Torn - Cynthia Eden Page 0,76

right to the floor. He said that I’d turned on him. After everything he’d done. After all he’d given to me. I was on the floor, looking up at him, and he was yelling about how I couldn’t make it without him. How I needed him to survive . . .” Her lashes flickered and she stared at Wade. “I knew then that I couldn’t need anyone.”

No, baby, that isn’t how life works.

“I had to rely on myself. Only myself. Because he was yelling the same crap at me that I’d heard him yell at my mother, right before he killed her.”

“You were afraid.” His voice came out as an angry growl because he was pissed. Pissed at her psychopath of a father. Pissed that someone hadn’t helped her. Pissed that no one had listened to her when she’d tried so desperately to get the cops to hear her.

“After that night, he started trying to control me more. Wanting to know where I was going. Watching me, all the time. If I did anything that upset him . . .” She shook her head. “I heard the whispers from everyone. People thought I was the crazy one. That I’d gone over the edge when my mom vanished and I’d just latched onto the idea of him killing her. I knew the truth, though.” She paused. “The truth is that he killed her, and he was going to kill me.”

“Victoria . . .”

“He was a brilliant man. He knew so much about science. Medicine. About the human body.” Her hand rose and she pressed it to her heart. “He knew just where to cut, so that death could be fast or so it could be slow.”

You think I’m going to blame you for stopping that bastard?

“I know . . . because he told me. He told me that he made my mother’s death slow because she needed to suffer. But for me . . . He told me one night while I was in bed . . . he sat there, right beside me, stroking the hair away from my forehead, and he said that he’d make it fast for me. Because I was his daughter, you see. I was part of him. So he was going to be kind and he’d make it fast.”

He took another step toward her.

She lurched back. “He said . . . no one would find me. They’d think I ran away. He’d learned from my mom’s death. He was going to be better this time. No one would ever find me. I was just going to vanish, and he—­he doubted anyone would ever even look for me. I’d be a troubled teen . . . the world already knew just how troubled I was. I’d vanish, and that . . . that would be the end of me.”

Her father was a fucking bastard. “But you didn’t die.” You didn’t vanish.

Her lashes lowered, shielding her gaze again.

“Victoria . . .” He needed her to look at him. “You didn’t die.”

Her lashes rose once more. She stared at him. “No, I didn’t. But he did.”

“I know. I read the files, a heart attack—­”

She shook her head. “The perp who has been ­texting me. He was right, Wade. I am a killer. I killed my father. I couldn’t just wait for him to come after me, and I knew he was . . . he was going to wait for the perfect moment. He was going to take his knife and kill me, and no one would ever find my body. I—­I couldn’t let him do that.”

Jesus. “No, you couldn’t.”

“I went to the cops again. That next morning. I got up and I ran there. I told them what he had planned for me, but . . . they didn’t believe me.” Her laugh was bitter. “Or if they did, they didn’t do anything. I mean, what could they do? It was my word against his, and the jury had believed him before, not me, so . . .” Her words trailed away. “I had an option. I could run or I could stay and die.”

“You ran.” This hadn’t been in the files he’d read. He just knew—­she’d run.

“I didn’t go back home that night. I was too afraid. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t have any other place to go. I—­I just stayed on the streets. Slept near the bus stop. When I woke up, a cop was shaking my shoulder. He . . .”