“I know about everything, Story.” Her voice is ominously one-note, and when she lifts her gaze to mine, I find an awareness there that chills me. It’d be so much easier if she were truly losing it, crazed and broken, but she’s completely lucid. This is a woman who knows exactly what she’s done. “I know what Daniel wanted with you. I know what you did on the internet when you were younger. I even know about all the things your brother’s done to you.” Her voice drops. “And his friends.”
A tightness clutches my lungs, making it painful to breathe through. “How?”
She flicks the glitter off her fingertips. “A mother always knows, but it makes it easier when your husband has the entire house fitted with security cameras.” A weariness crosses her face as she edges closer, propping her hip against the dresser. “It’s like I told you before. I blame myself. I put you into that home, with those…” Her mouth contorts, but she doesn’t finish—doesn’t put a word to what the Paynes are. There’s a strange appeal in the way she looks at me. “I had to stay, though. Daniel was our way out, but he was also a part of this…sickness. I had to find a way to protect you while still being his wife, so that’s what I tried to do. You understand, don’t you?”
I shake my head, at a complete loss. “I don’t.”
Frustration sparks in her eyes, but she visibly bats it down. “You wanted to go away, so we sent you to the boarding school. That might have worked, but Daniel…” Her jaw goes tight and she looks away. “He knew where you were, and he never stopped. Not once. He was still talking to those monsters about you. The Kings.” She spits the word like it’s bitter. “He said he was keeping you whole for them. That you could still belong to them. That he could call you back whenever they wanted, their little Royal virgin whore.” She raises her eyes, pinning me with a fierce stare. “So I sent you some letters and made you run.”
Every cell in my body turns to ice, and I fall back into the chair without really experiencing it. “You?” It’s as though I’ve left my body and I’m nothing more than what Killian had described that day out back. Meat. Flesh and bone, and nothing more. “It was you?”
She reaches for the hairbrush on the vanity, raising her chin. “The Executive Daddy. Not very inspired, was it? Daniel rarely was.” I don’t move as she gathers my hair into her hand, her knuckles cold as they brush against the back of my neck. “I knew what it was like at that age, having creepy old men lusting after you. I knew the fears. The panic. The constant worry that they might find you, corner you.” She runs the brush through my hair, bristles tickling my scalp. “I also knew the power that attention could wield, how it sucked you in. I just needed you to be hidden—just for a while. Just until I found my opportunity.”
“You’re Ted.” It feels like there’s a cost in saying it aloud. I pay it with the shattered pieces of my heart as I struggle to grasp the magnitude of this knowledge. “You killed Jack.”
The brush snags in a knot, and she carefully frees the bristles. “Not me. Not directly.” Sighing, she parts my hair down the middle, just like she always used to do when I was small. “I found you before Daniel did, but then I saw how you were living. With those…criminals.” I can hear the displeased moue of her mouth. “When you were smaller, I used to think to myself…this child is going to be easy. Oh, you were so polite and well-mannered. All the other mothers I knew used to tell me how lucky I was to have a good one. And that’s what you were. You were honest and open. You were so good.” This time, when the brush snags a knot, she yanks. “Then all these men came along, hell bent on turning you into something twisted and wrong.”
“You killed him,” I repeat, stuck in the memory of his blood. His blank, vacant eyes. “You murdered him.”
“Ugly Nick killed him,” she snaps, giving my hair a rough tug. “And I wouldn’t have had to if you’d just stayed on a straight path, Story. Honestly! Burglars and degenerates?” She emits a hard huff of breath, separating my hair. “He was just another in the long line of men who were using you. Can’t you see that now? I know you’re young, but you must see that.” Flippantly, she adds, “It doesn’t matter. By the time I realized how you were living, Daniel had already tracked you down again, so that degenerate served a purpose. I needed just a little more time.”