“How did you know we’d be here?” I ask.
“I get a direct notification when this door is opened.”
“Does Dad know about this?”
“He doesn’t need to.” Agnus pauses. “Yet.”
The thought that Dad trusts him burns at the back of my throat like acid.
“I assume you remember now,” Agnus continues. “I told Ethan you’d remember if you come down here, but he’s stubborn when it comes to emotions.”
“You killed my mother,” I breathe, my face going up in flames.
“Shut up, Elsa,” Aiden whispers harshly, but only I can hear him. “Don’t provoke him when we have no exit plan.”
He digs his fingers into my arm, keeping me in place. He’s watching our surroundings, probably searching for a way out.
“What will you do?” Agnus asks with that infuriating confidence. “Tell Ethan?”
I swallow my rage even though I want to poke his eyes out. It kills me that this man has been on Dad’s side after he erased Ma from the face of the earth.
However, Aiden is right. I have to be rational about this.
“What if I do tell Dad?” I ask slowly.
Agnus twirls the cigarette between his fingers. “You saw Abigail dead.”
“She wasn’t dead. She was whimpering and pleading for help.”
“And I helped her.”
“By burning her?”
“By offering her a way out, yes. Half her head was gone. She was going to die either way.” He watches the floor as if she was still lying there, moaning in pain. “Besides, Abigail has been the living dead since Eli’s drowning. I respect her choice of finally putting herself and everyone else out of their misery.”
“You don’t regret it, do you?”
“The only thing I regret is not forcing Ethan to send her to the psych ward sooner. A miscalculation on my part, unfortunately. If he did, neither Knox nor Teal nor Aiden would’ve been hurt. If he did, both of you wouldn’t have been shot and separated for ten years. So no, Elsa. I don’t regret purging Abigail from the life she didn’t want in the first place.”
He’s a psychopath, isn’t he?
If he’s so detached after killing someone, he must be some sort of a psycho.
However, as I hear his argument, I can finally see why he did it. I can finally see why Aiden thinks it was the right thing.
Ma wanted to kill me and Dad.
Ma stopped being my mother the moment Eli died. She drowned with him in that lake and since then, she tried everything to bring us all down to her hell.
The fact I wanted her to live isn’t only an insult to Dad and I, but it’s also an insult to the three children she traumatised; Knox, Teal, and Aiden.
It’s an insult to the promise I made to Aiden ten years ago.
I had hoped to have everything, but it was impossible.
One way or another, Ma would’ve ended our family just like her family ended.
“If you think you’re so righteous,” I ask Agnus. “Why didn’t you tell Dad about what you’d done?”