Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Our darling and deranged brother, Henry Shaw.
A man who is about to meet his maker after he dies a slow death in the most painful way possible.
CHAPTER 20
Katelyn
A rumbling gently shakes my limbs, and I open my eyes to orange plastic seats and a puddle of iced coffee running over the tiles toward my feet. I blink, and register the pain in my neck, my chest, my arms, and my legs. I keep blinking to free my mind of the web it’s trapped in. Every part of me aches like I’ve got the flu.
I sit up slowly, and the world swims a little as my vision goes blurry. I look down and see my brother's hand on my arm. Instead of reassurance, it makes my very blood run cold.
“Henry?” I say groggily.
I remember him surprising me in my kitchen, holding the biggest knife we have to my throat and forcing me to drink a cloudy glass of water. My brother drugged and kidnapped me.
His hand tightens around my wrist, already covered in angry red marks.
“Henry?” I try to lift my head all the way up, and he smashes it back down so my cheekbone meets his shoulder with a force that will surely leave a bruise. “Are we on the subway?”
“I had to get you out of there now he’s back. He’ll try to take you from me like he did before, and I had to stop him before he separated us forever.”
“Who? Heath? Or are you talking about Eddie?”
“Heath. Eddie’s dead,” Henry slurs like he’s drunk.
The horror comes back in a heartbeat. I remember Heath blowing Eddie’s head off through the fog in my mind. Eddie’s dead. One of my worst tormentors—gone. But Henry’s still here, and now he has me alone. I don’t know what his intentions are, but they cannot possibly be good. He’ll rape and kill me to keep me from Heath.
“Are we on the subway?” I ask again.
“He’s stolen everything from me, my father, my sister, my home. He’s taken it all,” Henry mutters.
“Are we going to the city?” I adjust my eyes and look out the windows. The train runs above ground, and we’re outside. It’s still dark, but I have no idea how much time has passed since Heath kissed me goodbye. There isn’t another soul on this train to witness my demise.
“He took everything, so it’s only fair I take something from him. Just like Mom, Peggy didn’t know how to swim,” Henry muses.
I sit up straight and grab the locket sitting below my clavicle. Peggy, Heath’s mother. She was so kind to me, so generous with her time and affection after I lost my mother. I only have warm memories of the woman who appeared out of the blue one day with a suitcase and a young Heath at her side, holding his hand.
This is my son Heath, Katelyn. I hope the two of you can get along. You’re exactly the same age.
Heath and Peggy were a welcome respite from my sometimes-distant father and Henry, who was always so hard on me.
At certain points in my life, I’d wondered if Henry had anything to do with my mother’s drowning, but I always took Peggy’s death at face value. I’d believed none of us were home when she fell from the top of the grand staircase at Wainscott Hollow and broke her neck. I wonder if an autopsy was performed. I do remember they couldn’t figure out why she’d been out swimming in her work uniform. Peggy’s death was eerily similar to Mother’s.
We always believed the story that our mother had walked into the waves. I always believed the story. She was a melancholic person, and subject to bouts of serious depression. I look at Henry’s white-knuckled hand biting into my wrist and become overwhelmed by a wave of nausea.
If I want the truth, I need to be brave. If I want to get out of this alive, I need to be smart.
“Did you kill Peggy, too, like you did Mom? The same way?” I try to make my voice steady, cheerful even. Henry has always thrived off of my fear of him. It makes him meaner, more vicious. My terror elevates his pleasure in torturing me.
“Sure, it was the easiest thing to do, force them into the water, let the waves do the rest.”
“But I thought Peggy fell.” Without flinching, I grasp and hold the locket on my neck.
“Some fisherman was out there, and I didn’t need a witness, so I tried to make it look like I was saving her. Had to drag her back into Wainscott Hollow. But when I got her back, she started choking up sea water like she wasn’t all the way dead. So I had to drag her up to the top of the stairs, and boom! Hence the broken neck. If we couldn’t have a mother, it wasn’t fair that he did.”