And to get revenge on Naomi he had set her house on fire.
That fire had taken his two youngest sons from him, and a part of his wife and remaining children that they could never get back. If it hadn’t been for the fire, Ruth would never have gotten addicted to painkillers. If it hadn’t been for the fire, Seth would never have suffered from depression and taken his own life. If it hadn’t been for the fire, his wife wouldn’t have withered away until he scarcely recognized the woman she had become.
All of that lay at Naomi’s feet.
She was the reason Andrew had set that fire.
And she hadn’t yet suffered enough for that.
“Why didn’t you ever say something?”
“Because you had destroyed his family too. It didn’t seem fair that he be punished for that.”
“You know.” Naomi’s brown eyes were studying him. “You signed that message the monster under the bed. You know. About what your father did to me when I was a little girl.”
He knew the smile he shot her wasn't pleasant. “I didn’t just know about it. I made it happen.”
“Y-you wh-what?” she stammered.
“My father had dementia, he didn’t see you as a little girl, I may have led him to believe you were his wife.” He chuckled.
He had needed Naomi to suffer even back then. She had been a beautiful girl, and she had borne a striking resemblance to his mother even though they weren’t related. It had seemed like a good way to make sure he destroyed her. Only he hadn’t destroyed her. Naomi was smart and successful and every bit as beautiful as she had been as a child. When he had gotten out of prison, he had known that he needed to decimate her. He had learned a lot in prison, now he didn’t need to hang back and let someone else do his dirty work for him, now he was quite prepared to do it himself.
“How could you do that?” Naomi was crying but didn’t seem to notice. “You’re right, you were there when I was born, you did take care of me as I grew up, you did teach me all the same things you taught your biological children. How could you do that to me? I was only eight years old.”
“And David and Eli never made it to their eighth birthdays thanks to you,” Gene raged. He needed to hurt her. He needed her to hurt like he had hurt when he had seen his two and four-year-old sons’ burned bodies. That pain had never left him. Seeing his sweet, effervescent little boys lying there dead, had killed him inside. His need to inflict pain on the person who caused their deaths, and on the world in general, had consumed him. The only way to even minimally alleviate that throbbing agony in his heart was by hurting Naomi. That was why he had hidden under her bed when his father had assaulted her. He had needed to hear her suffer. Her tears had been a balm on his soul.
He needed to hurt her now too.
Stuffing a rag in her mouth, he slapped a piece of tape over it, he couldn’t have her screaming out in pain and alerting someone to what was going on.
Then he walked to the vanity, set down his knife, and picked up a nail gun.
Naomi’s eyes were dull as she watched him cross back to her side. She wasn't stupid, she knew he intended to torture her before he killed her. She was probably wondering what else he had in store for her.
To her credit, Naomi showed no fear as he held the nail gun against her bicep.
As he pressed the trigger, and a nail was fired into her flesh, it was like his heart gave a small sigh of relief as for just a moment the pain of his family’s demise eased.
* * * * *
3:59 P.M.
Sam slammed the fridge door much harder than was necessary, causing it to bounce back open. He went to slam it a second time but caught the door just in time and closed it properly. He made up for it by thumping the bottle of water he’d gotten from the fridge onto the counter so hard it cracked, and water began to trickle out all over the place. Picking up the now useless bottle, he threw it as hard as he could against the wall, vaguely satisfied when the plastic exploded, and water splattered everywhere.
“You have to let go of the anger,” Nick said quietly from the kitchen door.
In response, Sam just yanked a glass from his cabinet, filled it with water, took a mouthful, then hurled it at the wall where it too shattered into a million pieces. Just like his heart had when Naomi walked out his front door without looking back.
“Being angry with her doesn’t help.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he shot back.
“She didn’t have a choice,” Nick reminded him.
Whirling on his colleague, his friend, the man he’d thought he may one day wind up being related to when Nick married Aggie and he married Naomi. “She had a choice, and she chose to sneak out of my house pretending to be one of her sisters rather than tell me what was going on and letting us handle it together.”
“You wouldn’t have let her go alone,” Nick pointed out.