases over the past decade, but the one that’s been most consistent is Carl Donovan, the one you know.”Her hands hover over the photo like she doesn’t want to touch it.
“He’s not just some creep with boundary issues,” I continue, my voice even but taut.“He’s former private military, discharged under black seal, which means even the official reason’s classified.Recruited into syndicate contracts less than a couple months later.Since then, he’s been hired for high-threat operations.Kidnappings, torture extractions, target surveillance.Disposals.”
Her head shakes slowly, like her brain’s rejecting it.“Disposals?”
“When someone’s too much of a liability to keep breathing.”Her jaw clenches and her breath staggers.
I lean forward and place a third file in front of her.This one is thicker and I tap it with a finger.“This is a breakdown of the last five jobs he was assigned to.All involve strategic manipulation, working his way into his target’s life over weeks.He gains their trust, gets close, makes them feel safe.”I pause.“Then disappears with them.”
Her eyes are wide now, hands trembling slightly as she flips the next file open and scans the first page.There’s a victim photo of a woman with dark hair.She’s in her mid-thirties and labeled MIA.
I speak quietly.“This was two years ago in Brazil.The client was an arms dealer trying to silence a witness before a court date.Carl posed as a security consultant.Gained her trust, took her out for drinks one night and she was never seen again.”
Lila doesn’t blink as I keep going.“He’s a specialist, Lila.His skill is subtlety.He builds connections the way people build castles, with careful precision and patience.He’s happy to take his time and wait until you let your guard down completely.And then...”I let the silence finish the sentence.
She swallows hard, voice barely there.“How long has he been watching me?”
“Longer than you think.”I reach into the folder again, pull out a few pages and slide it across the table toward her.
“He didn’t just lie to you, Lila.He killed Jake.”Her breath hitches and she stares at the documents like they might explode in her hands.
“No,” she whispers.“No, that’s not—” She stops.Then grabs the photo.It’s grainy, but clear enough.A still frame from a security camera inside the hardware store.
Jake’s body.Blood seeps out from beneath him in a thick, spreading pool.His hands are bound behind his back with zip ties, his face swollen, eyes half-open but lifeless.
But I’m not done.I pull out the next photo, enhanced and color-corrected by Matteo’s team.I lay it down gently in front of her like I’m placing a gravestone.This one shows Jake’s wife slumped in a folding chair.Her wrists bear ligature marks, there's blood at her temples and her eyes are shut, but there’s a trail of dried red down her cheek.
Lila’s body locks and she stares at the photos like they might crawl off the page.“They didn’t just kill them,” I say quietly.“They tortured them.For hours.Maybe longer.I think Jake fought back, tried to protect her.That’s why it looks like he took the worst of it.”She makes a strangled sound, barely a sob, barely a breath.I reach for her, but she jerks away.Stands up and paces.
“That’s his store,” she says, her voice shaking.“These pictures.It shows where it happened.He killed them there, in the hardware store not far from here.”She turns toward me, eyes wide and frantic.“We have to call someone.The police.The FBI—”
“It’s useless.”My voice cuts sharper than I mean for it to.
She stops.Blinks.“What do you mean it’s useless?”
“By now the store’s been sanitized.Every drop of blood scrubbed, every trace of evidence gone.Bodies disposed of, witnesses paid or silenced.These people don’t leave messes, Lila, they rewrite the entire scene.The police won’t find a damn thing because half of them are on Syndicate payroll or scared shitless to cross them.”
She looks like I just knocked the air out of her lungs and I soften.“If you go to the authorities now, the best-case scenario is they write you off as paranoid.Worst case?They report it.Right back to the people we’re trying to stop.”She sits again and her face pales even more.
“What would they even want with me?I’m not anyone important—”
“Yes,” I say firmly.“You are.”She laughs.But there’s no humor in it, just disbelief.A breathless, jagged sound that shakes as it leaves her mouth.
“I’m an artist,” she says.“I sell acrylic paintings at local art galleries.I don’t have secrets.I don’t know anyone important.Why would someone like him, why would an entire fucking syndicate, care about me at all?”
I don’t answer right away, because the next truth is the heaviest one.And it’s tied to everything.I lean forward, slow and deliberate.I place another photo on the table and meet her eyes.But I don’t answer right away.
Because the next truth is the heaviest one.The one Matteo warned me not to touch.
You want to tell her everything?That everything she’s built for herself is balanced on a lie I crafted to keep her alive?he said.You think that won’t shatter her?
But how the hell is she supposed to understand the gravity of any of this—Carl, Annalise, the Syndicate—without knowing who she really is?Why they want her.Why they’ll burn the world to take her.I stare at the folder in front of me, fingers tightening around the last piece I’ve been holding back.This ...this is the line.And once I cross it, there’s no going back.Not with her, not with Matteo.
But I’ve already made my choice.I made it the second I let her into my chest and didn’t pull her back out.So I lean forward, slow and deliberate, and pull out the final photo I managed to find of Matteo.Twenty-three years younger.Clean-shaven.Still terrifying, still powerful.
