Page 106 of He Sees You
"Yes."
"He knew what your parents were doing to you."
"Yes."
"He let Jake hurt those women."
"Yes."
"He's been trafficking girls."
"Yes."
"Everything I am came from blood money. My education, my apartment, my entire life was funded by selling children."
"That's not your fault."
"No, but it's my responsibility now. Knowing makes me responsible."
"What do you want to do?"
"I need to write. I need to get these feelings out before they poison me."
"Celeste—"
"Please. Just... take me home. To your cabin. I need to write about daughters who discover their fathers are the real monsters. I need to make sense of this."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Cain
The groundskeeper's cottage sits fifty yards from the main Lockwood estate, hidden behind a wall of evergreens that have grown wild in twenty years of neglect.
Snow crunches under my boots as I approach, each step deliberate, measured.
I haven't been inside since I was seventeen, the day before I killed my mother and father.
He'd called me to his "office" to discuss my future—military school, he'd decided.
Somewhere that would "fix" what was broken in me.
I remember that conversation perfectly.
Him sitting behind his mahogany desk, while my mother stood by the window like a porcelain sentinel, both of them explaining how this was for my own good.
How I needed discipline, structure, distance from "negative influences"—meaning Juliette, meaning anyone who might believe us about the abuse.
"You're sick, Cain," Richard had said, lighting his Cuban cigar, the smoke curling between us like a barrier. "The violence,the anger, those incidents at school. Normal boys don't break other boys' arms over words."
"Normal boys don't have to protect their sisters from their parents," I'd replied.
My mother had slapped me for that.
Hard enough to split my lip, careful to avoid leaving marks that would show.
They were always careful about visible marks.
The bruises were always where clothing would cover, the cuts where they could be explained as accidents.
