me screwing his girlfriend, threw me out of the room, and then he killed her with his bare hands.”
“H-how do you know that?”
Rubbing the back of my burning neck as I remember every detail of that night, I admit aloud for the first time to anyone what happened. “Because he held a gun on me and made me ride with him to the woods. Then he gave me a shovel to dig the shallow grave for her, making sure hikers would eventually find her and it would be linked to the strangler on the loose. It worked too.”
Cora’s face goes a little pale as her jaw drops. “But…why didn’t you turn him in?”
“Are you fucking serious?” I ask with a chuckle. “Who would believe an eighteen-year-old delinquent over a veteran FBI agent? No one, that’s who. So, when he left me in the woods that night, I never went back. Anita wasn’t a saint, but she didn’t deserve that shit, to die brutally when she was only thirty-two. We had been fooling around for weeks that summer,” I confess. “I did her as a big fuck you to my father. She did me because he threatened to have her arrested and charged with murdering her rich husband.”
“Anita?” Cora repeats. “The ID you gave me?”
“I figured no one else would be using her social security number or name since she was dead.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“When they found her and gave her a funeral, she got the last laugh at my father, leaving everything she had to me in her will. Her attorney had a PI track me down. I thought I was going to get arrested for her murder, that my dad had set me up. Instead, the attorney gave me a big fat check.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cora
* * *
My head is spinning so hard right now that I don’t know which way is up or down.
I followed Silas home from the pool hall to confront him, to yell at him, but of course I wasn’t going to actually kill him.
I think I just wanted him to feel some of that fear I felt the night at Harold Cox’s house when he pointed the gun at me.
But he didn’t kill me, for whatever reason. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone through with it, or his friend stopped him, and he didn’t treat me badly when he lied to me about being a federal agent.
I should’ve known it was too good to be true, to get to live on a beautiful island and open up my own restaurant. Silas didn’t have to do either of those things for me. He spent his own money to give me everything I wanted.
I’m so confused, trying to figure out what to do now. Good or bad, he’s still the father of my baby, regardless of how strongly opposed to that idea he is. I’m not going to terminate the pregnancy, no matter what he says.
I just have to figure out whether or not I’m going to get up and leave after everything Silas has confessed to me. He may be a talented liar; but, for some reason, I believe what he told me about his father. Mostly because I don’t think anyone could make up a story so sad and disturbing. And the woman, Anita, it sounds like he cared for her and maybe even blames himself for her death at his father’s hands.
He thinks his family are all meant to be killers, but I can’t help thinking that if Silas hadn’t endured what he did at eighteen, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up in a motorcycle club or killed the men at Harold Cox’s house that night. There’s goodness in him, I’m certain of that. He could’ve treated me horribly, but he didn’t. He was good to me. Which is why I haven’t given up on him just yet.
If he could just face the demons his father created, maybe he would change his mind about being a father himself.
And I have an idea how he can begin the process of ridding himself of his awful father.
While he’s pulling a black t-shirt on over his head, I tell him, “I think I know a way for you to finally get revenge on your father and turn it into something positive.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks when his head pops through the neck hole.
“He’s on life support with no brain function. The ICU nurse mentioned that they need a family member to sign the paperwork to take him off of